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.”
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 | 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 | 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.”
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 | 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 | 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 | 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.
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 | 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.”
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 | 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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.”
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, 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 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
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 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 | 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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cell-based 3D-printed seafood could soon be on your plate courtesy of a new partnership between Umami Meats and MeaTech.
Singapore’s Umami Meats has been working to develop cultured seafood since its launch in 2020. Its most recent pre-seed funding round of $2.4 million will help it to scale its technology and prototypes. Through the partnership with Israel’s food tech company MeaTech, the companies say they’ve opened the door to the Asian seafood market.
3D cultured protein
“We are delighted to establish this collaboration with MeaTech to expand our product range with their 3D printing capabilities,” Mihir Pershad, Umami Meats’ Chief Executive Officer and Founder, said in a statement.
“This partnership will enable us to build upon our technology platform for cultivating fish muscle and fat to produce a variety of structured products that meet the desires of discerning consumers,” Pershad said.
“We believe cultivated seafood holds tremendous potential to provide a local, sustainable source of healthy protein and to address many of the challenges facing our food system and our oceans.”
MeaTech steak | Courtesy
Singapore is already ripe for entry as the only country that has approved the production and sale of cultured meat. California’s Eat Just brought its cultivated chicken meat to the market nearly two years ago.
Through the new collaboration, MeaTech’s 3D bioprinting will be used to produce the complex protein structure of various seafood items. MeaTech has been strategic in its collaborations, working with its tech to develop a wide range of proteins from species including bovine, avian, and porcine.
“We are very pleased about this new agreement which reflects our commercialization strategy of industry collaboration using our unique 3D printing capabilities,” Arik Kaufman, MeaTech’s Chief Executive Officer and Founder said. “We are excited about entering into the seafood sector and believe it will lead us to new market pathways throughout Asia and worldwide.”
The seafood market
The global seafood market is valued at more than $110 billion and growing at a CAGR of 3.6 percent. But the industry faces a number of threats including climate change, overfishing, ocean pollution, and increasing consumer demand.
Courtesy Mike Bergmann via Unsplash
An increasing number of companies are innovating in the alternative seafood space, from cultivated whole-cut seafood to plant-based options. Recently, Aqua Cultured Foods debuted its whole-cut fish made through microbial fermentation.
“The feedback and discussions with companies we’re meeting have made us extremely optimistic about go-to-market and co-branding opportunities,” Aqua CGO Brittany Chibe said after a recent taste test of the product. “Whether it’s rising costs, supply chain concerns, or sustainability goals, we are seeing major interest from potential partners that want to develop products with our seafood or offer it on menus.”
Bay-Area food-tech startup SCiFi Foods has emerged from stealth mode with a game-changing announcement for the cultivated meat sector. The company says it has achieved price parity with beef using a proprietary tech combination involving its own high-throughput cell line engineering and CRISPR technology.
“We’ve known from day one that by opting to work on cultivated beef, we were choosing a much bigger challenge in terms of the science and technology required,” SCiFi Foods CEO and co-founder Joshua March said in a statement. “However, beef is the ultimate prize—with both the biggest market demand and the biggest climate impact. This breakthrough illustrates the power of our bioengineering strategy, and is a huge testament to our team and the platform they’ve built.”
Price parity
According to SCiFi, its first R&D announcement is also a world’s first achievement—the company, which has raised more than $29 million to date, is the first to produce edible cultivated beef cell lines that grow in a single-cell suspension. “This not only validates SCiFi Foods’ cell line engineering strategy and platform, but also allows the company to reduce the cost of growing its beef cells at scale by at least one thousand times—the biggest zero to one in cultivated meat,” the company said.
Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash
The milestone cements cultivated meat as a viable alternative to conventional meat production and its environmental and ethical issues. SCiFi says the tech has allowed it to reduce the cost of cultivated meat by more than 1,000 times current production costs—this development achieves price parity for cultivated beef grown at scale. The result is a “blended burger” that’s part plant-based and part cultivated meat, for less than $10 per burger.
The achievement comes less than a decade after the first cultivated beef burger was introduced in The Netherlands. That burger, developed by Mark Post and Peter Verstrate, cost $330,000 to produce.
SCiFi says most companies working to produce cultivated meat are attaching cells to a surface or using microcarriers. This poses some barriers, the company says, including limits on cell density, is more expensive, and has not been demonstrated at large scale. The new single-cell breakthrough allows the use of standard large-scale bioreactors, which is more economical to produce, the company says.
The single-cell tech has been used in producing cultivated chicken and fish cell lines, but this is the first time a company has successfully produced beef.
CRISPR
Part of the development comes by way of the controversial CRISPR technology. That tech, developed by American biochemist Jennifer Anne Doudna, a Fellow of the Royal Society, was adapted from a genome editing system that bacteria use for immunity. By capturing and inserting small pieces of DNA from the attacking virus into their own DNA, bacteria create what’s called CRISPR arrays.
The technology has been eyed as a potential embryonic treatment for a number of hereditary diseases including hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, among others.
But for all of its potential, the tech has also brought controversy as studies have found that altering the DNA of embryos or eggs and sperm could cause mutations that create other health threats. The risks don’t just impact the embryo at hand, either; genetic changes would alter the health and health risks of future generations, too, research has found.
Photo by Talha Hassan on Unsplash.
The tech is unlikely to pose risks to humans who consume CRISPR-edited cultivated beef, however. Just in the same way that eating meat from an animal with brown eyes doesn’t change the consumer’s eye color, the tech would be unlikely to alter human DNA.
SCiFi isn’t the first to explore CRISPR in developing cultivated meat. Fellow California-based company Upside Foods patented a CRISPR tech in 2017 which it said could modify cells into perpetual replicative states.
SCiFi says the new achievement will see cultivated beef prices drop even further; it says with a large-scale production plant coming, it can reduce the cost to just $1 per burger.
“Cultivated meat has the potential to disrupt the trillion-dollar meat market and help build a more sustainable future, but cost has always been its biggest challenge. With this milestone, we’ve proven that potential is realistic with our ability to engineer beef cells that grow at low cost and large volumes,” said SCiFi Foods CTO and co-founder, Kasia Gora, PhD.
