6 Mins Read

Brazilian meat giant JBS has broken ground on a $62M cultivated meat research and development facility in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina. Billed as the largest food biotech centre in Brazil, it’s scheduled to open at the end of 2024. The world’s biggest meat company – and a highly controversial one at that – is aiming to produce cell-cultured beef in the future.

The JBS Biotech Innovation Centre will see the meat company invest funds in three phases, with the total required capital estimated to be $62M. It will invest $22M in the first stage, which will focus on the construction of lab facilities, and the second phase centred on a pilot plant. In the third stage, JBS will look to build an industrial-scale model to exhibit the technical and economic potential of cultivated proteins.

The new R&D hub will feature a scientific team of 25 specialist post-doctoral researchers, plus staff and clerical support. The project is designed to serve as a base for future facilities that JBS may work on to manufacture cultivated beef and other meat products. The aim is to make the production of cell-cultured meat more affordable, efficient and scalable.

Cultivated beef endorsed by a conventional meat giant

JBS first declared the project in 2021, when it earmarked about $100M for investment in the cultivated meat sector. Out of this, $41M was set aside to invest in Spanish cell-based meat startup BioTech Foods. Last year, the latter broke ground on what it claims is the world’s largest cultivated beef manufacturing facility in San Sebastián, which is slated to finish by mid-2024.

The plant will reportedly have a capacity to produce 1,000 tonnes of cultivated meat annually, with the potential to quadruple this output. JBS says that while the factory will focus on products like sausages, burgers and meatballs, BioTech Foods’ tech can expand beyond beef to include cell-cultured chicken, pork and fish.

“As a global leader in protein production, it is our responsibility to be at the forefront of food tech,” said JBS’s global supply and innovation director Jerson Nascimento Jr. “The JBS Biotech Innovation Centre reinforces our commitment to the cultivated protein sector, consolidates our position as one of the main players in this very promising market, and reinforces our commitment to offering innovative, high-quality products to our consumers.”

The new plant is being led by Luismar Marques Porto, its cultivated meat president, and Fernanda Vieira Berti, VP of the research facility. Scientists at the JBS Biotech Innovation Centre – which will be located at the Sapiens Parque innovation hub – have already begun working at temporary facilities to research beef cell cultivation.

“We are delighted to be part of the first initiative of this size in Brazil and to be able to contribute to studies that will help expand the sector. We are confident this project will become an international benchmark,” said Porto.

JBS isn’t the only meat giant that has invested in the cultivated protein sector. In 2018, Tyson Foods acquired a minor stake in cultivated meat leader Upside Foods (then called Memphis Meats) – which is one of the only two such companies that have received regulatory approval for sale in the US. Upside Foods also received investment from Cargill (in 2017 and 2020), which invested in Israeli startup Aleph Farms in 2019 as well.

JBS remains a problematic company on the climate front

When the world’s largest meat company – with assets worth nearly $40B – makes a move this big for alt-protein, it’s bound to attract interest. But despite the company’s purported support of slaughter-free animal meat production, JBS has a checkered record when it comes to ethical and environmental issues. In fact, JBS is under pressure from environmental groups that are urging the US Securities and Exchange Commission to block its IPO in the country, calling it the “biggest climate risk IPO listing in history”.

The company has a well-documented past of greenwashing and human rights abuses. While it may be making plans to produce cultivated meat, JBS increased its greenhouse gas emissions by 51% between 2016 and 2021 – additionally, its total emissions were actually 68 times higher than what it claimed. Moreover, JBS has been found to be among the biggest drivers of Amazon deforestation, with the number of slaughterhouses in the region more than doubling between 2009 and 2020.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, JBS was accused of child labour abuses, with two dozen minors allegedly hired by a cleaning company to clean JBS’s dangerous meatpacking plants across the US. And in World Animal Protection’s list of the meat industry’s climate impact, the company ranks as the worst offender globally.

JBS’s integrity was called into question in an exposé ahead of COP26 in 2021, with multiple breaches found just six months after its publication. This included settling with the US Department of Justice over a price-fixing scheme in beef markets, gaining approval or agreeing to settle over poultry and pork price fixing, respectively, and being fined over a fatality at one of its facilities.

