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Category: Cell-Based News

  • Believer to Open the World’s Largest Cultivated Meat Factory in the Heart of Hog Country

    future meat lamb
    3 Mins Read

    A new cultivated meat factory slated to open in North Carolina will be the world’s largest.

    In what Israel-based Believer Meats says is a watershed moment for the cultivated meat industry, its forthcoming 200,000-square-foot factory, which doesn’t yet have a target opening date, will be able to produce 22 million pounds of meat annually once operational, making it the largest cultivated meat factory in the world.

    The facility, which broke ground earlier this week, is coming to Wilson County, North Carolina — the heart of the state’s hog farming industry. North Carolina is the third-largest hog-producing state in the U.S. The facility will bring as many as 100 jobs to the region over the next three years, and an investment of $123.35 million to Wilson County. The company has raised more than $387 million since its 2018 launch.

    One step closer to commercialization

    “Our facility propels Believer forward as a leader in the cultivated meat industry,” Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, Believer’s CEO said in a statement. “Our brand has continually proven our commitment to scale production technology and capacity, and with our new U.S. production center, we are one step closer to commercialization. Believer is setting the standard globally to make it possible for future generations to eat and enjoy meat.” 

    Believer, formerly Future Meat Technologies, said it specifically targeted North Carolina because of its talent pool and its success in integrating technology-driven solutions.

    Courtesy Believer

    “We’re pleased to welcome Believer Meats to North Carolina,” said North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper. “This important decision to build its first U.S. commercialization operation in Wilson County validates our innovative research and development and highly skilled talent while further cementing our state as the best in the nation to do business.”

    The new facility will feature custom-made bioreactors that Believer says can achieve high cell densities and yields. The company has developed cultivated lamb, which it hails as an R&D breakthrough.

    Robert Rankin, Executive Director of the Association for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS) oday’s hailed the announcement as “another example of the growth, progress and increased interest in this cutting-edge industry,” he said.

    The announcement also earned praise from the industry think tank, the Good Food Institute.

    “We celebrate this milestone and are thrilled to see the North Carolina and Wilson County officials and community providing critically important support to scale cultivated meat production. These steps pave the way for cultivated meat to come to market in the U.S. at scale and helps ensure as many consumers as possible have access to these groundbreaking products,” says Liz Specht, Ph.D., Vice President of Science and Technology at the Good Food Institute. “Further government investment like this will advance the sector toward commercialization, helping to feed a growing population more sustainably, spurring economic growth, and improving environmental and global health outcomes.” 

    The future of protein

    Johnson-Hoffman said Believer, and the cultivated meat industry at large, are “on the path” to creating change. “Through affordability, approachability, and availability, we want our products to become the meat of choice globally, and with the announcement of our new production facility, we are well on our way.”

    Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy

    Believer’s new facility will be among a growing handful of dedicated cultivated meat factories across the globe. Upside Foods’ EPIC factory in California could soon be operational as the company just earned FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken. Once it receives USDA approval it could begin producing for commercial distribution.

    Eat Just, which is currently the only company with approval for cultivated meat in the world, is expected to bring its Good Meat factory online in Singapore early next year. The company says it will be able to produce tens of thousands of pounds of meat per year.

    Elsewhere, Ivy Farms opened the largest cultivated meat factory in Europe last summer, capable of producing three tons of cultivated meat annually. And in October, Australian cultivated meat company Vow debuted Factory 1, its NSW-based factory capable of producing 30 tons of cultured meat per year.

    The post Believer to Open the World’s Largest Cultivated Meat Factory in the Heart of Hog Country appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Orbillion Bio’s New Partnership Will Produce 4 Million Pounds of Cultivated Meat Per Year

    Orbillion's Wagyu beef burger
    3 Mins Read

    Collaborating with synbio tech solutions provider Solar Biotech, cultivated meat pioneer Orbillion Bio says it can produce upwards of four million pounds of cultivated meat per year.

    Known for its premium cultivated Wagyu beef, California-based Orbillion Bio says the new partnership with Solar Biotech will see it scale up to 20,000L bioreactors — enough to produce more than four million pounds of cultivated meat per year.

    The announcement follows the recent FDA GRAS status for Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken, moving the cultivated meat industry closer to U.S. regulatory approval.

    In position for mass production

    The partnership is the first of its kind for Solar Biotech, marking its official entry into the cultivated beef industry, following its launch into animal-free chicken and work with Motif Foodworks on a yeast-derived heme protein.

    Orbillion’s founders Samet Yildirim, MSc, MBS, Patricia Bubner, PhD, and Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay, PhD 

    “At Solar Biotech, we develop world-class bioprocessing technology together with leading players in biotech. We now want to bring our knowledge and decades of experience into creating real impact in the sustainable food tech space, and there is no better partner than the Orbillion Bio team. We see our technical synergy with Orbillion as an opportunity to enter a rapidly growing higher value cellular agriculture segment, which will yield long-term significant recurrent revenue for both parties with attractive profit margins” Alex Berlin, CEO and CTO of Solar Biotech, said in a statement. “They bring significant expertise in world-class bioprocessing and food, and we are looking forward to investing in this partnership to bring cost-effective and nutritious foods to market.”

    The partnership marries Orbillion’s proprietary cell culture platform with Solar Biotech’s scale-up bioprocess development capabilities and infrastructure, proprietary AI-driven bioprocess controlling software, new biosensing technologies, and vertically integrated engineering, and previous experience commercializing mammalian cell cultures for animal-free meat, the companies said in a statement.

    Quality, parity, and sustainability

    “Orbillion’s innovative business model will bring to market the highest quality cultivated beef, while being cost competitive,” Patricia Bubner, CEO of Orbillion, said in a statement. “Our unique technology has already allowed us to produce meat that comes from non-GMO cells and that is free of fetal bovine serum (FBS), and by partnering with Solar Biotech we can move more swiftly to reach price parity.”

    The new partnership will see Orbillion produce its meat at lower costs — part of its commitment to achieving price parity with conventional meat by 2026, and commodity pricing for beef by 2030.

    Orbillion Wagyu beef | Courtesy

    It will also help tackle the food industry’s emissions. Orbillion says if produced using renewable energy, cultivated meat could reduce global warming impacts by between 85 and 92 percent versus conventional beef. Lab-grown meat also reduces the amount of land needed to produce protein, and requires fewer resources including fresh water.

    As the cultivated protein sector positions itself for widespread regulatory approval, Orbillion hope it is setting itself apart with a focus on premium meats. In addition to its Wagyu beef, it’s also developing elk and lamb meat. A recent partnership with Luiten Foods will bring its range of cultivated meats to Europe by 2025, pending regulatory approval.

    The post Orbillion Bio’s New Partnership Will Produce 4 Million Pounds of Cultivated Meat Per Year appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • The Future is Asian: Green Queen Publishes 2022 Edition of Award-Winning APAC Alt Protein Report

    4 Mins Read

    A new report by Green Queen Media argues that while plant-based meat sales may be flat in the US and Europe, in Asia Pacific, the alternative protein industry is booming.

    Green Queen Media has published the 2022 edition of its award-winning APAC Alternative Protein Industry Report today, titled The Future is Asian and presented by plant-based chicken leader TiNDLE. The 150-page report, now in its third year, is the result of over 14 months of original reporting and dozens of first-hand interviews, as well as featuring expertise and insights from over 30 ecosystem insiders and sector investors.

    Both the 2020 and 2021 editions grabbed the top prize in the category of Special Awards for best Global Report at the Hallbars Sustainability Reports Awards in Sweden. Hallbars is an organization that recognizes the best climate-forward publications around the world. 

    Representation matters

    It’s been a challenging year for alternative protein, particularly for plant-based meats, with flat sales in the US and some European markets, a challenging environment for public plant-based companies like Beyond Meat and Oatly, and constant media attacks by pro-meat and pro-dairy lobbies. However, these headlines belie the global picture. “Across the Asia Pacific region, alternative protein companies have been going from strength to strength, hitting major milestones, attracting significant government support and raising record funding rounds,” said Sonalie Figueiras, the report publisher and Green Queen Media’s founder and editor-in-chief, in a statement. “Our report illustrates the importance of reporting and media representation. Western-centric media would have you believe that alternative protein is an industry in trouble. In reality, the sector is headed for boom times in Asia and beyond.”

    “What is perhaps obvious to some, but became incredibly clear upon writing the report and working with our industry experts, is just how differently the various countries within APAC approach alternative proteins, both in terms of technology and consumer behaviour,” said Nicola Spalding, the report author.

    The future is Asian

    Where the 2020 report focused on examining making the case for why alternative protein was necessary in a region that boasts 60% of the world’s population but only 20% of the world’s agricultural land, and the 2021 report provided an exhaustive look at the industry in APAC and dug deep into the three technology pillars, the 2022 edition highlights the 10 most important growth stories and historic firsts that the industry has achieved, as well as the unique products created to serve consumers with vastly different food traditions, culinary tastes and dining preferences.

    On the funding front, record-breaking rounds made headlines across the globe, as APAC was home to both the largest cultivated meat Series A ever and the largest plant-based meat Series A ever. The report chronicles every round raised in 2022, with an emphasis on the 10 biggest.

    In addition, precision fermentation, which in 2021 was a fledging sector in Asia, experienced real traction this past year, with China’s first animal-free dairy company coming out of stealth and the launch of the region’s first animal-free dairy milk onto supermarket shelves amongst many other announcements.

    Several APAC cultivated meat players celebrated major product firsts, from the first cultivated pork belly to the first cultivated duck breast to the first cultivated fishball to the first cultivated Dokdo shrimp- huge leaps, especially given how young the sector is.

    The Future is Asian features extensive interviews with 10 local ecosystem insiders from Japan to Taiwan to India, and spotlights the insights of the top venture capitalists investing in the region’s startups.

    For the first time, the report authors provided recommendations aimed at the many players of the region’s ecosystem on the road ahead amidst a changing global landscape fraught with supply chain disruption, the ongoing Ukraine war, rising food inflation and the looming threat of a worldwide recession, on top of a worsening climate crisis.

    In-depth: APAC’s alt protein pioneers

    After years of ecosystem building, the region now boasts hundreds of startups working towards a future of food that promises to feed over three billion people sustainably, safely, and ethically.

    The report showcases a range of in-depth case studies spotlighting some of the region’s most exciting players such as South Korean cultivated meat and seafood startup CellMEAT, Singaporean plant-based chicken and seafood player Growthwell Foods, US-Australian animal-free casein maker Change Foods, global fats leader AAK, specialty distributor Classic Fine Foods, Californian precision fermentation company Perfect Day and Hong Kong-based foodtech accelerator Brinc.

    Also included are greater China-based plant-based pork and dumpling brand Plant Sifu, US whole-cut fermentation-based seafood pioneer Aqua Cultured Foods, Singaporean cultivated seafood startup Umami Meats and Swiss flavor manufacturer Givaudan.

    The climate crisis presents a clear and present danger for Asian countries. The region will feel the brunt of many of the worst tolls of environmental degradation from worsening air pollution to mass climate migration to declining food security. As Figueiras writes in the report’s introduction, “Alternative protein is an important part of the future food toolbox if we are to build a stronger, more resilient regional food system that will face water shortages, land degradation, and more frequent climate-related weather events, amongst many other challenges.”

    Download The APAC Alternative Protein Industry Report 2022 – The Future is Asian now. 

    Lead image courtesy of Green Queen Media.

    The post The Future is Asian: Green Queen Publishes 2022 Edition of Award-Winning APAC Alt Protein Report appeared first on Green Queen.

  • Why This Company Is Growing Vegetables In Bioreactors Instead of Fields

    a farm

    3 Mins Read

    The nutri-tech start-up Novella is taking a page from cell-based meat production and growing botanical ingredients without the whole plant.

    Israel-based Novella says it’s growing plants in bioreactors in a method similar to cultivated meat, and reducing the inefficiencies of field-based crop production.