“A decade ago, when the first lab-grown burger debuted in the press, it seemed like a pipedream,” she said. “So we are proud to be taking a major leap towards making cultivated meat a reality for everybody.”
Swiss multinational plant equipment manufacturer Bühler is going all-in on the sustainable food system, particularly the alternative protein sector.
At its recent 2022 Networking Days event in Uzwil, Switzerland, Bühler announced several key initiatives that focus on the changing protein landscape. The timing is crucial as approval for cultivated meat is likely to happen in key markets within the next 12 to 18 months after the successful Singapore approval of Good Meat’s cultivated chicken in 2020.
Demand for plant-based protein continues its climb in developed markets such as the U.S. and Europe, and in new markets including Asia and Latin America.
“We’re not against meat. We’re pro-choice and pro-solving problems,” said Ian Roberts, Bühler CTO.
The Cultured Hub in Kemptthal
To that end, the company is launching The Cultured Hub in Kemptthal near Zurich, which it says is nearly complete. It’s a joint venture between flavor giant Givaudan, Swiss supermarket giant Migros, and Bühler. The facility will support the acceleration of large-scale fermentation and cultivated food production.
“We want to accelerate fermentation and cultured meat by offering startups the opportunity to test their products earlier, and not have to invest in a huge facility to do so,” Roberts said.
Future home of The Cultured Hub in Kemptthal, courtesy
“The challenges posed by climate change, increasingly depleted resources, and a growing global population expected to exceed 10 billion people by 2050 require a reimagination of our food system,” the company says on its website. “Sustainable food cultivation is key in meeting these challenges. Increased global customer demand for sustainably and ethically produced healthy, and tasty food products further substantiates the need for change.”
Embracing biotech
It will also explore partnerships that bring biotechnology, precision fermentation, and cellular agriculture to a number of key areas, namely animal feed, in a move it says will support a more sustainable value chain worldwide. It recently launched a joint venture with Austrian pharmaceutical and biotechnology company ZETA for that project.
“Harnessing bioprocessing for the food and feed industry is not new, but it needs to be applied at scale,” Roberts said of the launch. “Technologies such as precision fermentation and cellular agriculture offer the potential to drastically reduce the land and CO2e footprints of food and feed production. This is a potential pathway to produce food and feed for a growing world population whilst respecting the limits of the planet.”
Accelerating plant-based
But for Bühler, it’s not just the controversial, complicated food tech of cultivated meat that’s on the table. In a partnership with Germany’s Flottweg SE, Bühler is working to accelerate plant-based products as demand rises, with an emphasis on protein isolates. Flottweg specializes in mechanical separation technology, a process Bühler says supports its production processes. This will accelerate the development of sustainable proteins.
It’s a move that Andreas Risch, Head of Business Unit Special Grains & Pulses at Bühler, says will increase offerings to its customers in the whole protein processing space, “in particular toward protein isolation but also for all the applications where a solid-liquid separation step might be required.”
Bühler plant-based patty, courtesy
Where all of these technologies intersect is the booming demand for alternatives to the current protein systems. Consumers are seeking healthier options, which include a shift away from red and processed meats that have been classified by the World Health Organization as likely and probable carcinogens. Consumers are shifting away from animal protein because of the impact on the planet, too. As evidence of human-caused climate change is becoming increasingly more evident, more consumers, particularly the climate-sensitive Millennials and Gen-Z, are opting for smaller-footprint foods.
For Bühler, that means a shift to its entire value chain. The market leader in dry processing technology says it wants to improve its sustainability efforts and reduce its carbon footprint. It recently partnered with the German engineering company Endeco to help achieve that goal. The partnership includes a Protein Lab aimed at developing value chain solutions.
Aligned with Endeco, Bühler says it will be able to not only meet the growing demand for alternative protein sources and develop processing solutions with a lower carbon footprint, but it will also be able to offer its customers end-to-end solutions including wet and dry processing.
“Endeco provides the final missing piece for Bühler between the mill and pulse processing,” says Johannes Wick, CEO Business Grains & Food at Bühler.
“Together with Bühler we will not only help meet growing demand for more sustainable sources of protein, but also improve the environmental footprint of the processing technology itself,” says Karl-Heinz Bergmann, owner and CEO of Endeco.
Headquartered in North Carolina, biotech startup Jellatech has announced the successful production of cell-based collagen. The company, founded two years ago, claims to have created full-length, triple-helical collagen that functions identically to conventional sources. The development has been made using the company’s proprietary cell lines.
Used across multiple industries, including cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and food production, collagen reportedly contributes to an $8.4 billion dollar sector. Jellatech set out to create a clean and sustainably superior version of the protein, which doesn’t rely on animals for sourcing.
Jellatech accomplishes its collagen goals
“This is a major milestone for us and I am beyond proud and excited that we are already here. Being able to see our clean cell-based collagen with the naked eye – it brings happy tears,” Stephanie Michelsen, CEO of Jellatech said in a statement.
With consumers increasingly scrutinising the sustainability credentials of the brands they support, cruelty-free alternatives to necessary ingredients are becoming more vital. Traditionally, collagen is found in animal skin, bones and connective tissues, requiring the slaughter of said creature. Horses, cows, pigs, rabbits and fish are common sources of collagen collection. Add in supply chain disruptions caused by Covid-19, travel restrictions and other unforeseen outbreaks, including African swine flu, and a stable provision becomes hard to guarantee.
Jellatech has positioned itself to offer an alternative to conventional animal-sourced collagen. In April last year, the startup secured $2 million in a pre-seed funding round, to support ongoing collagen and gelatine R&D. The investment allowed Jellatech to send out samples of its collagen development, with a view to commercialising within 18 months. That ambition is closer than ever to being realised, with the new announcement that it has achieved bioidentical results with cell-based collagen.
“We’re thrilled to see that our cell-derived collagen appears bio-identical to collagen derived from animals. Because of this, we have a wide range of exciting applications from biomedicine to cosmetics to food and beverage,” Rob Schutte, head of science at Jellatech said in a statement.