In a statement, Rainforest Action Network lists the practices JBS has been accused of over the last 15 years: “Illegality; deforestation; invasion and land grabbing of Indigenous and traditional territories; land conflicts and violence against rights defenders, slavery and labour abuses in its supply chain; lack of traceability; corruption; and greenwashing.”

Cultivated meat facilities around the world

There are several large-scale cultivated meat facilities by alt-protein startups that are already operational or mid-construction. These differ from pilot plants, which are pre-commercial manufacturing systems to test the technology in small volumes. Shanghai-based CellX, for example, completed the construction of what it called a “large-scale pilot plant” last month.

In February last year, Aleph Farms moved to a 65,000 sq ft plant in Rehovot, Israel, which increased its capacity by six times to be able to initially produce 10 tonnes of cultivated steak annually. And earlier this year, it announced the acquisition of another manufacturing facility in Modi’in, Israel.

In December 2022, fellow Israeli producer Believer Meats (formerly Future Meat) broke ground on a 200,000 sq ft facility – which it says will be the largest cultured meat factory in the world when it opens. It is said to have a capacity of at least 10,000 metric tons of cell-based meat, which is more than double the potential output of the JBS-BioTech Foods plant.

In May, Mosa Meat – which showcased the world’s first cultivated beef burger 10 years ago – unveiled what it claimed is currently the world’s largest cultivated meat production plant in Maastricht, Netherlands. This is the company’s fourth facility, expanding its footprint to 7,340 sq m (79,007 sq ft). Mosa Meat says its “cultivated meat campus”, which has a 1000-litre bioreactor scale, can produce “tens of thousands of cultivated hamburgers”.

Earlier this month, Upside Foods began construction of a 187,000 sq ft factory in Glenview, Illinois, which can eventually produce 30 million pounds of meat and seafood annually. This follows its Engineering, Production and Innovation Center (EPIC) plant, which can currently produce 50,000 lbs of finished cultured meat products annually, with the potential to expand to 400,000 lbs though a recent Wired investigation raised questions about whether the company was producing its products in the facility’s bioreactors.

Meanwhile, Eat Just’s Good Meat – the other company to earn regulatory approval in the US, and the first to do so globally in Singapore back in 2020 – is building what it says is Asia’s largest cultured meat plant in Singapore. It also signed an agreement for a US facility that will house 10 250,000-litre bioreactors, which it says will be capable of producing 30 million lbs of meat.

Over in Asia, Malaysian company Cell AgriTech is preparing to open the country’s first cultivated meat facility in Q4 2024, while South Korean cultured beef producer Seawith announced a ₩6.5B ($5.43M) investment last year, which it plans to use for a state-of-the-art production plant.

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5 Mins Read

Three months after becoming the joint-first company to gain regulatory approval for cultivated meat in the US, California-based Upside Foods has announced a new commercial-scale manufacturing plant near Chicago. The new facility will begin producing ground cell-cultured chicken products, with an initial capacity of millions of pounds per year.

The 187,000 sq ft is based in Glenview, Illinois, and is titled Rubicon “with an appreciation for its historical significance as a point of no return”. In what is a significant step in the mainstreaming of cell-cultured meat, the factory has the potential to eventually produce 30 million pounds of cultivated meat and seafood products per year, and house cultivators with capacities of up to 100,000 litres.

Upside Foods COO Amy Chen told Green Queen that the facility – one of the world’s largest and most advanced commercial sites of its kind – will start with a broad portfolio of chicken-based formulations, including products like chicken nuggets, chicken sausages, dumplings and patties.

Second cultivated meat facility enables mass production

The company’s current cultivated chicken, which entered US foodservice via Bar Crenn in August, is manufactured at its Engineering, Production and Innovation Center (EPIC) in Emeryville, California. That plant can currently produce 50,000 pounds of finished cultured meat products annually, with the potential for future expansion to accommodate over 400,000 pounds per year.

“Not only does [EPIC] serve as the pioneering facility for the production and sale of our commercial products, but it also functions as an innovation centre for research and development that guides our scaling efforts,” said Chen.

“On the other hand, our Chicago facility marks our inaugural venture into large-scale commercial production,” she added. “Leveraging the knowledge accumulated from Upside’s EPIC facility in California, this new establishment will propel us to the next level of cultivated meat production.”