    “We don’t need the whole plant to get access to specific bioactive compounds,” Kobi Avidan, CEO and co-founder of Novella, said in a statement. “It also isn’t necessary to discard up to 99 percent of a plant and incur tons of agricultural waste just to derive specific nutrients. We have the technology where we can narrow the harvest of an entire field for its plant essence in a single bioreactor.”

    According to Novella, the traditional “field to bottle” method of producing nutraceuticals involves a long and complex journey that is labor intensive and limited by the reaches of agricultural land. Ingredients are often grown and harvested across the world before reaching their final destination, further complicating the process, making traceability more difficult, and producing more emissions.

    Bypassing the field

    Even as urban farms take foot offering locally-grown fruits and vegetables, Novella says no one has tackled the nutraceuticals arm of botanical micronutrients.

    Rather than growing the whole plant, Novella is identifying plant tissues such as those in stems, fruits, leaves, and flowers. It then pulls a cell culture, just like companies using the tech for growing meat in bioreactors.

    Novella founders
    Novella founders (left to right), Itay Dana, Kobi Avidan, and Shimrit Bar-El

    The result is a powdered botanical product composed of whole-cell and nutrient-rich plant tissue. The process also eliminates exposure to pesticides and herbicides common in field-based agriculture.

    “Growing nutrients outside the plant is actually a simpler process than growing meat cells outside of the cow,” says Avidan. “Moreover, we can now cultivate any ingredient close to the market of interest. This will be instrumental in lowering costs, as well as lightening their ecological footprint.”

    Growing kale bioreactors

    The startup has begun exploring plants including the dark, leafy green vegetable kale, which is used for its range of vitamins and antioxidants.

    “Kale has captured the interest of the functional food, supplement, and pharma industries due to its long list of vitamins and minerals,” says Shimrit Bar-El, PhD, co-founder and CRO of Novella. “But it is very difficult to work with and process. We are specifically exploring the vegetable for its vitamin K and unique carotenoid composition.”

    Courtesy Novella

    Vegetables are often at risk of contamination from bacteria such as E Coli and salmonella — typically the result of run-off from animal agriculture operations.

    Consumers are increasingly demanding products that are microbiologically safe, natural, and without chemical additives, says Itay Dana, B.Sc., MBA, co-founder and BDO for Novella. “There is an increasing demand for natural botanicals, accompanied by incremental rises in prices resulting from a shortage of such products,” Dana says.

    “By shifting the cultivation of popular micronutrients to the lab, the Novella platform can help free up extensive agricultural terrain for rededication to the growth of food crops while making high-value nutraceutical ingredients more readily available at affordable prices.”

    Lead image courtesy Unsplash.

    The post Why This Company Is Growing Vegetables In Bioreactors Instead of Fields appeared first on Green Queen.

  • The World’s First Cultivated Fish Fat Dives Into the Cell-Based Fat Category

    ImpacFat is the first company to make cell-based fish fat
    3 Mins Read

    ImpacFat has unveiled the world’s first cultivated fish fat during the Big Idea Ventures Demo Day showcase underway in Singapore.

    With a rich mouthfeel and increased nutrition profile, ImpacFat’s newly cultivated fish fat is the latest cultured fat poised to disrupt the alternative protein sector.

    The company is holding tasting sessions today for select participants following approval from the Singapore Food Agency. Tastings are taking place at the Big Idea Ventures’ 6th Demo Day happening at Singapore’s National Gallery, following the culmination of its five-month accelerator programs in Singapore, New York, and Paris. Big Idea Ventures is a leading impact investor in the food tech space.

    The fat market swells

    “As a consumer, we may think that fat is bad and want to reduce our fat intake. However, ImpacFat wants the world to know that fat can be good too,” Mandy Hon, Managing Director, ImpacFat Pte. Ltd., said in a statement. “Since fat is essential in our diet, why not take the healthiest one? ImpacFat aims to give that healthiest fat that you will want to gain, while at the same time protecting the animals and environment. We can’t wait to let everyone taste our healthy and tasty fish fat,” Hon said.

    fish
    Photo by Tony Sebastian on Unsplash

    Fat cells play a key role in animal products, delivering mouthfeel and texture. In the case of fish fat, there are also beneficial oils including those in the omega category. ImpactFay says there has been a lack of focus on fat production, and it’s one of the biggest gaps in addressing consumer concerns about alternative protein.

    According to ImpacFat, its cell-based fat is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which it says are more resistant to oxidation and other chemical or physical changes than conventional fish oils.

    The company also touts the sustainability of its products, free from the impacts overfishing is having on the world’s oceans and fish stocks. Like other cultivated products, ImpacFat’s fish fat requires fewer resources and produces fewer emissions than conventional animal products.

    Redefining fat

    The cultivated fish oil delivers another benefit: the absence of heavy metals such as mercury, microplastics, and pathogens.

    “Consumers want alternative proteins that exceed the taste and nutrition profiles of the conventional meat and seafood they know and love—a standard most believe the sector has not yet achieved,” says Mirte Gosker, Managing Director, The Good Food Institute APAC—Asia’s leading alternative protein think tank. “The addition of cultivated fish fat, developed by expert-led startups like ImpacFat, could be exactly what’s needed to take such products to the next level.”

    ImpacFat has been the recipient of several awards including Grand Finalist at The Liveability Challenge 2022 and Winner of Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit pitch day 2022.

    Photo by Richard Bell at Unsplash

    The company joins a bevy of alternative fat producers using cell-based tech. Last month, German cultivated fat startup Cultimate raised €700,000 in a pre-seed funding round to bring its fat tech to the alternative protein sector. In October, U.K.-based Hoxton Farms closed a $22 million Series A funding round for its novel cultivated animal fat.

    Lead image courtesy of ImpacFat.

    The post The World’s First Cultivated Fish Fat Dives Into the Cell-Based Fat Category appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Cellular Agriculture Will Help FAO Address Food Emissions In Roadmap By COP28

    good meat
    4 Mins Read

    As attention turns toward agriculture in the fight against climate change, cellular agriculture emerges as an invaluable solution.

    During COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced its plan to develop a roadmap for agri-food systems to better address the 1.5°C Paris Agreement climate targets. Zitouni Ould-Dada, Deputy Director of FAO, set a COP28 deadline for publishing the roadmap.

    A map to net-zero

    “Investors representing $18 trillion, led by FAIRR, have made their voices heard,” Jeremy Coller, Chair of FAIRR Initiative and Chief Investment Officer at Coller Capital, said of the announcement, which came at the urging of FAIRR, and was announced during the FAIRR-hosted COP27 Blue Zone event.

    “We welcome the FAO’s commitment to producing a roadmap for food and agriculture which will provide much-needed clarity to both companies and investors, which will allow companies to plan for the transition and investors to assess investment risk and opportunities. It’s a huge challenge and investors will be looking for the roadmap to include clear guidance on methane emission limits, halting deforestation, scaling up alternative protein production, and support to ensure a just transition for farmers.,” Coller said.

    farmer
    Photo by Zubair Hussain on Unsplash

    “Without a map to get to net zero, the food sector will never get there,” Steve Waygood, Chief Responsible Investment Officer at Aviva Investors, said. “That’s why the FAO commitment to set a clear path towards 1.5°C is so important. It will help investors to better determine where capital should flow in order to finance those businesses and sectors best placed to deliver both food security and the low-carbon transition.”

    According to FAIRR, only 16 of 54 OECD countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) have agricultural targets, despite the industry’s significant impact on climate change.

    “A roadmap for the food system will help investors to identify new, sustainable investment opportunities, and to identify risks for companies that are not aligned to the likely direction of future policies,” Chris Dodwell, Head of Policy & Advocacy at Impax Asset Management, said. “The IEA’s net zero roadmap has provided much-needed guidance for investors in the energy sector, but there is a gap when it comes to the food sector that we hope the FAO’s roadmap will fill. The roadmap will also give countries the confidence needed to include the agriculture sector within their NDCs and develop the policies needed to move us closer to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

    Cellular agriculture’s role in the future of food

    World leaders are also being urged to prioritize cellular agriculture as part of their plans to reduce emissions. The urging comes from a new global alliance formed during COP27 earlier this month. The new alliance is made up of the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA), and Cellular Agriculture Europe (CAE).

    “It is great news that the FAO has committed to producing a climate roadmap for food and agriculture next year,” said Robert E. Jones, President of Cellular Agriculture EuropeJones. “We encourage them to include a full suite of solutions to reform the global food system to make it sustainable for people and the planet.

    “Cellular agriculture can be a powerful tool in that mix, but we need governments to step up and help create the enabling conditions necessary for it to thrive and scale up quickly,” said Jones. “Considering the role agriculture is playing in the climate crisis, world leaders should be as committed to innovations in food production as they are to the energy transition.”

    COP27 attendees from approximately ten countries attended events featuring cell-based meat, presented by California-based Eat Just, which brought its cultured Good Meat to the Singapore Pavilion. Cell-based meat is currently only approved for sale in Singapore, but a major milestone came to the U.S. last week when California’s Upside Foods earned the FDA’s GRAS status for its cultivated chicken.

    Courtesy Upside Foods

    Some experts put cellular agriculture’s impact on the environment at more than 90 percent lower than conventional agriculture. Recent findings suggest technologies such as cellular agriculture could feed the entire global population on a fraction of the land currently used to raise livestock. The industry is tied to a number of issues beyond just emissions leading to climate change; livestock production is linked to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and overuse of resources, including medically important antibiotics.

    Dr. David Tonucci, President of AMPS Innovation, applauded the COP27 events. “It is great that cellular agriculture was part of the conversation,” he said. “Now we need to see concrete efforts to lift up this important innovation into the policy frameworks for emissions reductions around the world.”

    Dr. Sandhya Sriram, President of APAC-SCA, said countries must also be “ready and willing to use public resources to level the playing field for innovative and sustainable protein production methods like cellular agriculture.”

    Current food production methods are responsible for one-third of the climate crisis, according to Sriram. “Just reforming conventional animal agriculture methods will not be enough alone to sustainably feed ten billion people in 2050, especially with the FAO predicting meat consumption rising over 50 percent in the same time period,” Sriram said.

    With full regulatory approval expected in the U.S. and elsewhere soon, cell-based meat is being looked at as a key alternative to emissions-heavy conventional meat production.

    Lead image courtesy of Eat Just.

    The post Cellular Agriculture Will Help FAO Address Food Emissions In Roadmap By COP28 appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Wilk’s Cell-Based Milk Fat Yogurt Gets Third-Party Stamp of Approval

    2 Mins Read

    Wilk, the publicly traded Israel-based food tech company developing cell-based human and animal milk, says it has developed the world’s first yogurt made from cell cultures.

    External laboratories verified that Wilk’s yogurt meets all necessary chemical and biological requirements to qualify as yogurt. Wilk says its yogurt is a first-of-its-kind development using cell-based milk fat that mirrors the nutritional benefits of real milk fat.

    Cell-based milk fat

    The release follows Wilk’s announcement over the summer that it was working to develop cell-cultured milk fat for use in yogurt. The milk fat will be the only cell-based ingredient in the new yogurt, which typically also contains dairy-based whey, but it’s an important step toward greening the dairy industry.

    “This is a significant milestone, not just for Wilk, but for the Israeli FoodTech space and wider global industry,” Tomer Aizen, CEO of Wilk, said in a statement.

    yogurt
    Photo by micheile dot com on Unsplash

    “It signifies a major breakthrough in demonstrating our ability to produce functional cell-cultured milk components that can be integrated into a wide array of dairy products and brings us closer to realizing our goal—to produce authentic dairy products in a sustainable and environmentally conscientious manner that will drive the industry forward,” Aizen said.