Taking the cell-based path
Jellatech is not the only startup looking to take animals out of the collagen production system. The company states that it decided against plant-based or fermentation-derived investigations due to the limitations both have. Jellatech claims that both are unable to fully mimic the range of functionality that animal-based collagen contains, therefore its cell-based innovation is a step ahead.
“Collagen formation is a complex process that requires specialized machinery found only in mammalian cells,” Christopher Gilchrist, senior scientist at Jellatech said in a statement. “We’re working to harness the innate ability of these cells to produce collagen that is bio-identical to native collagen and do it in a sustainable and animal-free way.”
The race for cruelty-free collagen
In February, biodesign startup Geltor announced it has successfully completed its first commercial run of fermented animal-free collagen. Dubbed PrimaColl, the vegan product was manufactured in partnership with Arxada to test scaling capabilities. The company reported no loss of precision, with all produced PrimaColl being hailed as a bioidentical alternative to animal-sourced collagen. Despite announcing a capacity increase from 10,000 litres in 2019 to millions in 2021, The company states that it has a long way to go to replace the conventional protein, which currently sees kilotonnes of demand every year.
In March, Israeli cultivated meat innovator Aleph Farms revealed it is adding cell-based collagen to its portfolio of developments. The move forms part of the company’s commitment to replacing all bovine proteins currently used commercially, in a bid to offer a sustainable alternative to animal farming. An in-house incubation accelerator, dubbed Aleph Frontiers, looked into the potential for collagen as part of an 18-month stealth investigation, with the results being favourable. 2024 has been floated as a potential launch date for finished collagen products.
The Japanese government has announced that it is pulling together a team of experts to analyse the safety of cultivated meat. The move is seen as a precursor to implementing a regulatory framework for future commercial product approvals.
The team will be curated by the Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry. Its endeavours will be focused around establishing if there are any risks to human health from consuming cultivated meat products. The entire cultivation process will be analysed ahead of the anticipated industrialisation of cell-based meat production.
Photo by Afif Kusuma at Unsplash.
Japan setting future foods in motion
Japan currently has a food sanitation law in place. It prescribes specific conditions for the production, processing, and sale of conventional meat items. Due to cultivated meat still being unapproved for sale, these guidelines do not apply to the cultivated sector, which now needs its own framework.
The team of experts, when in position, will be charged with understanding the entire cultivation process, collecting data about each stage of the process to write a report as to the potential risks involved. Toxic substance contamination and potential consequences to human health are considered priority focal points. Once the report has been submitted, the Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry will conduct a panel to decide on necessary safety precautions.
Frameworks from other countries, where cultivated meat is making meaningful progress, will be taken into consideration. This will necessarily include Singapore, which remains the only country to approve cultivated meat products for commercial sale. The U.S. and Israel are expected to be used as reference points alongside, as both have burgeoning cultivated sectors and multiple players within the niche vying for regulatory approval.
Photo by IntegriCulture.
Japan’s cultivated innovators
In April, IntegriCulture announced that it had successfully cultivated chicken and duck liver cells. The breakthrough allowed the company to move from research to prototyping stage, using its proprietary CulNet system. The startup revealed that it had made progress without the use of animal serums and for 1/60 of conventional costs. Having scooped $16 million in funding to date, the company is now looking to produce cultivated foie gras as its first commercial product.
Nissin Food Holdings and the University of Tokyo are working together to make cultivated beef. The two have apparently succeeded in creating Japan’s first edible cell-based meat earlier this year. The research team is now engaged in trying to produce a two-centimetre-thick, 100-gram piece of beef by 2025. If the project is successful, mass production will be attempted.
In 2021, it was announced that Israeli cultivated pioneer Aleph Farms signed a working agreement with Mitsubishi’s food industry arm. The ultimate aim of the partnership is to bring cultivated meat to Japan, with Aleph’s manufacturing platform being seconded out. Mitsubishi is bringing in biotech experts and working with relevant officials to secure distribution channels.
Another key partnership is a collaboration between Israel’s SuperMeat and Japanese food giant Ajinomoto. The two have agreed to work together to expedite the development of cultivated products. Ajinomoto brings scaling capabilities, extensive R&D expertise and streamlining prowess to the partnership. SuperMeat offers its proprietary technology. The two hope to reach commercialisation within two years.
Photo by IntegriCulture./
Getting consumers on board
Japan has the shortest history of eating meat out of all Asian countries. Traditionally, consumers favour domestically produced meat and look for marbling as an indicator of quality. An underlying preoccupation with meat safety remains and as such, could provide a stumbling block to cultivated meat acceptance. However, as a nation, a lot of faith is placed in relevant governing bodies. If the ministry can formulate a stringent framework for the safe production of cell-based meats, consumers might be willing to try locally manufactured products.
South Korea’s Simple Planet has announced a breakthrough by developing cultivated meat with a higher content of unsaturated fatty acids. The move has been claimed as a first for the country. Unsaturated fatty acids are hailed as effective in preventing vascular diseases, making meats with more of them preferred over varieties containing large doses of saturated fats.
The breakthrough has led Simple Planet to announce that it sees a path to creating cultivated meat products with higher levels of unsaturated fatty acids than are possible with conventional meat. It states that this shows promise for both cell and plant-based meat markets and will propel Korea to the forefront of the alt-protein sector.
Photo by Misael Moreno at Unsplash.
How are the good fats isolated?
Simple Planet has been transparent in its approach. It was revealed that by isolating adipose stem cells, taken from bovine adipose tissue, it was able to cultivate them to create a fat product. It contains the same composition as regular bovine fat, with oleic acid, a healthy unsaturated fatty acid observed. Using this, in place of unhealthy fats allows for future cultivated meat developments to be further tweaked to enhance nutritional profiles, alongside taste and aesthetics.
“Based on the results of this study, we will continue additional research and development for sustainable future food, share core technologies and values through active collaboration with companies, and secure market competitiveness with a differentiated system,” a spokesperson for Simple Planet said.