The company selected Dallas-based tech firm Jacobs as its design and manufacturing partner for the new plant, and chose the Chicago metropolitan area as its mass-manufacturing base due to the region’s legacy in meat production, a shared commitment to innovation and sustainability, strategic geographical advantages (it’s located at a major transportation crossroads), and its talented workforce.

It comes after the January acquisition of Wisconsin-based cultivated seafood producer Cultured Decadence. Upside Foods, which is worth $1B and has brought in $600M in funding, said this furthers its “commitment to the Midwest”, where it plans a total investment of over $140M. The company claimed this will create 75 new jobs – from warehousing and logistics positions to bioprocessing and food production – as well as other commercial functions.

“This new facility is a significant investment in our communities – creating new good-paying jobs while advancing our ambitious clean energy goals to create a more sustainable future,” Illinois governor JB Pritzker said in a statement. Touching upon Upside Foods’ US regulatory approval, he added: “Their pioneering leadership makes them a perfect fit for the region.”

“We’re excited that the next chapter of our journey towards building a more sustainable, humane, and abundant future will be in Illinois,” said Upside Foods founder and CEO Uma Valeti. “We are grateful for the collaboration and partnership that we have built at the state, county, and local levels in our site selection process.”

Diversifying the product range and bringing costs down

Upside Foods said that while ground chicken is its initial focus, it plans to diversify into other animal-based foods and whole-textured formats in the future. Chen declined to share specifics about the production and market costs of the cultivated chicken but confirmed it would enter the market at a premium. “Our ultimate goal is to reach price parity and eventually be more affordable than conventionally produced meat,” she added.

“That broad journey of technical scale-up, buildout of the supply chain ecosystem, and continuing to move down the cost curve is something we are laser-focused on in our next chapter. For instance, further reducing the cost of cell feed and finding efficiencies in bioprocess scale-up will play key roles in achieving our scale-up goals. We’ve already made tremendous progress on both of these fronts, and continue to invest in developing and testing new production processes to help achieve these goals.”

In 2021, Upside Foods announced a breakthrough development, producing an animal-component-free (ACF) cell feed for its cultivated chicken products. This meant it was no longer using the controversial fetal bovine serum (FBS), and doubtless helped fast-track scalable production as well as earn regulatory clearance. Chen remained coy on whether the company was planning on applying for approval in other countries – Singapore is the only other country that allows the sale of cultivated meat so far – but hinted that “our mission is global”.

She added that following its collaboration with Bar Crenn, the company planned on partnering with additional chefs and restaurants in the US, and eventually selling its products in grocery stores and markets globally: “Ultimately, we want Upside’s products to be available everywhere meat is sold, including retail and foodservice channels.”

A recent consumer poll by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that half of Americans are unlikely to try cell-cultured meat, with most citing the reason as “it just sounds weird”, half saying they don’t think it would be safe.

Chen, however, remains confident about the consumer appeal of cultured meat. “We’re focused on educating consumers on what cultivated meat is and the potential benefits it can provide,” she said. “We believe they will fall in love with the familiar taste and texture of cultivated meat now that they have the chance to experience it.”

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4 Mins Read

Canadian cultivated meat startup The Better Butchers has revealed plans to open what would be the world’s first exclusively cultured meat butchery within the next two years. The brand says it wants to be Canada’s first company to launch cultivated meat to market, and has had “positive discussions” with regulatory authorities in the country.

The startup is founded by Mitchell Scott, who was the former co-founder of US plant-based meat brand The Very Good Food Company. Scott was terminated as company CEO in 2022, and the business itself went into receivership this year.

“When I was unceremoniously exited from the plant-based food company I co-founded, I started looking into it and ended up building out a team to start the world’s first cultivated butchery,” Scott told Vegconomist. “In addition to having the potential to solve massive environmental, ethical and health concerns, I think cultivated meat can also solve some of the consumer adoption issues facing plant-based meat, such as taste, texture, and long ingredient lists.”

The Better Butchers plans to open its cultivated meat butchery in Vancouver in 2024, and is currently also focusing on a direct-to-consumer product portfolio, with plans to enter foodservice and wholesale in the aftermath. The brand is working on prototypes of cultivated pork sausages, meatballs and marinated steaks.