    According to Wilk, it chose to develop cultured milk fat because it is necessary for adding flavor and texture to dairy products like yogurt. The company says the milk fat is also critical in its human breast milk as it plays a key part in infant digestive, brain, and nervous system development for infants. The company is one of several working to create human breast milk from cell cultures for sustainable alternatives to infant formula.

    Fueling the future of dairy

    The launch follows Wilk’s 2021 announcement that Coca-Cola Israel invested $2 million into the company and will help develop products made with Wilk’s cell-based milk and milk fat.

    cellbased breast milk
    Courtesy Canva

    “We will continue investing our efforts and resources to develop cell-cultured milk and breast milk components that will help our partners produce healthier products in a more sustainable manner,” Aizen said over the summer.

    Wilk’s announcement follows news from Australian food tech company Me& that it has developed the world’s first cell-based fortified human breast milk. Like Wilk, Me& is working to address infant nutrition needs while also reducing the carbon footprint of the conventional dairy industry.

    Lead image courtesy Pexels.

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  • Food Tech Company Me& Has Developed the First Fortified Human Breast Milk

    cellbased breast milk
    4 Mins Read

    Australia’s first cell-based milk startup, Me&, says it is developing cell-based breast milk just like a human mother would.

    Me&’s cellular and molecular technology captures the inbuilt program in breast tissue cells allowing it to control the cell-based milk development and modify its composition to offer superior nutrition. The company recently closed an oversubscribed $2.5 million seed round led by Horizons Ventures and CSIRO Fund Main Sequence.

    It’s the latest company to bring novel tech to the infant formula category. Israel-based Wilk and U.S.-based Biomilq are using cell tech to develop human breast milk, and U.S.-based Helaina is using precision fermentation to ‘brew’ breast milk in microbes.

    Breast milk from cells

    “I’ve had two babies born prematurely and spent their first weeks of life in the NICU,” Esha Saxena, Me& co-founder. She developed the product alongside Dr. Luis Malaver. Combined, they bring together more than 30 years of experience in product development, bioengineering, and cell biology.

    Saxena saw the dire need for change when her children were in the NICU, but her motivation also comes from decades of wanting to change the planet for the better. “I was born in India and at a very young age, about 3 [years old], I made a deliberate choice to stop eating meat, almost overnight,” she said.

    The Me& team including co-founders Esha Saxena (left) and Luis Malaver (centre).

    “It was a big surprise to my family, none of whom were vegetarian at the time, there was nothing I was exposed to that introduced me to the idea, and my mum took me to many pediatricians to have me tested for intolerances, food aversions, all of whom concluded it came down to nothing but, a choice I had made a lot earlier than expected.”

    Saxena says there is a global lack of supply and a critical need for human milk “to ensure adequate development of preterm and newborn babies,” she said. “My inspiration for this business is to fill this much-needed gap, and reduce the reliance on cows’ milk that we know is not good for babies, the environment or the animals.” 

    Bill Bartee, General Partner at Main Sequence says the product is an example of science changing the world for the better.

    “We are in the midst of an exciting time in history,” he said. “Advances in science have provided us with the tools to deliver bio-based engineering solutions and build new ways of doing things. The technology has come together to enable us to build biological factories to make new things — and do it very efficiently. The Me& team have harnessed this expertise and paired it with a market need to create a world-first innovation—cell-based fortified human milk.”

    Replicating the infant nutrition response of breast milk

    The company is based at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. The institute is a world leader in medical research on infant and child health and development.

    “Being based at the Hudson allows us to be part of the translational research ecosystem contributing to critical initiatives in infant health,” Malaver says. “We are fortunate to be next door to world-leading neonatologists and an extensive NICU hospital to stay connected with our customers and tiniest little consumers.”

    milk bottle baby
    Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash

    According to the founders, there is a very broad spectrum in infant nutrition, and what’s available now is not ideal, they say. Infant formula, most of which is cow’s milk-based, covers the nutritive and non-bioactive factors. Some formulas are including prebiotics, which are critical for gut health development. But these formulas pale in comparison to traditional mother’s milk.

    Me& says there are scientific theories that mammary gland receptors interpret the saliva from the baby sucking for bacteria and viruses and the mother’s body can alter the milk’s immunological composition in response. Breast milk is also dynamic in other ways, changing the composition depending on the weather‚ such as offering more hydration on a warm day. Breast milk has more melatonin at night to promote sleep, for example.

    Like other cell-based products, Me&’s breast milk delivers near-identical nutrition benefits but at a lower impact than dairy milk—the go-to substitute for human breast milk. Animal agriculture is resource intensive and a leading cause of climate change and deforestation.

    “I have fallen in love with the potential of deep biotechnology to solve the problems we are facing today,” Malaver says. “Cell-based human milk represents a huge opportunity to make an impact in both helping vulnerable kids and contributing to ethical and sustainable food production.”

    Lead image courtesy of Canva.

    The post Food Tech Company Me& Has Developed the First Fortified Human Breast Milk appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Vow Sets a Funding Record Ahead of Becoming the World’s Second Approved Cultivated Meat Brand

    3 Mins Read

    Vow says its Series A funding round comes as it expects approval from Singapore to begin selling its cultivated meat in restaurants later this year.

    Australian cultivated meat producer Vow has closed a record-setting $49.2 million Series A funding round to help bring its cultivated quail meat to Singapore. Funding was led by Blackbird and Prosperity7 Ventures, an Aramco Ventures growth fund, with backing from Toyota Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Grok Ventures, Cavallo Ventures, Peakbridge, Tenacious Ventures, HostPlus Super, NGS Super, and Pavilion Capital. The new funding comes nearly two years after Vow raised $6 million in seed funding.

    Vow says its first product, dubbed Morsel—a cell-based quail meat—will hit Singapore restaurants before the year’s end, joining California-based Eat Just’s Good Meat as the only other cultivated meat approved for commercial sale and distribution in the world.

    Changing the way billions eat

    “When Vow was founded, we knew to change the way billions eat we had to do more than recreate what we know,” says Vow CEO and co-founder George Peppou.

    “We’re thrilled to be toe to toe with the best companies in this space, moving at speed to reach huge milestones with a fraction of the capital of other companies,” he said.

    Sonalie Figueiras is currently editing Aussie Startup Vow Bags US$6M Seed Funding To Grow Cultured Exotic Meats Library
    Vow’s kangaroo dumplings

    “Our food diet is standardized, and neither healthy nor sustainable,” says Nadav Berger, general partner and co-founder of PeakBridge. “Much of our proteins come from limited animal-based sources which are harmful for both biodiversity and our health. Solutions and technologies that explore alternatives to conventional animal-based protein without compromising on taste, texture, nutrition and climate impact are here to stay.”

    Vow is taking a unique approach to cultivated meat, replicating exotic meat including kangaroo and alpaca, along with quail, rabbit, and goat meat. The quail-based Morsel quail is expected to take meat in a new direction, Peppou said, with chefs using it in novel ways. The company says Morsel has a roasted umami flavor with seafood notes.

    “By inventing new meats that are tastier, more nutritious, and serve functions traditional meats can’t, we can have an enormous impact,” Peppou said.

    Fueling the cultivated meat category growth

    The market approval and funding follow Vow bringing its first factory online in New South Wales last month. Dubbed Factory 1, the facility can produce approximately 30 tons of cultivated meat per year. The company says it’s also already working on Factory 2, which will be capable of producing meat at 100-fold the output of Factory 1.

    Vow Cultivated Meat Factory
    Vow’s Factory 1

    “With Factory 1 Vow has quietly become a world leader in cultured meat, we are now operating at world leading scales and have achieved all of this in just three and a half years, with a fraction of the capital,” Peppou said.

    Morsel is expected to hit restaurants in Singapore later this year.

    Lead photo courtesy of Vow.

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  • Cultivated Fat Startup Cultimate Raises €700,000 Pre-Seed

    Cultimate Foods team
    3 Mins Read

    With backing from Big Idea Ventures, ProVeg International, and Realum.cloud, cultivated fat startup Cultimate has raised €700,000 in a pre-seed funding round.

    The German-based Cultimate Foods is working to upgrade meat alternatives with cultivated fat that produces the taste and mouthfeel of conventional animal products. The new funding will allow the company to scale up its production processes and fully validate its cultivated fat product solution and prepares the technology for the pilot stage.

    Animal fat for plant-based food

    “Our ultimate goal is to deliver a game-changing ingredient for the plant-based meat industry. We are focused on developing the most important part of meat experience, fat. Cultimate will deliver all the properties of meat that are currently lacking in the available meat alternatives,” co-founder of Cultimate George Zheleznyi, said in a statement.

    Impossible Burger
    Could cultivated fat improve Impossible Burgers? | Courtesy Impossible Foods

    The company has expanded its research and development team as well as launched its own laboratory in Göttingen, Germany.

    “I believe science is the answer to many of the problems of the food industry and, by extension, to climate change. With our technology we can give consumers the meaty taste that they want while reducing animal farming and CO2 emissions,” said Eugenia Sagué, co-founder of Cultimate, who previously held several positions in the plant-based food industry.

    Cultimate is the latest company focused on the hybrid market—bringing cultivated animal cell products to alternatives such as plant-based or fungi-based protein.

    Sustainable food demand

    Demand for sustainable and ethical protein continues to rise and so is meat consumption; global meat consumption could double by 2050. The world’s leading climate and health organizations routinely urge consumers to reduce meat consumption for their health and to slow the impact of climate change. Meat production is a key producer of greenhouse gases.

    Cultimate says the hybrid market offers significant opportunities for the global food system, which could lower production costs as well as impact.

    Hoxton Farms founders Max Jamilly (left) and Ed Steele (right)
    Hoxton Farms founders Max Jamilly (left) and Ed Steele (right) | Courtesy Hoxton Farms

    The funding announcement follows several other funding rounds in the animal fat sector. Last month, Hoxton Farms and Nourish Ingredients both raised Series A rounds; Hoxton is using a similar cell-cultured approach and Nourish is working with microbial fermentation to replicate the texture and function of fat.

    It’s not just animal fat getting the tech makeover; earlier this month, C16 Biosciences, the biotech company backed by Bill Gates, announced it will launch its first consumer-facing palm oil products next year.

    Lead image courtesy Cultimate.

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  • Has the Food Revolution Arrived? 86% of Chefs Say They Want to Serve Cultivated Meat

    SuperMeat's cultivated meat
    4 Mins Read

    A new survey from Israel-based food tech company SuperMeat, finds the vast majority of chefs, 86 percent, are interested in serving cultivated meat—an indicator of the potential for the category once countries grant regulatory approval.

    The new SuperMeat survey interviewed 251 chefs and food service professionals earlier this year. The research was conducted in partnership with Censuswide, an independent market research consultancy.

    Results of the survey were overwhelmingly in favor of cultivated meat—protein that’s grown from animal cell samples in bioreactors instead of on farms. The tech has thus far only received approval in Singapore, with the Bay Area company Eat Just the first, and currently, the only, company approved for sale and consumption.

    The lack of regulatory approval has not slowed progress for the sector, though. Recent reports show record funding raises and a number of start-ups entering the category.

    Cultivated meat demand and acceptance

    But despite the interest from investors, consumer opinion on the tech has been mixed, with some critics lumping it in with genetic modification—a technology typically used to make plants more resistant to heavy applications of herbicides.

    Still, consumers do want more ethical and sustainable choices. Sixty-five percent of chefs said they’ve seen increased demand in the last five years; 87 percent of Midwest restaurants and 82 percent of fast-food restaurants said they’ve seen increasing demand for meat alternatives.

    Courtesy SuperMeat

    Widespread acceptance of cultivated meat from the culinary world could help sway consumers on the fence about the tech. Eighty-four percent of the chefs surveyed said they would consider replacing conventional meat altogether on their menus with cultivated meat if cost-effective. Seventy-seven percent though said they would pay a premium, particularly for poultry; more than 66 percent of the chefs said they would pay as much as 11 to 15 percent more for cultivated meat.