The startup will now use recently acquired technology to undertake follow-up R&D, to better understand how controlling the content of unsaturated fatty acids can positively impact cultivated meat. It has stated that it hopes this breakthrough will lead to the growth of the domestic Korean food industry and help to claim a prominent position within the cultivated sector.
Photo by Daniel Bernard at Unsplash.
Korea’s cultivated meat sector gathering pace
South Korea has already been identified as a country to watch for alternative protein developments. Alongside continued plant-based innovation, numerous advances in cultivated meat and seafood have happened over the past twelve months.
In December last year, CellMEAT announced two significant steps forward. The first was the unveiling of a fetal bovine serum-free cell culture media. It came just one day ahead of major U.S. cultivated brand Upside Foods announcing a similar breakthrough. CellMEAT revealed its development and claimed it would drive down costs associated with cell-based meta production and circumnavigate lingering ethical concerns. Little more than a week later, the startup debuted the world’s first cultivated Dokdo shrimp. The prototype paved the way for CellMEAT to continue prioritising expensive seafood varieties that cannot be sustainably farmed. Future products are expected to include king crab and lobster.
Cultivated beef meatballs. Photo by SpaceF.
In February, SpaceF announced that as well as improving on its original pork prototype, it had also successfully cultivated Korea’s first chicken and beef products. The new developments came almost a year after the first pork debut, with all products presented as finished food items. Meatballs, patties, fillets and nuggets were created, alongside a German white sausage. The startup revealed that its pork 2.0 was a far more realistic representation of conventional animal meat, due to improved fibrosity.
CJ CheilJedang announced its plans to enter the cultivated sector by revealing its burgeoning partnership with KCell Biosciences. The two are constructing a cell culture media plant in Busan, later this year. When complete, the facility will be the largest of its kind in Korea and the second largest in the whole APAC region. The two hope to meet at a cost-efficient intersection that will allow cultivated progress to continue, without having to remove price parity hurdles later.
U.K.-based Moolec Science, a food ingredients company engaged in molecular farming of animal proteins, has merged with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) LightJump. The two have confirmed the start of their business combination agreement, which sees Moolec valued at $504 million. Once the merger is complete, the new company is anticipated to be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker “MLEC”.
At present, Moolec is engaged in hybrid developments, making animal proteins using plants as production factories. It has already gained patent protection for its molecular technology and has gained regulatory approval for its first two products – a plant-based dairy ingredient and GLA oil. Scaling was undertaken earlier this year, to accelerate its successes with soy and pea-based hybrids that can replace conventional meat with animal-free alternatives.
Photo by Moolec.
Changing the landscape of alternative protein
Moolec and LightJump are expected to complete their transaction in the later part of 2022, with Nasdaq listing following soon after. If it happens, the listing will be the first of its kind for a molecular farming food tech. The startup has rarely followed the path most travelled, however.
Claiming self-designated pioneer status, Moolec uses plants to produce genuine animal proteins. It has designed technology that allows the synthesis of animal proteins to be completed within any seed crop. Proteins produced line up with specific functions necessary for consumer-accepted alternatives to conventional foodstuffs, such as dairy. The result will be animal-free, affordable and nutritionally comparable products, fuelled by molecular farmed ingredients.
“Moolec Science is a category creator in the alternative protein landscape. Our Molecular Farming technology focuses on providing real animal proteins without using any animals, based on the genetic engineering of seeds to produce proteins the same way animals do,” said Gastón Paladini, CEO and co-founder of Moolec said in a statement.
“As fourth generation of a family business that is one of the largest meat players in the Southern Cone, I have first-hand knowledge of the challenges faced by the industry. Moolec’s goal is to use science in food to overcome current global food security issues, building a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable food system.”
Photo by Moolec.
The science of food security
Plants used for Moolec’s molecular farming developments will be grown through traditional farming methods, allowing for high volumes and reduced costs for end products. The same methodology has the potential to be used for other markets, other than meat proteins. Dairy, poultry and fish alternatives have already been cited, alongside other biomaterials and cosmetics. The commercial scope of this, plus environmental benefits appears to have caught LightJump’s attention.
“LightJump Acquisition Corp. is excited to be partnering with Moolec Science, a FoodTech pioneer in Molecular Farming,” Robert Bennett, CEO of LightJump Acquisition Corp said in a statement. “We believe Moolec’s differentiated technology platform will be able to address the worldwide growing demand for animal proteins while delivering them at a small fraction of the cost and environmental impact of existing approaches. We are committed to working alongside Moolec’s outstanding management team to support its expansion plans and its transition to becoming a Nasdaq-listed company.”
Photo by Miruku.
Molecular farming as a growing niche
Moolec is not alone in seeking to leverage the power of plants as natural manufacturing facilities. Miruku, founded by New Zealand and Israeli food industry experts, is looking to use molecular farming to create animal-free dairy products. The startup announced the closure of a $2.4 million seed round in March of this year after coming out of stealth. Operating out of APAC it is reported to be the region’s first molecular operation, with only a few others globally.
The New Technology Conference in Nanjing National Agricultural High-Tech Industry Demonstration Zone recently played host to a tasting of China’s first cultivated pork belly. The development, presented by domestic startup Joes Future Food, was unveiled during the conference’s Second Cultured Meat New Product Tasting Ceremony.
Alongside pork belly, co-culture of muscle and fat cells, cost-effective serum-free growth mediums and other new technologies were introduced. Guests of the conference were invited to taste Joes’ cultivated pork belly and pigskin noodles, prepared in a variety of dishes.
Professor Zhou Guanghong.
Is China saying yes to cultivated meat?
Joes’ claims that conference attendees noted that the startup’s pork belly was “very chewy”. Alongside, the cell-based fat was described as “delicious when fried” and the pork kebabs were heralded as “authentic”.
China is the world’s largest consumer of conventional pork, and garnering a positive reception from Chinese consumers bodes well for Joes. The startup is in the midst of building a pilot production line, which it hopes to use to promote the commercial potential of cell-based meats.