Canada’s regulatory process

Scott said the company has had positive discussions with regulators for a potential approval of The Better Butchers’ cultivated meat products. He expects just over a 12-month process to get the regulatory seal, once the prototypes are complete in Q1 2024.

According to industry think tank the Good Food Institute, Canada has stated its intent to regulate cultivated meat under its current novel foods regulations, instead of considering new regulatory approaches. Authorisation requires a premarket proposal with detailed information about the product. And the approval process is made up of three parts: a ‘letter of no objection’ for human food use; a premarket assessment for new animal feed, regardless of whether the product is intended for that purpose; and an environmental assessment.

Canada’s regulator, Health Canada, is also working in tandem with Food Standards Australia New Zealand on applications of GMO food safety assessment components. The collaboration will see one body take the lead while the other peer reviews, which streamlines the regulatory process, saves costs for both applicants and agencies, and maintains regulators’ independence for final approval.

Meanwhile, since the US is already further up the regulatory ladder after becoming only the second country to approve the sale of cell-cultured meat this June, The Better Butchers plans to pursue approval in that market too.

Cultivated meat in Canada

Interest in cultivated meat in Canada is booming. A new report published last week by the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN) and Fiddlehead Technologies found that there have been 22 patent filings for cell-based meat tech in the country since 2020, with nine companies working in the nation’s cultivated meat sector. Meanwhile, media coverage about the topic has been more positive in recent years. And Canadians increasingly searched for terms including ‘lab-grown meat’, from its production process to its availability for sale.

GFI also notes that last year, Canada invested in cultivated meat development and commercialisation through the government-funded non-profit Ontario Genomics. It collaborated with Germany’s The Cultivated B. to build a 130,000 sq ft cellular agriculture facility, which will provide a domestic supply of bioreactors. Ontario Genomics also partnered with the CFIN for AcCELLerate-ON, a CAD$900,000 competition for cultivated food and beverage projects. Three of the winners of last year’s contest focused on cultivated meat and seafood.

While The Better Butchers wants to be the first company to bring cultivated meat to Canada’s market, a host of other businesses are working on cell-cultured meat and seafood in the country. And last year, Canada saw the opening of a new Institute of Cellular Agriculture, born out of a strategic partnership between leading cultivated protein investor Cult Food Science, the University of Alberta, and New Harvest Canada.

As for butcheries, while The Better Butchers could very well be the first brand to open a butchery exclusively featuring cultivated meat, it won’t be the first butchery to offer cultivated meat. That honour rests with Singapore-based Huber’s Butchery, which put cultivated meat by GOOD Meat (the first company to receive regulatory approval for cultivated meat, also in Singapore) on its display and menu last December.

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5 Mins Read

Los Angeles startup Omeat, which launched in June after four years in stealth mode, has launched and already completed the first commercial sales of Plenty, its ethical and affordable alternative to fetal bovine serum (FBS). The product is available to buy for cultivated meat companies, presenting a slaughter-free substitute for the controversial growth medium and signals the launch of Omeat’s B2B arm.

Omeat claims it’s among the first revenue-generating cultivated meat companies, having created a cell culture supplement that can dramatically cut costs and be scaled up to meet the global demand for cultivated protein – a market that could reach $25B by 2030 if consumer acceptance grows. A 2021 poll conducted by Israeli cultured meat producer Aleph Farms showed that 87-89% of Gen Zers, 84-85% of millennials, 76-77% of Gen Xers, and 70-74% of boomers were at least somewhat open to trying cultivated meat.

The problem with FBS

FBS originally paved the way for cultivated meat production, but it’s a problematic substance. Harvesting it entails taking cells from the fetuses of pregnant cows during their mutual slaughter. The resulting meat is thus not animal-free, and this has raised a lot of ethical concerns, particularly amongst animal activists.

Moreover, it’s an exorbitantly expensive process. When Dutch cultivated meat pioneer Mosa Meat introduced the first cell-based burger 10 years ago, it cost $300,000 for two beef patties. While tech advancements have naturally helped such processes scale up and cut costs, removing FBS played a major role in that.

Now, industry think tank the Good Food Institute predicts that cultivated meat could reach price parity with its traditional counterparts by as early as 2030, with further analysis by industry supplier Ark Biotech highlighting how cost-competitive cultivated meat could become a reality.