    The Midwest chefs were most willing to pay a premium for cultivated meat—87 percent said they’d opt for the higher ticket price in order to put the options on their menu. Western chefs said they’d be willing to pay higher premiums, with 16 percent saying they would pay as much as 16 to 20 percent more for cultivated meat. Chefs cooking Mediterranean were right behind, with 83 percent saying they’d be willing to pay 11 to 15 percent more for cultivated meat. Italian and Mexican chefs were willing to pay five to ten percent more.

    Poultry was the top choice, with 51 percent of chefs saying they’d be interested in trying cultivated chicken and other poultry products; 38 percent said they’d be interested in beef, and 35 percent indicated seafood and pork. Tastes ranged regionally, the survey found. Chefs from the South favored beef and exotic meats; fine-dining chefs favored pork. Chicken was the top choice for fast-food and American cuisine. Italian cuisine favored seafood, and chefs across France, Japan, and Indian cuisines all favored exotic meats.

    Regulatory approval

    The chefs surveyed were overwhelmingly in favor of adding cultivated meat shortly after approved; more than half said they would add the products to their menus within two months of approval. Chefs in the Northeast and West said they would add it even sooner and chefs in the South were the most hesitant, wanting to wait as long as six months.

    GOOD Meat cultivated chicken
    GOOD Meat cultivated chicken | courtesy Eat Just

    “It is great to see the interest and positivity from the professional culinary community for cultivated meat. This demonstrates that chefs are more than intrigued by cultivated meat, understand the benefits, and are ready to see it served in mainstream dining,” Ido Savir, CEO of SuperMeat, said in a statement. “SuperMeat is thrilled to continue our work to commercialize cultivated meat products and be among the first to bring these options to menus across the U.S..”

    U.S. regulatory approval is expected in the near future, but no date has been confirmed. Experts suggest it could be within the next year or as long as 18 to 24 months.

    Lead image courtesy SuperMeat.

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  • Sustainable Chocolate Gets a Boost With Trendlines Investment In Celleste Bio

    Vegan Chocolate Market to Reach $1 Billion By 2027
    3 Mins Read

    With support from Mondelēz International, Barrel Ventures, and Regba Group, along with Trendlines, Celleste Bio is closer to bringing its cell-based chocolate to market.

    New cell-based food tech startup Celleste Bio, which hails from Israel, is out to tackle chocolate’s sustainability and labor issues. The company is producing high-quality cocoa using conventional cell culture methods.

    Cacao trees, which grow in tropical regions across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, are expected to face threats as climate change increases temperatures and impacts growing seasons. The industry is also linked to deforestation and biodiversity loss.

    Chocolate’s not-so-sweet side

    The cocoa industry’s ongoing human rights violations also make alternatives more appealing. Despite pledges from the world’s leading chocolate producers including Hershey’s, Mars, and Nestlé to ensure their chocolate is free of child labor, problems are ongoing. The industry is also tied to other human rights violations including mistreatment of women, unfair wages, and human trafficking.

    Cell-based chocolate is one potential answer to the industry’s problems. Like the tech replicates animal cells for meat and dairy, Celleste, co-founded by experts in the food tech space Hanne Volpin, PhD, CTO of Celleste, Avishai Levy, MSc,E., Orna Harel, PhD, and Daphna Michaeli, PhD, says it will reproduce cacao cells without the use of genetic modification or manipulation.

    Celleste's Hanne Volpin
    Celleste’s Hanne Volpin | Courtesy

    “We want to offer people the pleasure and health that high-quality cocoa products provide while eliminating the challenges of sustainable production that we face in cocoa production today,” Volpin said in a statement.

    “Trendlines believes that the global need for more sustainable cocoa ingredients today and in the future, represents a tremendous opportunity for all stakeholders,” said Trendlines Agrifood Fund CEO, Nitza Kardish, PhD.

    Disrupting Big Cacao

    Celleste joins several other cocoa alternative producers. Last month, Seminal Biosciences emerged from stealth mode with its precision fermentation cocoa butter that performs just like conventionally grown cocoa butter.

    “In addition to making chocolate more sustainable, with stateside production via bioreactors, this technology will improve the security and reliability for a key ingredient used across a variety of industries,” Alka Roy, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Seminal Biosciences, said in a statement.

    Waim bars
    Waim bars, courtesy WNWN

    U.K.-based WNWN is also working to replace conventional chocolate but it has turned to other plant-based ingredients instead of cell cultures or fermentation. It’s using barley and carob in a process that it says replicates the flavor and mouthfeel of conventional chocolate without all the negatives.

    “Chocolate has a truly dark side with more than a million child laborers estimated to work in Ivory Coast and Ghana, where three-quarters of the world’s cacao is grown, and more CO2 emissions pound for pound than cheese, lamb or chicken,” WNWN CTO Johnny Drain said in a statement earlier this year. “Using fermentation we’re able to create a suite of the same flavor compounds found in cacao. We can dial up certain aromas and even adjust the acidity to bring out notes found in premium single-origin chocolates.”

    Lead image courtesy of Pexels.

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  • Eat Just’s Cultured Chicken Meat Comes to COP27

    good meat
    3 Mins Read

    Cell-cultured chicken meat will make its debut at the COP27 climate conference being held in Egypt this month.

    Good Meat, the cultivated meat division of the Bay Area food tech company Eat Just, is bringing its lab-grown chicken to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the site city for the U.N. climate event.

    Eat Just is currently the only company to have received regulatory approval for the sale and distribution of cultured meat; its chicken received approval from the Singapore government nearly two years ago. The chicken will be showcased as part of COP27’s Singapore Pavillion for the first time outside of the city-state.

    An ABEC bioreactor that produces Good Meat
    An ABEC bioreactor that produces Good Meat | Courtesy

    “We hope our guests at COP27 find their cultivated chicken meals both delicious and thought-provoking and they leave the summit with a new appreciation for the role food innovation can play in combatting the global climate crisis,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, said in a statement. “There is no better place to launch our next version than right here at the world’s most consequential climate change gathering.”

    The chicken will be served this coming weekend, from Saturday, Nov. 12 through Monday, Nov. 14 at invitation-only events, Eat Just said.

    COP26 food criticism

    Last year’s COP26 came under fire for serving animal products throughout the two-week conference. Critics compared it to serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference. Agriculture is a leading cause of climate change, producing more than 14 percent of all global emissions; animal products are responsible for at least 60 percent of the sector’s emissions, according to a study published last year in the journal Nature Food.

    “To produce more meat you need to feed the animals more, which then generates more emissions,”  Xiaoming Xu, University of Illinois researcher and the lead author of the paper said in a statement last year. “You need more biomass to feed animals in order to get the same amount of calories. It isn’t very efficient.”

    Good Meat's cultivated lab meat
    Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat | Courtesy

    The United Nations’ own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also recently called for drastic reductions to agricultural emissions including methane, which is produced by ruminants including cattle and sheep. Methane doesn’t linger in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but while present it traps more heat, accelerating the impacts of climate change. A recent IPCC report called for at least a 30-percent drop in methane emissions before the end of the decade.

    Cultivated meat in the fight against climate change

    Cultivated meat is expected to play a key role in reducing the industry’s emissions footprint once more countries approve it for sale and consumption.

    Cultivated meat, which is grown with real animal cells in bioreactors instead of requiring raising and culling livestock, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 96 percent compared to conventional meat, according to recent findings from Oxford.

    Good Meat's chicken
    Good Meat’s chicken | Courtesy

    Good Meat is partnering with the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific (GFI APAC) and others in the Singapore Pavillion to showcase efforts underway across the region.

    “Singapore was the first country to allow the sale of meat made without tearing down a single forest or displacing an animal’s habitat, and we look forward to other countries following in their footsteps,” Tetrick said.

    COP27 runs from November 6 through November 18, 2022. More information can be found on the event website.

    Lead image courtesy of Eat Just.

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  • ‘Shark Tank’ Deal-Winning Pet Food Brand Wild Earth Debuts Cultivated Dog Food

    3 Mins Read

    Wild Earth, the Bay Area pet food company focused on alternative protein sources, has developed a cultivated chicken broth topper aimed at making the category more sustainable.

    Cultivated meat isn’t just novel tech designed to revolutionize the global food system for humans—it holds equal, if not more potential, for our furry friends.

    Wild Earth has been working to revolutionize the pet food industry since its $550,000 Shark Tank deal with Mark Cuban in 2019. Since then, the company, which produces vegan pet food made from cultured koji—a type of protein-rich fungus—has also been working to develop cell-based cultured meat.

    Reducing pet food’s paw print

    “Our pets’ environmental paw print accounts for 30 percent of meat consumed in the United States and it doesn’t have to,” Ryan Bethencourt, co-founder and chief executive officer of Wild Earth, said in a statement. “By replacing factory-farmed products with clean, sustainable, cruelty-free cell-based meat we can tackle the issues of low quality and often contaminated meat used for our pets’ food and transform the sustainability of the entire pet food industry.”

    Courtesy

    The company is driven by the environmental and ethical implications of the current pet food industry. Dog and cat food produce around 64 million tons of CO2 per year—the equivalent of more than 13 million cars. The industry is also rife with health risks—much of conventional pet food comes from animals not fit for human consumption, which can mean a higher risk for contaminants and poor-quality food.

    “Wild Earth has always been on the cutting edge of plant-based pet food and I look forward to seeing their continued growth as they step into the cell-based meat space,” said investor Mark Cuban.

    The broth topper will be available to consumers next year; it’s made from cultivated chicken cells, which eliminates the need for raising livestock. It also reduces the environmental footprint by 96 percent and reduces water consumption by between 82 and 96 percent, according to recent Oxford data.

    Cell-based pet food

    “Cell-based meat is the future of food for us and our pets, and this development marks an important milestone in our mission to disrupt the pet food industry for the better,” Bethencourt said. “We walk the walk when it comes to taking steps to reduce the destructive impact the industry has on our pets’ health and on our environment.”

    Because, Animals cultivated mouse meat

    Last year, Colorado-based pet food company Because, Animals debuted the first pet food made from cultured mouse meat. “The public launch of Harmless Hunt is a milestone for us, for the cultured and alt-protein industry, for pet food, and for animals raised and slaughtered to feed cats and dogs,” co-founder and CEO Dr. Shannon Falconer said in a statement.

    “We are finally able to provide pets with a healthier, safer, greener choice at a price that will be on par with other premium retail products.”

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  • Nearly Every Cultivated Food Startup In Asia Just Signed An Historic Nomenclature Agreement

    Esco Asters Cell-Based Meat
    3 Mins Read

    Cellular agriculture producers across the APAC region have come to a consensus: the preferred English-language term for the category is “cultivated.”

    The cultivated meat sector has gone through a number of naming conventions including “clean meat” and “lab-grown” meat. But “cultivated” may be what sticks. That’s according an historic memo of understanding signed by the leading companies and organizations in the sector across Asia-Pacific countries.

    APAC aligns on ‘cultivated’

    Signatories of the memo include Good Food Institute APAC, APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture, and more than 30 other key industry stakeholders including multinational companies Cargill and Thai Union as well as regional coalition groups China’s Cellular Agriculture Alliance, Cellular Agriculture Australia, the Japan Association for Cellular Agriculture, and Korean Society for Cellular Agriculture. The agreement was signed during Singapore International Agri-Food Week.

    Cellmeat’s Cultivated Dokdo Shrimp



    “Nomenclature and regulatory harmonisation are vital for the long-term success of the cultivated foods industry and this MOU establishes a regional precedent that can be replicated in other markets around the globe,” said APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture President Dr. Sandhya Sriram and Program Manager Peter Yu.

    “The location of this historic announcement was no coincidence,” Good Food Institute APAC Managing Director Mirte Gosker said. “In recent years, Singapore has invested the necessary resources to make the city-state a welcoming ecosystem for food innovation and multilateral collaboration. This MOU is the latest proof that the Lion City is trading its traditional reliance on food imports for a new role as the place where the alternative protein sector’s biggest decisions are forged, announced, and exported to the world.”