China has been making tentative steps toward the acceptance of alternative proteins, including cultivated meat. In March, it was reported that President Xi referenced China’s burgeoning alt-protein sector in a speech given to key industry figureheads. President Xi specifically noted that the country needs to develop its own unique proteins. Alongside plant and fermentation methodologies, he specifically paid lip service to biotechnology and bio-industry developments. This led observers to speculate that he is, potentially, open to cultivated meats. If President Xi is on board with the idea of cell-based meat development, it could lead to startups such as Joes being subject to simpler legislation and faster routes to commercialisation.
Cultured Pigskin Noodles by Joes Future Food.
Sustainable solutions for meat consumption
Prior to President Xi’s speech, China’s five-year agricultural plan made reference to cultivated meat for the first time. The blueprint for China’s future developments and national economic strength, the plan is considered a sign of things to come in the food sector. The inclusion of cultivated meat, alongside talk of increasing sustainability credentials, offered optimism to cell-based startups.
At the end of the New Technology Conference, Professor Zhou Guanghong of the Nanjing Agricultural University concluded that people will be able to eat pork without raising pigs. He stated that cultivated meat, such as that presented by Joes, is the “answer to national strategies of sustainable development and low-carbon agriculture”.
President Xi photo courtesy of Canva.
The road to cultivated pork for China
Back in October last year, Joes raised $10.9 million in a Series A funding round. The money was earmarked for continued R&D into cultivated pork, alongside technology scaling. It followed a $3 million raise in January of the same year. The startup spoke of wanting to be the first company to be able to offer sustainably-made pork to Chinese consumers. It won the prototype race, debuting a cultivated meat item in 2019 but now faces competition to get to market first.
Shanghai-based CellX announced it had scooped $10.6 million in a Series A raise, last month. The cellular agriculture startup has raised in excess of $15 million in total to accelerate its cultivated developments. It is looking to produce pork, beef and chicken with whole cuts being given priority. The startup notes that it considers this as the best route to consumer acceptance, as the end products will look familiar. Taking a four-pronged approach, CellX is aiming to produce cultivated meat, while slashing the costs of the sector as it progresses. It claims to have produced a low-cost media formula already and secured an immortalised cell line for its work.
Lead image: cultured pork belly by Joes Future Food.
Israel cell-based breast milk startup Wilk has confirmed a significant breakthrough: the company says it has successfully replicated lactoferrin, a key protein for the development and growth of children and a major step towards being able to offer formula partners access to authentic and vital breast milk components.
The news secures Wilk’s position as one of the first biotech startups in the world to edge closer to commercial production of cultivated human breast milk. It comes after the startup secured U.S. patent approval for its procedures and technology associated with cell-based animal and human breast milk production.
Photo from Pexels.
Why lactoferrin was the missing puzzle piece
In human breast milk, lactoferrin proteins are present at a concentration of up to 50 times more than in cow’s milk. As a protein, it is an essential carrier of iron and other key nutrients to nursing children, which support projected growth curves and developmental milestones. Being able to add lactoferrin to baby formula will allow products to be far more comparable to actual breast milk. Wilk has stated that dairy and plant-based formulas would not be able to offer the same level of authenticity.
“This breakthrough brings us one step closer to our goal of providing all infants with the full range of nutritional benefits that can only be found in breast milk,” Tomer Aizen, CEO of Wilk said in a statement. “This is significant news for both the infant formula industry and parents who may soon have access to the optimal product for ensuring their infants’ growth and development.”
Photo from Pexels.
Lactoferrin as a health booster
Aside from the benefits for formula-fed infants, lactoferrin has been identified as offering wider health benefits. Wilk states that studies have shown its effectiveness in preventing and treating conditions including coronary heart disease and, topically, coronavirus. Recent research has, apparently, confirmed that the protein is able to bind to some of the receptors that coronavirus traditionally uses to attack human respiratory and digestive systems. The binding process prevents the virus from being able to cause infection.
Wilk states that with further R&D, it anticipates being able to produce lactoferrin in unlimited amounts. It is unclear if the startup will offer its proteins to partners outside of the formula sector.
Photo by Sprout Organics.
Disrupting the infant formula industry
The global baby formula sector is anticipated to reach $125.2 billion by 2030. Market growth is thought to be driven by increased disposable income in emerging markets, alongside greater awareness of the nutritional properties of formula recipes. However, this leaves the door open for supply issues, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak.
The U.S. is currently experiencing an unprecedented infant formula shortage. Parents have been taking drastic steps to ensure they have enough at home, including paying extortionate shipping fees to bring in products from overseas. The shortage has hit parents of children with special dietary needs extra hard, with dairy-free formula proving almost impossible to source.
Australian formula startup Sprout Organics is hoping to move into the U.S. market soon. The plant-based company has just launched on Amazon, shortly after debuting in the Middle East. Sprout has directly addressed the current shortage, stating that it is talking with the FDA and Austrade, in an attempt to hasten its U.S. entry. Parents in the States have already confirmed bulk orders from Sprout, incurring $500 shipping fees, which they have been happy to pay for a large supply.
In the cultivated sector, Wilk is joined by at least three other breast milk-focussed companies. Biomilq, from the U.S., Singapore’s TurtleTree Labs and Australia’s Me& are all looking to progress their cell-based breast milk developments. TurtleTree has already announced its own human lactoferrin protein, with regulatory approval currently being sought in Singapore and the U.S.
Founded in 2021, Brown Foods claims to have developed “real” whole milk in a laboratory setting. The breakthrough took less than three months for the Boston and India-based startup, which just closed a $2.36 million seed round. Participation has been confirmed from Y Combinator, AgFunder, SRI Capital and Amino Capital, amongst others.
A Y Combinator alumnus, Brown Foods was founded by a group of friends who met at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Motivated by a lack of access to nutritious milk alternatives the group claims to be the first company in the U.S. to have made “real cow’s milk”. Similarly to cultivated meat, regulatory approval has not yet been granted for cultivated dairy in the U.S., or anywhere else.
Photo by Daniel Quiceno at Unsplash.