In 2019, Mosa Meat itself became the first company to ditch the serum, and in a remarkable move, published the formulation for developing serum-free growth media for cultivated meat last year. Now, more and more companies are looking to move away from FBS, and Omeat says Plenty is a humane, affordable, scalable, and highly effective option for cell culture growth.

Japanese startup IntegriCulture also developed cultivated chicken and duck liver cells using a serum-free medium, and South Korea’s CellMEAT created a serum-free cell culture medium to drive down production costs and provide an ethical cell-cultured meat option. But Omeat claims other FBS alternatives on the market fall short of efficacy and consistency when compared to Plenty.

The Plenty difference

Plenty is created using regenerative plasma drawn humanely from cows that graze freely on Omeat’s carbon-negative farm. Collected weekly, the process to extract the plasma is similar to human plasma donation. Unlike blood, plasma regenerates quickly, so the cows do not feel depleted.

“With one cow providing plasma weekly, we can create many cows’ worth of meat annually,” explained Omeat founder and CEO Ali Khademhosseini during its June debut. The company can produce 20 times more meat per cow than if it was slaughtered. “This means we can feed the planet with only a fraction of the current number of animals used in beef production.”

“We’re perfecting a sustainable operation that existing farms and ranches can implement, generating the same volume of product but with a fraction of the overhead,” said Khademhosseini. “It’s way more efficient, and we don’t have to sacrifice the cow.”

While Plenty does not require animal slaughter, it does still necessitate cows and this could be an ethically grey area, given that for most animal welfare activists, the goal is to remove animals (and the use of animals) from food production entirely.

Omeat, which raised $40M in an oversubscribed Series A round last year, sees itself as a meat company, with the goal to “be a bridge to the future of the meat industry”. It employs full-time veterinary and animal welfare staff, and has developed procedures for plasma collection that rely on positive reinforcement and prioritise the comfort and overall well-being of the cows.

A bridge to the meat industry’s future

A cultivated meat company with a focus on generating revenues

Crucially, Plenty does not require FDA or USDA approval as it is not a food, allowing Omeat to start generating revenue right out of the gate. Other cultivated meat companies can now buy the serum for their own usage in a US market that is buzzing of late, thanks to historic regulatory milestones made in June this year- it is now only the second country to grant regulatory approval for the sale of cell-cultured meat. Singapore was the first to do so in 2020. Elsewhere, Israel’s Aleph Farms became the first company to file for approval in Europe in, with applications in Switzerland (though notably, not in Brussels) and the UK this July.

Plenty is not limited to the cultivated meat industry. Omeat says its solution will appeal to businesses focused on regenerative medicine and vaccine production, or employing cell-culture technology. “We’re looking forward to scaling and helping other companies that are changing the world, allowing them to achieve their goals with a product they can feel good about using,” says Khademhosseini in a statement.

“When it comes to growth media supplementation, FBS is considered the gold standard. However, FBS has downsides, including high costs, limited and unpredictable supply, and ethical concerns about the FBS harvesting process,” he adds.

“Synthetic serum substitutes, defined media, and serum-free media have been developed before as alternatives, but they’ve come with limitations that have hindered their viability as a replacement to FBS. That’s why we developed Plenty: an affordable, effective, and slaughter-free cell culture supplement product.”

While cultivated meat startups such as GOOD Meat and Upside Foods have completed initial consumer sales of their cultivated chicken products, with the former doing so since December 2020 in Singapore, these have been fairly limited in quantity due to production capacity constraints. Plenty could enable Omeat to be one of the first companies in the space to reach significant revenues within a fairly short time horizon.

The post With Its Ready-To-Sell Ethical FBS Alternative, Cultivated Startup Omeat Bets On Revenue Generating B2B Arm first appeared on Green Queen.

The post With Its Ready-To-Sell Ethical FBS Alternative, Cultivated Startup Omeat Bets On Revenue Generating B2B Arm appeared first on Green Queen.

10 Mins Read

On August 5, 2013, a team of Dutch scientists from Maastricht University, led by Dr Mark Post, showcased the world’s first burger made from cultivated meat at a tasting in London. It was the result of decades of research and trials, with food critics describing this first prototype “close to meat, but not that juicy”, and Post calling it a “good start”.