    Regulatory approval can’t come soon enough

    While the naming of cultivated meat may be sorted out, the sale and distribution are still a waiting game for the growing industry. Currently, only Singapore has approved the sale of cultivated meat—Eat Just received approval for its Good Meat cultivated chicken in 2020.

    Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat

    But with more than $2 billion in funding and more than 120 startups innovating in the space, approval can’t come soon enough for the industry.

    Earlier this week, three of the leading cultivated food industry associations announced plans to formalize the launch of a global alliance to advance cultivated foods. The members include the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture, and Cellular Agriculture Europe.

    “[G]lobal challenges require global solutions,” Gosker told Green Queen. “By bringing together regional industry coalitions from Europe, the US, and Asia Pacific, this timely, new worldwide alliance has the potential to be a game-changer.”

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  • The Dutch Government Invests €60M In Cellular Agriculture 

    3 Mins Read

    The cellular agriculture industry receives a big boost with The Netherlands’ €60 million investment and additional €25 million in financing.

    The Dutch government’s investment is now the largest government grant in the world into the novel cultivated and cell-cultured animal tech. The funding is in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality.

    Sector growth, emissions reductions

    By 2050, the investment should yield big returns; the Dutch government says it expects €1.25 – €2.0 billion in growth in Dutch earning capacity by the middle of the century. It also calculated the emissions savings, anticipating cultivated meat and similar tech will reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 1.8 million tons and reduce ammonia by 15 to 20 kilotons per year.

    cultivated meat
    Cultivated beef meatballs. Photo by SpaceF.

    “We are very pleased that we can now start with the first activities to stimulate and consolidate cellular agriculture in the Netherlands.”  Ira van Eelen, said in a statement on behalf of the Cellular Agriculture Netherlands Foundation. “With this we can guarantee that the Netherlands remains the ideal place for cellular agriculture to thrive. We have a rich history in cellular agriculture and are a global leader in biotechnology, alternative proteins and food innovation. Supported by this visionary leadership that the Dutch government is showing again today, we will expand our team in the coming months and roll out the first activities around public research, scaling up and education.”

    The Cellular Agriculture Netherlands Foundation now includes nearly three dozen organizations ranging from NGOs and educational institutions to startups. With the new funding, the foundation will set up a new office to engage with potential partners and implement programs.

    Cultivated meat approval and support

    Currently, only Singapore has approved cultivated meat for sale, but the Netherlands could be next—and soon. Earlier this year it legalized sampling of cultivated meat. The Netherlands put cultivated meat on the map in 2013 when Dutch-based Mosa Meat debuted its first meat grown from cells.

    Mosa Meat steak tartar. Photo by Mosa Meat.

    “Cellular agriculture is a Dutch invention and we do not want to lose our competitive advantage,” Robert Jones, head of public affairs for Mosa Meat said in an interview with Dutch publication Innovation Origins.

    Dutch consumers are ripe for alternatives to conventional meat as well. A survey conducted in February found that more than 25 percent of Dutch residents want more meat-free options to help decrease the country’s carbon footprint.

    The new funding will give the sector a boost and aims to attract startups in the space to the Netherlands. The government funding will support private equity startups and and bring more expertise and investment to the cellular agriculture sector.

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  • US, EU & APAC Cultivated Food Associations Announce Major Global Alliance To Boost Industry

    4 Mins Read

    For the first time, three leading cultivated food industry associations are hosting a first-of-its-kind meeting this week in Singapore to formalize the launch of a global alliance to advance cultivated foods on the global stage. 

    The alliance is made up of the U.S.-based Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA), and Cellular Agriculture Europe (CAE) and represents 31 of the leading cultivated meat, seafood, and dairy companies. According to alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute’s database, there are currently more than 120 startups working on cultivated food globally, and collectively they have raised over $2 billion in funding to recreate animal protein at a fraction of the emissions, water and land cost of industrial agriculture.

    In an email statement, Mirte Gosker, Managing Director of GFI APAC, told Green Queen that “global challenges require global solutions. By bringing together regional industry coalitions from Europe, the US, and Asia Pacific, this timely, new worldwide alliance has the potential to be a game-changer.”

    Historic Meeting at SIAW

    At a meeting held during Singapore International Agri-Food Week (SIAW), the leaders and management committees of each organization, including Sandhya Sriram Ph.D., APAC-SCA (Shiok Meats), Robert E. Jones, Cellular Agriculture Europe (Mosa Meat) and David Tonucci Ph.D., AMPS Innovation (SCiFi Foods), will discuss how to better leverage the new tripartite alliance to push forward regional synergies, better advocate for regulatory frameworks and communicate more effectively about the benefits of cellular agriculture.

    SIAW, a week-long series of food and agriculture industry events where regulators, investors, startups, MNCs, and other stakeholders are gathering from all over the world to showcase the latest developments and products, offers the perfect backdrop and timing for this historic meeting.

    U.S.-based Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA), and Cellular Agriculture Europe (CAE) have formed a new global cultivated foods alliance.

    Urgent Need For Cultivated Food Regulation

    Currently, Singapore remains the only country in the world that allows for the sale of cultivated meat. Californian company Eat Just was granted regulatory approval for its cell-based chicken back in December 2020 by the nation-state’s government and since then, there has been little progress in other geographies. 

    “Unfortunately, current regulations for alternative proteins lag behind consumer demand and few standardized best practices or technical recommendations have so far been implemented,” says Gosker. 

    “Establishing consistent, efficient, and science-based global regulatory frameworks for cultivated foods is critical to maximizing the sector’s potential to mitigate environmental degradation, strengthen food security, and alleviate global poverty.”

    Ira Van Eelen, co-founder of KindEarth.Tech and a key figure in the world of cultivated meat, agrees that a cohesive global alliance is necessary for further progress. “This is a smart move and another sign of the maturing of the cultivated meat industry. As regulations are developed around the world, their [the industry’s] voices will be more powerful together and there is a lot that they can learn from each other in building the regional ecosystems it will take to scale up and support a thriving industry,” she told Green Queen via email.

    Van Eelen is the daughter of Willem Van Eelen, the Dutch scientist who pioneered cell-based meat technology. The rights to his work were later acquired via patent by Eat Just.

    A New, United Voice To Advocate For Novel Foods

    The new alliance hopes to have a united voice at the upcoming COP27 event and engage more strategically with the likes of Codex Alimentarius (Food Code), a joint effort between the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) designed to create international food standards.

    In March 2022, the Codex Alimentarius Commission issued a call for comments after recognizing the need for the development and production of foods like cultivated meat and said it plans to use the feedback to conduct an “assessment of the range and suitability of Codex tools that could be used to progress work on safety, quality, labeling, nutrition and/or fair trade practices” for such novel foods.

    Cellular agriculture is one of the pillars of the alternative protein industry, which also includes plant-based analogues and fermentation-enabled technologies and counts over 1,000 startups and companies working to reduce the ill effects of industrial animal agriculture. As the global food system faces unprecedented challenges from an energy crisis to water shortages to supply chain woes and the worsening effects of climate change, new means of food production are essential for future food security. As the global population nears 8 billion this November and experts predict 9.7 billion by 2050, alternative proteins provide a sustainable, ethical and healthy solution to the growing demand for animal protein.

    Lead image courtesy of Higher Steaks and Tailored Brands.

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  • Umami Meats Patents Novel Single-Cell Tech to Bring Down Cultivated Seafood Costs

    fish
    3 Mins Read

    Singapore-based Umami Meats has filed a patent for a novel single-stem cell technology that it says can build both muscle and fat in cultivated seafood.

    The new patent for mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) lines from fish is aimed at helping Umami meats make its cultivated seafood more accessible by lowering costs and scaling production. Current standards for cultivated meat and seafood require multiple cell lines and types to produce muscle and fat. Umami says its new MSC technology reduces that to one cell line and one production line for a variety of tissues. The company has also created plant-based and algae-based growth media that it says are cheaper and easier to scale. The cost of growth factors has historically been a roadblock to price parity with conventional meat.

    ‘Faster and more efficient cell growth’

    “So far, we have established MSC lines from three species, including our flagship species, Japanese eel. This innovative approach to cell lines builds the foundation for faster and more efficient cell growth. Our technology advances are a critical driver of lowering costs, increasing scalability, and making cultivated seafood affordable for mainstream consumers,” Mihir Pershad, Founder and CEO of Umami Meats, said in a statement.

    According to the organization WorldFish, global seafood demand is expected to double by 2050 despite the pressures already being felt by the world’s oceans and fisheries. Umami Meats says its cultivated fish and seafood play a critical role in addressing rising global demand.

    Photo by Caroline Attwood at Unsplash.

    “What makes Umami Meats different in the cultivated food industry is our method for cultivating premium seafood with the vision of reducing overfishing of endangered and difficult-to-farm species,” Pershad said. “Our single-stem cell method will be a game changer in enabling us to reduce the price of cultivated premium seafood to match that of traditionally-sourced fish.”

    Umami Meats says cultivated seafood can also address contamination risks widespread in wild-caught and farm-raised fish. “Advancements in cultivated seafood technologies could help address health risks like mercury and microplastic contamination in seafood or the growing risk of extinction for dozens of the most consumed seafood species,” the company said.

    Alternative seafood demand

    A recent survey by Good Food Institute APAC found a growing number of Asian consumers are shifting away from conventional seafood in favor of alternatives because of contaminants including heavy metals and microplastic. Plant-based seafood options are already making waves in the category, and while cultivated meat offers a solution, the category has yet to receive widespread regulatory approval outside of Singapore. By 2030, cultivated meat and seafood have the potential of becoming a $25 billion market, a recent McKinsey report noted.

    Cultivated seafood also addresses the increasing depletion of key species. Some species of eel and tuna, for example, are facing the threat of extinction if current fishing practices and ocean threats continue.

    fish
    Courtesy Martin Widenka via Unsplash

    “We know it will take multiple scientific and production process breakthroughs to make cultivated seafood affordable. But we are committed for the long term because we want premium cultivated seafood to be an everyday option for consumers,” Pershad said.

    ‘’The team is working diligently to shift the cost paradigm and will be increasingly leveraging advanced machine learning tools to accelerate the process of optimizing and scaling up production,’’ Pershad said. “The promise of cultivated seafood is compelling; our priority is bringing the tremendous potential of our scientific breakthroughs to commercial viability. We want to realize that promise and bring it to sufficient scale to create real impact for the world.”

    The announcement comes just days after California-based BlueNalu announced it developed technology to help it achieve scalability and reduce production costs by 75 percent for its cultivated seafood.

    Lead image courtesy of Pexels.

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  • BlueNalu Demonstrates Scalability and 75% Profit Margin for Cultivated Seafood

    3 Mins Read

    Cultivated seafood company BlueNalu says it has ‘cracked the code’ to significant profitability with 75 percent gross margins achieved through breakthrough technology.

    With its first large-scale facility and novel technology for its first product—bluefin tuna—San Diego-based BlueNalu says its operating and capital costs for production will yield a significant gross margin of 75 percent.

    “We believe that BlueNalu is the only company in the cell-cultured seafood industry to overcome each of these technology and market challenges, which will result in a scalable and highly profitable solution with demonstrable consumer benefits,” Lou Cooperhouse, co-founder, president and CEO at BlueNalu, said in a statement. “We are pleased to announce today that we have ‘cracked the code’ for creating significant profitability with our cell-cultured bluefin tuna toro and a series of other higher-value products that will follow.” 

    Cultivated meat scalability, affordability

    The biggest challenges facing the cultured meat category include scalability and costs. BlueNalu says it has overcome these challenges, which will help advance it to market.

    One of the pieces to the puzzle is a non-GMO, single-cell suspension line with growth rates aimed at accelerating the scale-up to larger bioreactors.