Mapping the profile of cow’s milk
Using bovine mammary cells, Brown Foods has been able to prototype its UnReal Milk development.
“We validated for the major macronutrients, the proteins, the fats and the carbs,” Sohail Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Brown Foods told TechCrunch. “We could see that the profiles for those were similar to milk at large-scale quantities, and as a result, we could say that we have a superior product from the lab.”
The startup claims that, even at scale, it can compare to the taste and texture of conventional milk. UnReal Milk is also slated to be suitable for converting into other dairy products, including cheese, ice cream and butter.
Photo by Ave Calvar at Unsplash.
Dairy, minus the environmental impact
Brown Foods cites the desire to produce a milk alternative that prevents further climate change and cruelty to animals as a motivating force. The dairy manufacturing sector accounts for around 30 percent of all livestock production emissions. This translates to 2.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year. With the global demand for dairy increasing, at least up until 2030 if predictions come true, alternatives to conventional milk production need to be found.
The alternative dairy sector is expected to be worth $50 billion by 2028. Plant milk is anticipated to dominate the sector, at least until newer developments have been proven as more than just viable concepts and accepted by consumers. Cultivated milk is being looked at as a less emissions-intensive way to get cow-derived dairy. It should not be confused with entirely animal-free milk such as those developed through precision fermentation. Brown Foods claims that its UnReal Milk product has a 90 percent smaller carbon footprint when compared to conventional milk.
Support to scale
As with cultivated meat startups, Brown Foods is looking at the complexities of scaling for meaningful production. The recently acquired seed funding will be funnelled into a modest initial scaling project, anticipated to begin within the next 12 months. Product development will also be funded by the recent raise.
“The top-level roadmap of how we are thinking is doing some kind of sampling where we can actually get feedback and learn what things look like and then go toward the kinds of products we will have for commercialization,” Gupta told TechCrunch.
Photo by Jagoda Kondariuk at Unsplash.
Other players in the cultivated milk space
In March, Montreal-based Opalia revealed that it has successfully developed cell-based milk, without the use of fetal bovine serum. Formerly called Bettermilk, the startup uses all the necessary components of conventional cow’s milk to create a product that is not bio-identical but is comparable in taste. The company was founded in line with animal welfare concerns and environmental impact awareness. It secured $1 million in pre-seed funding and is currently continuing its R&D cycle and looking to start costing scaled production.
Israel’s Wilk Technologies is pushing ahead with its development of cultivated animal and human breast milk. The startup secured U.S. patent approval for procedures and technology associated with both and is looking to develop processes fr commercial scale-up.
The current U.S. baby formula shortage has brought into sharp focus a need for alternatives to be brought to market. The U.S. has been attempting to increase its supply of infant nutrition products, but with little success. The result is growing panic over children’s development and health concerns for those with specific metabolic needs.
Reports of a growing black market for baby formula highlights the seriousness of the issue. Observers have noted that the monopoly of the U.S.’s supply by a handful of manufacturers has caused the bottleneck, resulting in calls for more options to be available for parents who are unable or unwilling to chestfeed.
The cultivated and precision fermentation breast milk sectors, though niche, offer optimism for parents globally that there will be other choices. The following five startups are pressing ahead to make sure that every child is fed, with sustainable and allergen-free alternatives to conventional baby formula.
Michelle Egger and Leila Strickland. Photo by Biomilq.
1. Biomilq
Founders: Leila Strickland and Michelle Egger.
Country of origin: U.S.
Funding to date: $24.5 million.
Manufacturing method: Cell cultivation.
Significant developments: Moving from proof-of-concept to proof-of-complexity in 2021.
Projected launch: Within four years.
Biomilq was founded specifically to disrupt the profit-driven baby formula sector by placing the focus back on parents and their children. Work began on the project in 2013, with a prototype confirmed in 2021, allowing the startup to claim it was the first to make “cell-cultured human milk outside of the breast”.
Bill Gates has invested more than once in the staunchly female-founded and led company that has stated a team of men in suits would not have been able to secure as much funding for such a development.
Photo by Helaina.
2. Helaina
Country of origin: U.S.
Founders: Laura Katz.
Funding to date: $24.6 million.
Manufacturing method: Precision fermentation.
Significant developments: Recreating immune-equivalent proteins that have previously only been found in breast milk.
Projected launch: Unconfirmed.
Helaina uses precision fermentation to produce what it calls a nature-equivalent breast milk solution. Following its latest funding round, a $20 million Series A in November last year, the startup is scaling its production technology to make meaningful movements towards commercialisation. The company uses the same technology as Perfect Day, which has recreated nature-identical whey proteins for cow-free dairy.
Helaina has successfully reprogrammed microbes to produce breast milk proteins which have been clinically proven to increase infant immunity. These will be used to produce the first product slated for launch: a “humanised” infant formula.
Co-founders Fengru Lin and Max Rye. Photo by TurtleTree Labs
3. TurtleTree Labs
Country of origin: Singapore.
Founders: Fengru Lin and Max Rye.
Funding to date: $39.4 million
Manufacturing method: Cell cultivation.
Significant developments: Moving from a singular focus on producing dairy milk without cows to include human breast milk for children.
Projected launch: By 2023, following commercial delays for initial 2021 ambitions.
In 2020, TurtleTree announced it was looking to work with leading baby formula brands to create human breast milk products. At the time this was a lateral move from the startup’s existing success with cow-free dairy. The announcement came after a successful pre-seed funding round in January the same year. It projected the ability to unveil a cultivated breast milk product by 2021, costing $26 per litre.
In December 2020, TurtleTree closed a $6.2 million pre-Series A funding round, specifically to accelerate its cultivated breast milk R&D. In June 2021, the startup unveiled its first commercial product, a cell-based human lactoferrin. The ingredient has been shown to offer immunity and developmental benefits. The ingredient is expected to be approved for sale far quicker than cultivated whole milk, allowing TurtleTree to start disrupting the infant formula sector more quickly. Approval is being sought in Singapore and the U.S. simultaneously.
Wilk team members. Photo by Wilk.