Now, 10 years on, the progress made by this industry has accelerated, with more companies and funding than ever before, as well as increased government and regulatory support, and steps towards price parity with conventional meat. Here are 10 highlights defining the meteoric rise of cultivated meat.

1) There are now over 150 companies working on cultivated meat around the world

According to industry think tank the Good Food Institute’s 2023 State of the Industry Report, the total number of cultivated meat companies is at least 156 – up from 107 in 2021. These producers are based in 26 different regions internationally, and at least 70 additional brands have joined the industry via partnerships or product and service offerings.

This total number of companies, however, is likely an underestimate, as it’s common practice for startups to begin in ‘stealth mode’ and announce their arrival after hitting their first milestone (such as a successful funding round or product prototype), but given that a decade ago, there wasn’t one incorporated company working on this technology, we’ve come a long way!

2) There are now dozens of types of cultivated animal flesh from quail to fish to foie gras

While that first burger tasting was for a beef burger, there are numerous kinds of cultivated meat being developed. Where Dr Mark Post’s Mosa Meat and Israeli startup Aleph Farms are focused on the cow, companies like GOOD Meat, ClearMeat, SuperMeat and Upside Foods are working on chicken (the latter has also debuted duck and beef products). Pork is another popular alternative, with brands like Meatable, Joes Future Food and Ivy Farm Technologies tackling Asia’s favorite meat.

There’s also cell-cultured seafood, from fish fillets to raw salmon to crustaceans such as prawn and crab. Singapore’s Umami Meats and Shiok Meats, and California’s Finless Foods and Wildtype Foods are all pioneering this sector.

Apart from these, Orbillion Bio produces Wagyu beef, in addition to working on elk, lamb and bison alternatives. French startup Gourmey is making cultivated foie gras, and Australia’s Vow want to use this tech to develop kangaroo, zebra, tortoise and yak meat – and it’s already showcased Japanese quail dumplings.

3) Nomenclature continues to be an issue

Cultivated meat, which is the industry’s preferred term, is has many alternative names from cultured meat to clean meat to synthetic meat to the industry’s least preferred term: lab-grown.

Research published in Nature Portfolio found ‘lab-grown’ to be the least favourable term among consumers (alongside ‘artificial meat’) too, while ‘cell-cultured’ and ‘cell-cultivated’ were the most popular. This is echoed by a 2021 GFI survey of 44 industry CEOs, 75% of whom preferred ‘cultivated’ meat. And in 2022, APAC stakeholders signed a memorandum of understanding declaring ‘cultivated’ as the preferred English-language term for these alternatives.

Mainstream media reporters continue to use the term lab-grown despite repeated requests from industry to stop doing so. One main reason journalists should rethink the term? It’s inaccurate. In fact, cultivated meat at commercial scale is not produced (or grown) in a lab environment. Rather, like most foods in our supermarkets, it is made in a food factory.

In 2021, Upside Foods strongly discouraged the use of terms like ‘lab-grown’ or ‘lab-based’, ‘synthetic’ and ‘fake’. It argued that ‘lab-grown’ suggests cultivated meat would always be made in a lab – but once it scales up, it could likely be made in a food-production-like environment. “The labelling of cultivated meat and poultry products will be a crucial component of how our industry conveys the basic nature, essential characteristics, and value of these products to consumers,” the company said.

4) Removing FBS from production is key to the industry’s long-term sustainability

One of the biggest controversies surrounding cultivated meat is the use of fetal bovine serum, a growth medium derived from cows. The use of this serum meant cell-cultured meat produced with it wasn’t animal-free – since it relied upon genetically altering animal cells – and Mosa Meat called the ingredient “not sustainable, reliable or scalable”.

The Dutch company ditched the serum in 2019, and last year published its formulation for developing a serum-free way to produce cultivated meat. “Using a method called RNA sequencing, we can study the changes in gene expression that the cells undergo when they differentiate into muscle,” the company said. It paved the way for companies across this sector to develop serum-free offerings.

Japanese startup IntegriCulture also developed cultivated chicken and duck liver cells using a serum-free medium, and South Korea’s CellMEAT created a serum-free cell culture medium to drive down production costs and provide an ethical cell-cultured meat option.

In fact, many of the more established cultivated meat companies are either phasing out or no longer using FBS in their production but the controversy remains, especially for industry detractors.