    BlueNalu’s 140,000 sq. ft facility will be able to produce six million pounds of seafood annually once operational in 2027. The company moved into its recently expanded 38,000 sq. ft pilot production facility earlier this year. It’s working there to scale its bluefin tuna and complete processes needed for regulatory approval, expected within the next few years.

    Courtesy BlueNalu

    “This also includes a revolutionary lipid-loading technique, that is projected to result in a significant reduction in capital expenditures and enable the company to make products with higher fat profiles and sensory attributes, such as the toro portion of bluefin tuna,” the company says. It has also designed downstream processes that allow continuous production and eliminate plant-based scaffolds, which it says can affect product cookability, scalability and flavor.  

    Scientific milestones

    “Over the past four years, our team has achieved remarkable scientific milestones which enable us to overcome the fundamental technology barriers required for success,” said Lauran Madden, Ph.D., CTO at BlueNalu.

    “In tandem with the plans for commercialization of our bluefin tuna, our team has continued to explore additional species using our platform technology,” she said. “So far, we have developed hundreds of cell lines for eight different finfish species, and we have initiated projects to expand into other premium seafood categories.”   

    Courtesy BlueNalu

    BlueNalu validated its achievements with an in-depth techno-economic analysis performed in tandem with a leading global Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm and experts in bioprocess modeling. The analysis found using the single-cell suspension and lipid-loading tech could reduce costs by more than five times.

    “We believe these landmark technologies, when combined with high-value, high-demand seafood products, are the winning equation to long term financial success,” said Amir Feder, CFO at BlueNalu. “Our projected 75 percent gross margin within the first year of production of our large-scale facility is unheard of in the food industry. This sets a very strong growth trajectory for the company, as we introduce additional products and establish new facilities around the globe.”   

    Lead image courtesy Blue Nalu.

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  • Vow Opens One of the Largest Cultivated Meat Factories In the World Ahead of Anticipated Regulatory Approval

    Workers at the Vow Factory 1
    3 Mins Read

    Australian cultivated meat company Vow has unveiled Factory 1, its NSW-based factory capable of producing 30 tons of cultured meat per year.

    Coinciding with the opening of Factory 1 in Alexandria in Sydney, Vow says it has started developing Factory 2, which can produce 100 times the amount of cultured meat as its sister site. Factory 2 is expected to be online in 2024.

    Factory 1

    “With Factory 1 Vow has quietly become a world leader in cultured meat, we are now operating at world leading scales and have achieved all of this in just three and a half years, with a fraction of the capital,” Vow’s CEO George Peppou said in a statement.

    Vow claims the factory, which is now up and running, is the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere and is a sign of things to come out of Australia. Vow says Factory 1 and forthcoming Factory 2 are demonstrative of the country’s strong position as a leader in new technologies aimed at feeding the global population.

    (left to right) George Peppou, CEO, Matt Kean, NSW Treasurer, Tim Noakesmith, Cofounder
    (left to right) George Peppou, CEO, Matt Kean, NSW Treasurer, Tim Noakesmith, Cofounder | Courtesy

    “The team has developed an extremely delicious first product, and now we have the capability to produce it at scale. We couldn’t be more excited to announce it to the world in a month from now,” said Vow Cofounder, Tim Noakesmith. 

    Since launching in 2019, Vow has been focused on cultivated chicken, beef, and pork. It recently submitted its first product for regulatory approval. Vow expects its cultivated meat to launch in Singapore before the end of the year. Currently, Singapore is the only nation that has approved cultivated meat for sale. Vow says with its existing research and development facility, the new factory will allow it to bring development and production under one roof.

    Cultivated meat scaling up

    Vow joins other leading cultivated meat companies including the Good Meat factory coming to Singapore. Eat Just’s cultivated meat offshoot broke ground on the factory in June. Once up and running next year, Good Meat says it can produce “tens of thousands” of tons of its cultured meat annually.

    In the U.S., Upside Foods opened its “EPIC” factory in California last year. It’s capable of producing 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat annually.

    French onion dish with Morsel, Vow's first product
    French onion dish with Morsel, Vow’s first product | courtesy

    Efforts to scale up cultivated meat production and bring down costs are happening around the world. Just last month, Prolific Machines emerged from stealth mode with backing from Mark Cuban and Emily Ratajkowski. The cultivated meat company says it can bring the cost of cultivated meat down to price parity with conventional animal products, comparing its tech to doing for the category what Henry Ford did for automobiles.

    “Back then, nobody really owned cars apart from super-rich people. What really changed things was Ford,” Prolific Machines co-founder and CEO Deniz Kent told TechCrunch. 

    “They built the assembly line for cars and found a way to manufacture cars at a price that normal people could afford. That transformed the industry because then you went from hundreds of car companies to only three companies having over 70% of the market.”

    Lead image courtesy of Vow.

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  • Singapore’s Meatiply Debuts Asia’s First Cultivated Smoked Duck Breast

    Meatiply's cultivated duck meat
    4 Mins Read

    Singapore-based cultivated meat startup Meatiply, has launched three structured meat prototypes as proof of concept, including the first smoked duck breast meat in Asia.

    The three new cultivated meat offerings include kampong chicken yakitori, chicken katsu bites, and Asia’s first smoked duck breast meat. The company says the meat is a combination of cells and plant-based ingredients.

    ‘Just the beginning’

    “We developed a versatile platform that allows us to isolate and cultivate a variety of cells from different species. To date, we have developed prototypes with 3 different species, with at least 2 more in the pipeline. These 3 prototypes are just the beginning,” Dr. Jason Chua, Chief Scientific Officer & Co-founder of Meatiply, said in a statement.

    Meatiply Management Team
    Meatiply Management Team | Courtesy

    According to the company, the prototypes are structured, not minced, which Meatiply says will allow it to offer a wider range of products. The cell-based meat is made from multiple cell types including muscle and fat, which it says allows it to better resemble the taste and texture of conventional meat.

    “Given the depth of our experience in cultivating stem cells and optimizing for their growth and maturation, we felt we had a lot to offer in the realm of cultivated meat,” said Dr. Elwin Tan, CEO and Co-founder of Meatiply.

    Tan and Chua co-founded Meatiply in 2021 alongside Dr. Benjamin Chua and Prof. Teh Bin Tean—all were studying stem cell biology at the National University of Singapore.

    “From the very first meeting, we have been impressed with the strong scientific background and entrepreneurial spirit of the co-founders. Their prototypes are one of the most advanced we have seen to be developed in such a short time. They also have a clear roadmap for tackling challenges around scalability and cost,” said Michal Klar, founding partner at Better Bite Ventures, an early backer of the startup.

    Meatiply announced a pre-seed funding round in early 2022 that also included participation from Wavemaker Partners and Genedant.

    Chicken Yakitori
    Chicken Yakitori | Courtesy

    “By 2050,the global population is estimated to hit almost 10 billion people and 56 percent more food will need to be produced to sustain this increase. Moreover, the meat industry is also plagued with systemic problems that needed to be addressed. By shifting our focus from biomedical research to developing advanced food technologies, we felt that we could deliver significant impact on these pressing issues.” said Dr. Benjamin Chua, Chief Product Officer & Co-founder of Meatiply.

    Cultivated meat in Singapore

    The company says establishing Meatiply in Singapore was “an easy decision” due in large part to the Singapore government’s 30-by-30 goal, as well as the team’s well-established networks within the scientific community, the presence of international non-profit think tanks like the Good Food Institute AsiaPacific (GFIAPAC), and a healthy start-up and biotech ecosystem in Singapore, “we felt that we would be well supported on multiple fronts,” Tan said.

    Singapore is also the only nation in the world that has approved the sale of cultivated meat. Meatiply says this will help it grow the alternative protein category.

    Chicken Katsu
    Chicken Katsu | Courtesy

    “As a living laboratory and launch pad for global climate and food security solutions, Singapore’s innovation ecosystem is central to scaling up cultivated meat production and driving down costs. Consumer demand for sustainable protein continues to soar across Asia, and the need for additional technological optimisation is immense, so every promising new entrant into the Lion City’s fast-growing food tech sector has the potential to be a game-changer,” says Mirte Gosker, Managing Director of the Good Food Institute APAC.

    “Consumer demand for sustainable protein continues to soar across Asia, and the need for additional technological optimisation is immense, so every promising new entrant into the Lion City’s fast-growing food tech sector has the potential to be a game-changer,” she says.

    Meatiply is currently raising a seed round to further develop and scale its production, cost optimization, and explore regulatory approval.

    Lead image Meatiply Duck Breast / Courtesy.

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  • New Partnership Will Bring the First Cultivated Wagyu Beef to Europe

    Orbillion's Wagyu beef burger
    2 Mins Read

    A collaboration between U.S.-based cultivated meat company Orbillion Bio and Luiten Food, a European leader in premium meat, will bring cell-based wagyu beef to Europe, pending regulatory approval.

    Aiming to bring sustainable premium cultivated meat to the European market, the Orbillion and Luiten partnership will see opportunities across Luiten’s 1,200 distribution channels in food service, specialty retailers, and butchers, the companies said in a joint statement.

    Market-ready

    The goal of the collaboration is to co-manage regulatory approval processes—currently, Singapore is the only country that has approved cultivated meat for sale. The collaboration will also see the development of manufacturing facilities in Europe. With Luiten Food’s global network, the partnership is angling the companies toward global distribution.

    Courtesy Orbillion Bio

    Orbillion is currently the only company to develop cell-cultured Wagyu beef. It has also developed elk and lamb meat through unique partnerships with farmers to help develop a modern spin on farm-to-table cuisine.

    Luiten managed director Lennert Luiten said there was “no better partner” than Orbillion to develop a Wagyu beef that meets its strict quality standards. “We’re excited to bring our strengths in brokering the highest quality meats to a category that will be a big part of how we feed the future,” Luiten said.

    “At Orbillion, we have always inspired to produce and bring to market the highest quality cell-cultured meats,” Orbillion CEO Patricia Bubner said in a statement.

    Heritage breeds, legacy brand

    “We take great pride in being the only cell-cultured meat company focused on quality throughout the full-development process—from the heritage breeds where our cells originate to the final product that diners will enjoy, and with Luiten Food, we’ll be able to bring this new farm-to-table experience to Europe,” she said.

    Orbillion's Wagyu beef made from cultured cells
    Orbillion’s Wagyu beef made from cultured cells | Courtesy

    “Together, we’ll go beyond a scientific concept, to a tangible, delicious, and enjoyable meat that is more humane to animals, kinder to the planet, and has a more desirable and consistent nutrition profile.”

    Luiten Food says the new partnership deepens its sustainability commitment and reinforces its 80-year track record of innovation. Luiten is a leader in developing top-quality cell lines, which it says has helped make it a leader in the legacy meat category.

    “We’ve been successful for more than 84 years because we’ve focused on what’s ahead,” Luiten said. “And now, that’s sustainable meat. That’s high-quality meat. That’s cell-cultured meat.”

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  • Mark Cuban and Emily Ratajkowski Back Prolific Machines’ $42 Million Raise to Scale (Cheap) Cultivated Meat

    Mosa Meat FBS

    3 Mins Read

    Emerging from stealth mode, the celebrity-backed Prolific Machines is about to bring down the price of cultivated meat significantly.

    Profilic Machines’ $42 million was raised a year ago and comes from a long list of seed and an oversubscribed Series A investors including Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban and model and actress Emily Ratajkowski.

    The seed was led by Arvind Gupta at Mayfield, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures led the Series A round. Funding also came from David Adelman, The Kraft Family, David Rubenstein, Michael Rubin, Breyer Capital, The SALT Fund, Purple Orange Ventures, Fred Blackford, Jake Poliskin, Matt Katz, Baruch Future Ventures, Kevin Love, Tobias Harris, Meek Mill, Ciara and Russell Wilson, Maverick Carter, Sean Feeney, Michael Schulson, Mark Bucher, and RJ Melman.