4. Wilk (formerly BioMilk)
Country of origin: Israel.
Founders: Arik Kaufman, Kobi Buxdorf and Tomer Aizen.
Funding to date: $1 million.
Manufacturing method: Cell cultivation.
Significant developments: Earning U.S. patent approval for cultivated breast milk processes in 2022.
Projected launch: Initial samples are anticipated by 2023.
Similarly to Turtle Tree, Wilk was initially founded to look at the possibilities of cultivated dairy milk. This evolved to include human breast milk in a bid to break into the $45 billion global infant milk sector. In 2021 the company became the first cell-based milk manufacturer to go public.
Following successful patent applications earlier this year, Wilk is submitting more to protect its intellectual property while R&D continues. Current focus is on identifying the best ways to maximise milk yield from cultivated mammary cells.
Esha Saxena and Luis Malaver-Ortega. Photo by Me&.
5. Me&
Country of origin: Australia.
Founders: Esha Saxena and Luis Malaver-Ortega.
Funding to date: Unconfirmed.
Manufacturing method: Cell cultivation.
Significant developments: Unconfirmed.
Projected launch: Unconfirmed.
New kid on the block, Me& has been launched to amplify the benefits of breast milk without excluding parents unable to chestfeed. The startup lists a number of health conditions that have been proven to be improved by feeding children breast milk, including asthma and diabetes. The company is looking to use cultivation technology to capture and replicate complex components of human breast milk to develop products that can be given in place of conventional formula.
Eat Just’s Good Meat has broken ground on the largest cultivated meat factory in Asia.
Building on its success in Singapore after becoming the first company to earn regulatory approval for cultivated meat in the city-state, Eat Just’s Good Meat is moving forward with its bioreactor facility in JTC Bedok Food City.
The target launch date is set for early 2023, and according to Eat Just will be able to produce tens of thousands of pounds of meat.
Cell-based meat in Singapore
The increased production capacity is due to what Eat Just says is ” the single-largest bioreactor in the cultivated meat industry to date.” Cultivated meat is grown in labs via media fed to cells, replacing the need to raise and slaughter animals.
Singapore is still the only place in the world that has approved the sale of cultivated meat. Eat Just has worked with several distributors across the region to sell its cell-based chicken since it received approval in 2020.
“Less than two years ago, Singapore made history, and since that moment, consumers have enjoyed the world’s first and only commercially available slaughter-free meat at high-end restaurants, hawker stalls and in their own homes,” Eat Just co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick said in a statement. “We view Singapore as vital in our plans to build this new approach to making meat. We’ll launch new products here, distribute to other countries in Asia from here and learn from consumers here who have proven themselves to be at the cutting edge of what’s next.”
GOOD Meat cultivated chicken. Photo by Eat Just.
Mr. Chan Hian Lim, Deputy CEO (Corporate, Industry and Technology) of the Singapore Food Agency, Singapore’s regulatory authority entrusted with ensuring a safe food supply, said that as consumer trends and technology evolve, alternative proteins such as plant-based, microbial and cultured meat “could contribute meaningfully to the ‘30 by 30’ goal. SFA will continue to work closely with the industry and research entitles to grow its capacity to produce a wide variety of food, including our protein needs, locally,” he said.
“We are excited to welcome GOOD Meat to JTC Bedok Food City, where there’s a growing ecosystem of food companies pursuing sustainable food innovation and manufacturing. As an industrial developer, JTC sees the importance of curating industry ecosystems in our estates to accelerate business growth. We are seeing a growing number of companies exploring innovative food solutions and believe that GOOD Meat’s presence will help catalyze new partnerships and synergies in alternative protein and other emerging innovative areas,” said Alvin Tan, Assistant CEO of JTC’s Industry Cluster Group, the government agency charged with championing sustainable industrial development in Singapore.
The facility will also house scientists and researchers, and help to boost Singapore’s efforts to develop urban food solutions, said Mr. Damian Chan, Executive Vice President, Singapore Economic Development Board.
“This facility will also provide many good job opportunities for Singaporeans to be at the cutting edge of novel food technologies. We look forward to working closely with such like-minded companies to develop Singapore into a hub where innovative agri-food solutions can be developed to feed the world,” he added.
Eat Just expansion
The groundbreaking ceremony comes after Eat Just announced a partnership with ABEC, Inc. on developing the largest bioreactors known for producing avian and mammal cell cultures.
Tetrick calls the Singapore facility a major step for the cultivated meat industry, which now includes about 200 companies around the world. Regulatory approval in the U.S. is expected by 2024, if not sooner.
San Francisco-based Artemys Foods has emerged from stealth with a new name. Now dubbed SCiFi Foods, the startup that counts British rock bank Coldplay as one of its early backers has announced its rebrand along with a renewed mission: to debut hybrid cultivated beef burgers that contain plant protein. To this end, the company has welcomed a new board member and closed a $22 million Series A funding round.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the latest investment round. Participation was confirmed from Valor Siren Ventures, Box Group and Entree Capital, amongst others. Total funding to date now stands at $29 million. The Series A raise will support company-wide expansion including R&D capabilities, marketing strategies and new personnel.
Making a (new) name in the cultivated meat sector
SCiFi is looking to overcome a recognised hurdle within the cultivated meat sector of producing commercial products at a price point that is appealing to consumers. It uses what it calls a unique bioengineering technique to grow meat from animal cells, at scale and without prohibitive costs. To date, it has focussed on ground beef products, with a view to releasing hybrid burgers that will also contain plant-based protein. SCiFi states that this offers a vastly improved flavour, when compared to exclusively plant-based meats, and brings down the cost of the cultivated element.
The hybrid approach relies on both proprietary bioengineering techniques and established CRISPR gene-editing technology. The latter is being used to experiment with cell behaviour, in a bid to encourage maximum growth and stability in the shortest amount of time possible. Together, they paint the picture of a futuristic food production company, which led to a total startup rebrand.