5) Total funding to date for cultivated meat startups is close to $3B

In its latest report, GFI report states that cultivated meat startups have raised a total of $2.78 billion in venture funding since 2016. In 2022, the sector reeled in $896 million – and while this was a 33% year-on-year drop, the amount still outperformed the overall global VC funding decline of 35% year-on-year.

Europe saw higher investments in cell-cultured meat last year than in 2021, while Asia Pacific companies raised more capital in 2022 than any other year. It was also the year that saw the largest single deals for both a cultivated meat (Upside Foods) and seafood company (Wildtype Foods), while the number of unique investors also grew year-on-year by 19% to 679.

6) Governments around the world are (slowly) starting to fund cultivated meat

Amidst a worsening climate crisis and more frequent food supply disruptions, governments around the world are increasingly looking to future food technologies as potential solutions as part of national food security strategies.

In 2022, Europe led the world in financing cultured meat research and development. The Netherlands announced a €60M investment – a world record – towards building a cellular agriculture ecosystem, while Norway pledged €10M for a five-year programme to develop cellular agriculture and solve cost and scalability issues. In Spain, a €750,000 grant was given to a biotech company to study cultivated meat industrialisation.

Horizon Europe, the EU’s core innovation and research funding programme, also mentioned cultivated meat and seafood as one of its three core pillars, with around €7M set aside for this sector. Meanwhile, the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council poured £20M into research and development for alt-proteins, which include cell-cultured meat.

Across the Atlantic, the US Department of Agriculture awarded a $10M grant in 2021 to Tufts University to build the National Institute for Cellular Agriculture, which was the first-ever government-funded research project. And in September last year, the Biden administration introduced a biotech programme that includes finances for “foods made with cultured animal cells”. Meanwhile, California allocated $5M for alt-protein research in its state budget, becoming the first US state to invest in research for cultivated meat.

In the Middle East, Israel leads the alt-protein wave. In 2021, it invested $18M to fund the world’s largest cultivated meat consortium, while government funding has contributed $13M to early-stage startups and infrastructure.

Asia also saw an increase in government investments in cultivated meat. South Korea awarded a $15M million grant to cell-based meat startup Space F, while Japan provided a ¥240M ($2.2M) grant to build the country’s first bioreactor for cultured meat production. Meanwhile, Singapore and Israel collaborated to award a joint grant to Steakholder Foods and Umami Meats to develop 3D-printed cultivated grouper fish. Notably, the Singaporean government has made alternative proteins and cultivated meat a key part of its 30 by 2030 food security plan.

7) Only 2 Countries Allow For The Commercial Sale of Cultivated Meat

As of today, only 2 countries have given cultivated meat the regulatory green light.

In 2020, Singapore famously became the first country in the world to approve the sale of cultivated meat after granting regulatory approval to Eat Just, the parent company of GOOD Meat. Since then, a host of companies have flocked to the island nation to pass through its regulatory process and enter the market. Earlier this year, Singapore also became the first country to grant regulatory approval for the use of serum-free media in cultivated meat (also awarded to GOOD Meat).

In June, the US became just the second country on the list to greenlight the sale of cell-cultured meat, as GOOD Meat and Upside Foods passed the premarket regulatory review process for cultivated chicken.

Many countries have regulatory systems in place for alt-proteins, but they are yet to grant approval to companies for sale. The Netherlands has, however, approved cultivated meat and seafood tastings. And in July, Aleph Farms submitted the first regulatory application for cell-cultured meat in Europe, filing for approval in Switzerland. Days later, it also applied for clearance in the UK. But so far, no cultured meat company has filed for regulatory approval in the EU. Israel is another locus of activity with more cultivated meat companies per capita than almost anywhere, and pundits have predicted it could be next for regulatory approval, but so far, the jury is still out.

8) Only a small handful of restaurants in the world have served diners cultivated meat

Currently, only a handful of restaurants across the globe are selling cultivated meat, with Singapore’s regulatory approval paving the way for eateries to debut these alternatives. In 2020, after the approval was granted, 1880 became the world’s first restaurant to serve cultivated meat, namely GOOD Meat’s chicken. This was followed by JW Marriot’s Madame Fan restaurant, which replaced all chicken items on its menu with GOOD Meat’s product in 2021, and Huber’s Butchery and Bistro, which also introduced the company’s cultivated chicken on its menu in 2022 where it remains on the menu today.