    The company is now preparing for its Series B, which will aim for $170 million to further accelerate its tech.

    Funding the future of food

    With the growing demand for sustainable protein, cultivated meat development has taken a starring role in the future of food. President Biden’s recent endorsement and funding for biotech are expected to accelerate U.S. approval for cultivated meat. But for a number of producers, cost is still an issue, often the core barrier to entry. Prolific Machines is emerging with tech it says can help scale up production and scale down costs at the same time.

    Prolific Machines Team
    Prolific Machines Team | Courtesy

    “You have to use these growth media proteins which are some of the most expensive things — one of the proteins we are replacing is like 30,000 times more expensive than a gram of gold,” Prolific Machines co-founder and CEO Deniz Kent told TechCrunch. “It’s really hard to scale anything for this reason because you have to use these proteins.”

    Cultured meat uses cell samples taken from live animals. But from there, the cells are grown in lab settings, often bioreactors, where they’re fed a diet of nutrients. This had first been fetal bovine serum (FBS), a controversial ingredient. But a growing number of producers have supplanted the ingredient for plant-based media that’s often less expensive than FBS.

    Price parity

    Prolific Machines says its unique approach can do for cell-cultured meat what Henry Ford did for automobiles: make it cheaper.

    “Back then, nobody really owned cars apart from super-rich people. What really changed things was Ford,” Kent said.

    “They built the assembly line for cars and found a way to manufacture cars at a price that normal people could afford. That transformed the industry because then you went from hundreds of car companies to only three companies having over 70% of the market.”

    Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy

    Its tech brings prices down and increases availability by eliminating the need for growth media entirely. It plans to bring products to market and license its tools to companies already in the space—and there are many. Data from the think tank the Good Food Institute shows more than 100 cultivated meat and seafood startups launched last year alone, a number up 25 percent from 2020.

    “I never intended to invest in another cultured meat company, but when Deniz showed me what they were doing, I was blown away by the creativity in their approach to reinvent the assembly line for food production,” Gupta said in a statement. “It is my goal to help reverse climate change by partnering with incredible teams, and I am convinced Prolific Machines will be a winner in the race for sustainable food production.”

    Prolific Machines is building a 25,000-square-foot headquarters in Emeryville, California—not far from cultivated meat producer Upside Foods ‘Epic’ facility that can produce 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat per year. The facility should be done by next spring.

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  • Biden’s Biotech Moonshot Lights the Way for Regulatory Approval of Cultivated Meat

    4 Mins Read

    Biotech is a priority for the Biden Administration, as the President signed an executive order earlier this week implementing support for the emergent category. Funding amounts were not disclosed but Biden says biotech holds the potential to fight cancer and make alternatives to emissions-producing products including oil-based chemicals, plastics, and textiles, as well as animal-free meat and dairy products.

    Calling it a cancer ‘moonshot’, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston earlier this week, he compared biotech to the former president’s moon landing initiative. Biden says he hopes to cut cancer deaths by 50 percent over the next quarter-century.

    Photo by Talha Hassan on Unsplash

    “Today I’m setting a long term goal for the Cancer Moonshot – to rally American ingenuity, we engage like we did to reach the moon, but actually cure cancers…once and for all,” Biden said. The president’s son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.

    “Today’s action is going to ensure that America leads the world in biotechnology and biomanufacturing, creating jobs, reducing prices, strengthening supply chains so we don’t have to rely on anywhere else in the world,” Biden said.

    Biotech revolution

    In a press call with White House staff, a senior administration official said the announcement and order come as the global industry is “on the cusp of a revolution powered by biotechnology.” 

    “Analyses and facts suggest that before the end of the decade, engineering biology holds the potential to be used in manufacturing industries that account for more than one third of global output.  That’s equivalent to almost $30 trillion in terms of value, the White House official said.

    “Living factories — cells — and biomass can be used to make almost anything that we use in our day-to-day lives, from medicines to fuels to plastics.  And this allows the U.S. to leverage innovation — this innovation — to strengthen our economy and society.”

    Photo by Alejandro Barrón from Pexels

    The administration says it’s also looking to improve food security and drive agricultural innovation, “including through new technologies that protect crops from disease, enhance seeds and fertilizers and foods made with cultured animal cells.”

    Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, president & CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, welcomed the move.

    “We commend the administration for launching this initiative, particularly the actions to streamline regulatory regulations for biotechnology products, expand market opportunities for biobased products, work for international alignment of regulatory standards, and invest in training and education pathways to ensure an adequate, diverse biotech workforce,” McMurray-Heath said in a statement.

    Biotech ag

    “This announcement puts in place steps that will help the soy industry continue to use soybeans to develop innovative, sustainable products that can help lower greenhouse gas emissions and create more jobs for not only agriculture but all Americans,” American Soybean Association President Brad Doyle said in a statement.

    “We are also pleased to see included measures that support agricultural biotechnology regulatory reform, along with quite a few other provisions.”

    Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy

    The move is also expected to speed regulatory approval for cultivated meat in the U.S and around the world. The industry raised $1.38 billion last year, according to the Good Food Institute. Last year saw the launch of more than 100 cultivated meat and seafood startups—a number up nearly 25 percent over 2020. Twenty-five countries now have at least one cultivated meat company.

    U.S.-based Upside Foods, which has raised more than $600 million and is now valued at more than $1 billion, opened a $50 million California factory last year that it says can produce 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat per year. Currently, only Singapore has approved the sale of cultivated meat products for Bay Area’s Eat Just Good Meat.


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  • Forsea Foods Is Taking On the ‘Tremendous’ Eel Market With Novel Cell-Cultured Tech

    forsea foods
    3 Mins Read

    Moving cell-cultured seafood “closer to nature,” Israeli newcomer Forsea Foods says it’s turning its attention to a bottleneck in the seafood industry by focusing on eel meat.

    Ashdod, Israel-based Forsea Foods says its patented organoid technology—stem cell-derived three-dimensional tissue structure—doesn’t require as many growth factors as other cell-based meat. The technology, developed by Iftach Nachman, PhD, co-founder of Forsea, is also used in developmental biology, medicine, and research.

    Self-organizing cell structures

    “While cell cultivation largely focuses on a system of directed differentiation, where cells are signaled to differentiate into a specific cell type and are then combined on a scaffold, our system grows the aggregate of the various cells already at the initial stage of the process. The cells organize themselves autonomously into their innate, purposed structure, just as in nature,” Nachman said in a statement.

    Forsea Team - Yiftach Nachman, Roee Nir, Yaniv Elkouby copy
    Forsea Team – Yiftach Nachman, Roee Nir, Yaniv Elkouby | Courtesy

    “This is a function of how you nourish the cells,” Roee Nir, a biotechnologist and CEO and co-founder of Forsea, said.

    “There are multiple benefits to the organoid method of cell cultivating fish,” says Nir. “First, it is a highly scalable platform that bypasses the scaffolding stage and requires fewer bioreactors. This makes the process much simpler and more cost-effective. Additionally, it dramatically reduces the amount of costly growth factors needed.”

    According to Forsea, the cell-cultured eel is sustainable and succulent and performs just like conventional eel filets but is free from common contaminants such as heavy metals, chemicals, and microplastic. A recent report on changing conceptions about alternative seafood in Asia pointed to growing consumer concern over heavy metals and microplastic in conventional seafood.

    The demand for eel

    Eel populations face an uncertain future, says Forsea. Overfishing has seen populations decline by 90 to 95 percent, pushing eel species into endangered territory and pushing market prices up to $70 per kilogram in Japan.

    The animals are considered a delicacy in East Asia, but according to Nir, they are also considered to be the ocean’s “most mysterious creatures, undergoing an unusual metamorphosis,” he said, speaking of their breeding that includes a 6,500 km migration to one of two spots on earth: the Sargasso Sea, near the Bermuda Triangle, or off Guam. Captive breeding has proven difficult for eel species.

    eel
    Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

    “The market demand for eels is enormous,” adds Nir.

    In just two decades, Japan’s consumption of eel has dropped from 160,000 metric tons to around 30,000 tons today. That’s due to overfishing and rising prices and what Forsea says is a huge gap between the supply and the demand for eels. Europe has also banned the export of any type of eel product. “The market opportunity for cell-cultured eels is tremendous,” Nir says.

    Israel food tech

    Forsea joins a robust Israel food tech industry. The company launched last year with funding from the Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA) and the Strauss-Group and support from The Kitchen FoodTech Hub.

    “The demand for seafood is showing no signs of slowing down,” said Amir Zaidman, VP Business Development of The Kitchen Hub. “In fact, global demand is projected to almost double by 2050. But we are rapidly approaching the point where there will simply not be enough fish in the sea to sustain the global community.

    Zaidman says Forsea’s innovative new cultivation platform has the potential to bring “positive disruption to this paradigm” by offering a clean, nutritious, delicious, and commercially viable alternative to wild-caught seafood, “while leaving the delicate ocean ecosystem completely untouched.”

    Featured photo of Forsea Foods’ Eel | Courtesy

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  • With Its $10 Million Series A, Biobetter Brings Cultivated Meat Growth Media Down From $500,000 Per Gram to $1

    Dr. Amit Yaari, CEO and co-founder Biobetter,
    3 Mins Read

    Israel-based cultivated meat startup Biobetter says it has closed a $10 million Series A funding round led by Jerusalem Venture Partners and additional investment from Milk and Honey Investments, LLC, and the Israeli Innovation Authority.

    Biobetter, which is using tobacco plants as bioreactors for its cell-based meat, says its novel tech has the potential to reduce the costs of cultured meat and help speed market entry.

    Tobacco as a growth medium

    “World population growth, combined with dwindling natural resources, are going to put incredible strain on meat supply—and the already fragile environment—in the coming decades,” Amit Yaari, PhD, CEO of Biobetter said in a statement. “Cultivated meat offers a promising solution to these problems and can ensure a more resilient supply chain with better economic and environmental returns.”

    Tobacco plant testing
    Tobacco plant testing, courtesy Biobetter

    The company’s proprietary protein manufacturing platform levies tobacco in creating the growth factors the meat cells need to develop without the need for animal-based media. “The field-grown tobacco plants offer a new, sustainable, efficient, and flexible response to the market need for more competitively priced GFs, specifically insulin, transferrin, and FGF2. These compounds are necessary to make cultivated meat commercially viable,” the company said.

    Typical growth medium costs can run between $50,000 to $500,000 per gram. But Biobetter says it can do it for one dollar per gram.

    This, says Dana Yarden, MD, co-founder of Biobetter, is positioning tobacco for a “pivotal comeback as a catalyst for bringing better food security.” Yarden says the funding will allow BioBetter to scale up production in FY2023 and be market ready by 2024.

    “Biobetter has the key to scale up production of cultivated meat, make it accessible to consumers globally and protect our planet,” said Erel Margalit, Founder & Executive Chairman of Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) and Margalit Startup City. “This is not only because of the sheer volumes of GFs it can produce but also by virtue of its ability to substantially reduce their cost.”

    Israel’s alt-protein boom

    “Biobetter has the potential to create global and regional impact,” said Nisan Zeevi, Director of JVP and VP of Margalit Startup City Galil.

    “Closer to home, this venture will create a significant new source of income for local farmers. As cellular agricultural expands, we will dedicate some 500 acres here in the galilee of tobacco plantations to support the industry. This also helps growers find new purpose in the burgeoning alternative protein scene following a reduction in smoking over the last decade that has left many tobacco fields idle and tobacco farmers suffering financial loss.”

    biobetter team
    BioBetter Lands USD10M Funding to Relieve Cultivated Meat’s Bottleneck Using Tobacco Plants (Credit: Alexander Seleznyov)

    Biobetter is part of the booming Israeli alternative protein sector. It is one of many food tech startups based out of Margalit Start-up City Galil, which is quickly becoming the country’s agri-tech hub.