And in July, San Francisco’s Bar Crenn, owned by chef Dominique Crenn, became the first US restaurant to serve cultivated meat in the US – with Upside Foods’ chicken – followed a week later by chef José Andrés’s Washington DC eatery China Chilcano, also serving GOOD Meat’s cell-cultured chicken.

9) From cultivated meat to cell-base coffee, chocolate and fur: how the industry’s tech inspired alternatives beyond food

While the technology for cultivated meat was originally developed to make a slaughter-free alternative to animal flesh, the industry inspired entrepreneurs and scientists from all kinds of other sectors to use the science to find cell-based alternatives to other high-emission products. Several companies are producing an animal-free alternative to dairy Indo-American startup Brown Foods, Canada’s Opalia, and Israel’s Wilk, which makes yoghurt from cultivated milk fat. Meanwhile, startups like Australia’s Me& and US-based Biomilq are pioneering cultivated breast milk.

There’s also cultivated chocolate, with startups like Israel’s Celleste Bio and California Cultured leading the pack. The latter is now also working on cell-based coffee, something researchers from Finland’s VTT Technical Research Centre say they developed in 2021 with French startup Stem working on the beanless coffee alternative too.

As of today, there are cultivated alternatives to chicken eggs, caviar, collagen (which includes Aleph Farms), palm oil, animal fur and leather, and chicken broth for dogs. Undoubtedly, there’s more cultivated innovation to come!

10) Cultivated meat and price parity: an ongoing battle

Alongside regulatory approval, the cost of these products is the biggest obstacle for the cultivated meat industry to overcome. But there have been major steps forward in this area. 10 years after Dr Post and his team’s showcased the first beef burger tasting in what reportedly cost over $300,000 for two patties, the cost is now closer to approximately $100 per pound (some companies have suggested a few hundred per pound, others have quoted under $100, so this is an average) thanks to continuous R&D and production scaling.

While at Bar Crenn, Upside Foods’ chicken is part of a six-course $150 prix fixe tasting menu – on par with (or cheaper than) many fine-dining tasting menus, the company is likely losing money per serve (hence the very limited availability of the menu), and we are still a while away from cultivated meat being able to compete with conventional meat or even plant-based meat

While GFI predicts that cultivated meat could reach cost parity with its traditional counterparts by as early as 2030 and further analysis by industry supplier Ark Biotech highlighted how cost-competitive cultivated meat could be a reality, many industry insiders are more cautious. Startups want to scale, but a lack of bioreactor facilities, a need for more funding, and the high cost of media (including FBS-free serum) mean the industry is unlikely to compete with supermarket beef chuck anytime soon.

The post 10 Years Since THAT Burger: 10 Highlights From The Cultivated Meat Journey first appeared on Green Queen.

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Israeli-cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms has filed for regulatory approval to put its cell-based steak on restaurant menus in the UK, reports Bloomberg. The alt-protein producer made the application on July 21, days after applying for approval in Switzerland, which was the first such filing in Europe.

Aleph Farms, which makes cell-based whole-cut meat, is the first cultivated meat company to apply for regulatory clearance with the UK’s Food Standards Agency. It plans to start production in the UK in the next few years and is in talks with potential commercial partners.

“The strategy is to file in the UK and Switzerland which are interesting markets,” Aleph Farms CEO Didier Toubia said. “We believe the UK will take a couple of years, but the potential is huge.”

The regulatory race

Post-Brexit, the UK is reviewing novel food regulation changes that could speed up cell-based and precision fermentation approvals. However, it still relies on the European regulatory framework. No cell-based meat company has yet filed for regulatory approval in the EU, where the process can be seen as opaque and complicated.

“The EU must develop a coherent strategy to support the sustainable protein sector and ensure regulatory processes are clear, in order to reap the benefits of cultivated meat,” Seth Roberts, policy manager at GFI Europe, told Bloomberg.

Cultivated meat is grown via animal cells in bioreactors, and is seen as a cruelty-free and more sustainable alternative to meat. Cell-based chicken has been available in Singapore – a hotbed for cultivated meat – since December 2020, when Eat Just gained the world’s first such regulatory approval. And in June, the US too issued its first approval to Upside Foods and Eat Just’s Good Meat.

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