    A recent report from think tank The Good Food Institute Israel highlighted Israel’s success in the alt-protein space.

    “2021 saw alternative protein placed at the forefront of [Israel’s] food-tech industry, with several massive investment rounds intended to accelerate scale-up and allow young companies to become global leaders for a better food system,” Aviv Oren, Director of Business Engagement and Innovation, GFI Israel, wrote in the group’s mid-year report.

    “This momentum draws more investors, governments and multinational companies, as it is clearer than ever that to meet climate change goals and prevent future pandemics we must leverage technology to change the way we consume our food. Israel is leading this change, with more startups and more investment in alternative protein than any country besides the U.S.”

    Photo of Dr. Amit Yaari, CEO and co-founder Biobetter, courtesy Alexander Seleznyov

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  • Future Meat Announces the World’s First Cultivated Ground Lamb Meat

    future meat lamb
    3 Mins Read

    Israel-based Future Meat Technologies has developed the world’s first cultivated ground lamb meat that it says looks, cooks, and tastes just like conventional lamb meat for use in burgers, kebabs, and other dishes.

    “In passing this milestone, Future Meat reinforces its position as a leader and pioneer in the cultivated meat industry and shows again the limitless potential of how innovation can drive sustainable solutions,” Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, CEO of Future Meat, said in a statement.

    The key learnings, Johnson-Hoffman says, will be leveraged to produce other meats, including beef and pork.

    Cultivated lamb meat

    The cultivated lamb was three years in the making for Future Meat, which says the development will help to disrupt the global lamb meat market—which spans the globe, specifically Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and parts of Asia. The company says reaching this milestone with ovine cell lines means that it can now produce cultivated lamb “at scale” and “accelerate its innovation focus to expanding into even more animal species.”

    “Since lamb has a uniquely distinct flavor, it is very clear if a cultivated substitute is on or off the mark,” said Michael Lenahan, General Manager of Future Meat. “The reason Future Meat’s cultivated lamb is indistinguishable from conventional lamb is because it is, first and foremost, real meat. It sizzles, sears and tastes just like people expect—it’s amazing.”

    future meat lamb
    Future Meat uses animal fibroblasts to replicate the meat in a lab, producing a non-GMO product that is cost-effective, sustainable, and completely scalable, without harming a single animal through the process | Courtesy

    The food tech company was the first to replace Fetal Bovine Serum and all other animal components beyond the cell lines in the cultivated meat development. “Future Meat’s approach leans on the natural spontaneous immortalization of fibroblasts, rather than genetic modification,” said Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, President, Founder and Chief Science Officer of Future Meat Technologies. “This is the key to Future Meat’s cells being non-GMO.”

    Future Meat says it is gearing up to enter the U.S. market once there’s regulatory approval for cultivated meat. Currently, only Singapore allows the sale and consumption of cultivated animal products.

    Israel’s food tech hub

    Israel is a hotbed for food tech, specifically cultivated and plant-based animal products. As of the end of June, more than $320 million in investment funding had been distributed to Israel-based companies, according to the Good Food Institute Israel.

    Future Meat beef
    Future Meat beef | courtesy

    “2021 saw alternative protein placed at the forefront of the food-tech industry, with several massive investment rounds intended to accelerate scale-up and allow young companies to become global leaders for a better food system,” Aviv Oren, Director of Business Engagement and Innovation, GFI Israel, wrote in the mid-year report.

    “This momentum draws more investors, governments and multinational companies, as it is clearer than ever that to meet climate change goals and prevent future pandemics we must leverage technology to change the way we consume our food. Israel is leading this change, with more startups and more investment in alternative protein than any country besides the U.S.”

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  • Shiok Meats Partners With Mirai Foods to Bring Cultivated Beef to Singapore

    2 Mins Read

    Shiok Meats’ subsidiary Gaia Foods and Swiss-based deep food tech Mirai Foods, have entered into a strategic partnership to develop cultivated beef.

    Singapore is leading the world in cultivated meat approval, as the first and only country to have approved the sale and distribution of cell-based meat. In 2020, it gave California’s Eat Just the green light for its cultivated chicken meat.

    Cultivated beef

    Now, Singapore’s Shiok Foods is working to speed cultivated beef to market with one-of-a-kind bovine muscle and fat stem cells from Mirai Foods. According to the companies, these essential building blocks for cultivated beef are natural, pure, and non-genetically modified cells from premium cattle breeds. Shiok says these are hard to come by in Singapore.

    Courtesy Shiok

    Sandhya Sriram, Group CEO at Shiok Meats and Gaia Foods, says the new partnership is the result of a strong relationship developing with Mirai. “Whilst we will leverage our regulatory status and expertise to help Mirai accelerate its market entry in Singapore, we are also eyeing on potential production and distribution of our seafood products in Switzerland, a high purchasing power market with a strong first adoption mindset,” Sriram said.

    “We are excited to partner with one of the world’s leading cultivated seafood producers and their subsidiary cultivated meat company to extend the culinary choice for Singaporean consumers to premium, Swiss quality cultivated beef”, Christoph Mayr, CEO at Mirai Foods, said in a statement.

    “Partnering with a Singaporean company is particularly interesting for us given the country’s strong distribution and partnership network across the Asia Pacific region, which has been showing a growing appetite for safe, high-quality beef”, he adds.

    Cultivated seafood in Singapore

    While Mirai is providing tools to enable Shiok to speed to market, Shiok is bringing regulatory information and know-how to the Swiss food tech company.

    Late last month, Shiok partnered with Vietnam’s Minh Phu Seafood to develop a combined R&D facility to help bring cultivated seafood to Asia.

    shrimp
    Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

    “Setting up a joint R&D facility with Minh Phu Seafood is a major milestone for us,” Dr. Sandhya Sriram, Group CEO, Chairman and Co-Founder of Shiok Meats, said in a statement. “Our vision has always been collaborating with established seafood companies and hatcheries to add variety to the portfolio and food security narrative through aquaculture innovation, research, and tech transfer. Our satellite R&D facility in Vietnam will focus on high-quality cultivated shrimp research and technology.”

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  • Shiok Meats Partners With Vietnam’s Largest Shrimp Producer on Cultivated Seafood R&D

    3 Mins Read

    Singapore’s Shiok Meats and Vietnam’s Minh Phu Seafood have signed a memo of understanding to develop a combined R&D facility to help bring cultivated seafood to Asia.

    The new R&D facility will be based in Vietnam in a move Shiok and Minh Phu, Vietnam’s largest conventional shrimp producer and exporter, say is paving the way for conventional seafood companies to diversify their portfolios with sustainable alternatives.

    ‘High-quality’ cultivated shrimp research and technology

    “Setting up a joint R&D facility with Minh Phu Seafood is a major milestone for us,” Dr. Sandhya Sriram, Group CEO, Chairman and Co-Founder of Shiok Meats, said in a statement. “Our vision has always been collaborating with established seafood companies and hatcheries to add variety to the portfolio and food security narrative through aquaculture innovation, research, and tech transfer. Our satellite R&D facility in Vietnam will focus on high-quality cultivated shrimp research and technology.”

    Shrimp dumplings, courtesy Shiok Meats

    Since launching in 2018, Shiok, which means “pleasure” in Malay slang, was the first company to produce cultivated shrimp, crab, and lobster.

    The companies say they will explore the development of cultivated shrimp, starting with a feasibility study. The move is aligned with Minh Phu’s vision for developing state-of-the-art technologies for Vietnam’s seafood industry, eventually leveraging the tech for the global market. It has been developing an integrated shrimp value chain from hatchery to farming, processing, logistics, import, distribution, and retail.

    The new facility will be Shiok’s third; it currently operates two satellite R&D facilities in Thailand and Australia. Last November, Shiok opened Singapore’s first “mini plant” for cultivated meat development.

    Cultivated seafood

    In 2020, Shiok debuted the world’s first cultivated lobster meat. Last August, Shiok launched the world’s first cell-based crab meat, prepared by Chef José Luis Del Amo of TheTasteLab. He created two crab dishes, Crab Cake and Chilli Crab, from cultivated crab meat and powder along with vegan pork mince OmniMeat. 

    shrimp
    Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

    Earlier this month, South Korea’s Cellmeat debuted its cultured shrimp at the Seoul-based restaurant Sigolo in dishes prepared by Chef Kyong-Ho Lee. Also this month, U.S.-based Pearlita debuted its plant and mushroom based oysters, a step toward its aim of producing cultivated and plant- and fungi-based hybrid seafood. It also developed a biodegradable shell for the full oyster experience.

    Singapore is currently the only country in the world that has approved cultivated meat for sale and consumption. But that wasn’t granted to a Singapore or Asian-based brand; approval went to California’s Eat Just in 2020 for its cultivated chicken. It has been sold in the country ever since.

    Singapore is expected to greenlight more brands in the cultivated meat and seafood space. The U.S. and E.U. markets expect approvals within the next two years.

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  • Opalia’s Cell-Cultured Milk Could Give Perfect Day a Run for Its Money

    3 Mins Read

    Cell-cultured milk from Canada’s Opalia could be ready for market by 2024 following recent production benchmarks. And as the demand for dairy alternatives continues to accelerate, brands like Perfect Day have laid a lot of the groundwork, setting Opalia up for success.

    Following the achievement of “functional complexity,” Opalia, formerly known as BetterMilk Inc., says it’s ready to start pre-pilot scale production of its cell-based milk for use in non-animal dairy products. The Cult Food Science Corp. portfolio company says it has successfully replaced fetal bovine serum (FBS) which has helped to reduce costs and make market viability a reality, pending regulatory approval.

    MIlk from mammary cells

    Opalia says it’s the first Canadian company to produce cow’s milk from mammary cells. The company says the technology will allow it to serve as a sustainable and ethical viable alternative to farmed dairy products.

    milk
    Photo by cats coming via Pexels

    “We are 100-percent focused on manufacturing a dairy product that negates any potential harm to animals and eliminates the massive environmental impact of traditional dairy products and production, therefore the breakthrough replacement of FBS for Opalia’s products is exciting”, Jennifer Cote, Chief Executive Officer of Opalia, said in a statement. “We are excited to be one step closer to upscaling production of our cell-based milk and to engage with downstream partners that are interested in commercialization of our milk.”

    Opalia achieved a proof-of-concept product last year, using an artificial mammary duct. It says the new alternative to FBS builds on its positive impact on the planet and the cultured foods category at large. It says that eliminating FBS averts disadvantages including questions over quality, reproducibility, as well as animal welfare issues and concerns over fraudulent marketing of FBS.

    Market opportunity

    The company cites the growing demand for plant-based milk as an indicator of market potential. The global dairy-free milk market is projected to reach more than $53 billion by 2028, up from $22.25 billion last year. It’s why Cult says it is grounded in its investment in the brand.

    But plant-based milk might not be Opalia’s biggest competitor. It stands to go after the market developed by California-based Perfect Day, which uses precision fermentation to replicate dairy cells with help from microorganisms. This creates a whey that can be used in milk, yogurt, cheese, and ice cream with taste, texture, and function that’s identical to conventional dairy.

    Perfect Day, which has raised more than $700 million to date, had revenue of more than $80 million last year, according to ZoomInfo.

    Courtesy Perfect Day

    Perfect Day has established a foothold in the dairy alternative category, appealing to consumers seeking a more sustainable option without giving up the flavors and function of the dairy products they love.

    “Cult’s investment in Opalia represents a significant step forward in the cultured dairy sector of the broader cellular agriculture industry,” says Lejjy Gafour, President of Cult. He says Canadians are becoming more aware of the negative impacts being made by the traditional dairy industry on the environment and animals.

    “With Opalia quickly obtaining complexity and taking the necessary steps to move forward in the production of cultured dairy, we are optimistic about our investment and belief in its initiatives and determination to create innovative solutions for our current food crisis,” he said.

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