“We’ve devised the technology to grow real meat without the need for an animal — an astounding feat,” Joshua March, CEO and co-founder of SCiFi Foods said in a statement. “This innovation is the future we once only imagined could be a reality. I believe it’s important to be open and authentic about what we’re doing, and our new name reflects exactly that. Consumers value transparency, and I would rather be bold than hide behind a bland, corporate moniker. As a company creating food, there are two things we absolutely can never compromise on: trust as a brand and the taste of our products.”
Catching the eye of seasoned investors
Andreessen Horowitz has a history of investing in big-ticket brands. It counts Airbnb, Facebook and Pinterest in its list of early-stage investment successes.
“Cultivated meat will disrupt the trillion-dollar global market for meat products, with huge benefits to the planet,” Vijay Pande, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz said in a statement. “However, there are major cost hurdles, and SCiFi’s technology and approach was the first we felt that truly has the potential to both scale quickly and to drastically reduce cost.”
With funding secured, SCiFi, which recently moved into a new 16,000 square foot R&D location in the East Bay, can put its plans to build a pilot facility into action. A deadline of year-end has been set to allow for finalisation of products, ahead of commercial launch. The pilot production unit will ensure consistent quality, to, hopefully, expedite the regulatory approval process.
Scaling cultivated meat production
Scale and cost are the main issues facing cultivated meat producers. SciFi has acknowledged that it is unknown where the ‘sweet spot’ is in terms of the perfect size of large bioreactors.
“We’ve spoken with a lot of experts in biopharma, and there’s no fundamental reason that they stopped at 20,000 liters other than that they just didn’t need to [go bigger],” March told FoodNavigator-USA. “But is that [sweet spot] 50,000 or 100,000 liters or more? No one really knows. We think that for our approach it will be commercially viable to grow our cells in 20,000 liter bioreactors, which is about the scale that you see today in biopharma.”
Good Meat, Eat Just’s cultivated meat brand, is looking to embrace a similar scaling mindset. The company announced, last month, that it has partnered with ABEC in a multi-year agreement. ABEC will be assisting with the production of the “largest known” bioreactors for cell culture production. Ten 250,000-litre units have been slated to be in the works, allowing for 30 million pounds of slaughter-free meat to be created every year.
The world is in the grips of a food-tech revolution. One of the most compelling new developments is cultured meat, also known as clean, cell-based or slaughter-free meat. It’s grown from stem cells taken from a live animal without the need for slaughter.
Proponents hail cultured meat as the long-awaited solution to the factory farming problem. If commercialized successfully, it could solve many of the environmental, animal welfare and public health issues of animal agriculture while giving consumers exactly what they’re used to eating.
As a moral psychologist, my research explores people’s perceptions of cultured meat, both the good and the bad. Below I discuss some of the top reasons people say they don’t want to eat cultured meat, compiled from opinion surveys, focus groups and online comments. But I’m optimistic that champions of this new technology can alleviate the public’s concerns, making a convincing case for consumers to embrace cultured meat.
‘Cultured meat is not necessary’
While there is increasing awareness of the downsides of factory farming, this knowledge has still not spread to all meat consumers, or at least is not reflected in their purchasing behavior. Factory farming supports what many consider cruel and restrictive practices where animals raised in such farms are subjected to extreme suffering, and estimates suggest that over 99 percent of U.S. farmed animals live on factory farms.
Animal agriculture is also inefficient. Growing and feeding an entire animal for only part of its body is inevitably less efficient than growing just the parts that you want to eat.
Some people who believe farmed meat is problematic would prefer a plant-based food system. Despite recent hype around veganism, the number of people who don’t eat animal products remains extremely low. Only 2 to 6 percent of Americans identify as vegetarian or vegan. And only around 1 percent of adults identify as vegetarian and report never eating meat. This figure shows little change since the mid-1990s, despite the ongoing activism of the animal rights and environmental movements.
I’d argue that the plant-based solution to factory farming is not a feasible outcome for the foreseeable future. Cultured meat might be. Individuals can still choose to eat a plant-based diet. But for those who are unwilling to give up meat, they can have their steak and eat it too.
‘I’m worried about the animals and farmers’
Some people express concern about the fate of chickens and cows, imagining them abandoned to die or released into the wild.
The time frame for cultured meat renders this consideration moot. Even by optimistic estimates, large-scale production is likely stillseveral years away. As new processes are adopted, the demand for farm animals will slowly decrease. Fewer animals will be bred, thus the animals at the center of these concerns will never exist.
Many people are also concerned about the negative impact a transition to cultured meat may have on farmers. But this new technology is far from the only threat farmers already face as the industry becomes ever more centralized. Eighty-five percent of beef in the U.S. comes from just four main producers.
Cultivated chicken. Photo by Mogale Meat.
In fact, cultured meat provides a new industry, with opportunities to grow and process products for use in cellular agriculture. The meat industry can learn a lesson from how taxis lost out to Uber and Lyft; they must adapt to new technologies to survive and thrive. And the industry is already taking steps in this direction – Tyson Foods and Cargill Meat Solutions, two of the biggest meat producers in the U.S., have made investments in this new future.
‘Cultured meat is disgusting’
Disgust is a common reaction to cultured meat. It’s difficult to rebut, as it is not an argument per se – disgust is in the eye of the beholder.
So what is disgusting appears to be somewhat determined by what is normal and accepted in your community. With time, and exposure to cultured meat, it’s possible that these feelings of disgust will disappear.
‘Cultured meat is unnatural’
Perhaps the loudest opposition to cultured meat is that it’s unnatural. This argument relies on the premise that natural things are better than unnatural things.
While this outlook is reflected in recent consumer preferences, the argument is fallacious. Some natural things are good. However, there are many things that are unnatural that are fundamental to our society: glasses, motorized transport, the internet. Why single out cultured meat?
Cultivated beef meatballs. Photo by SpaceF.
Perhaps the argument is only applicable to food – natural food is better. But “natural” food is a myth; almost all the food you buy is modified in some way. Moreover, I’d argue the overuse of antibiotics in conventional meat and other practices of modern animal agriculture – including the selective breeding used to produce modern farmed animals – throws it into the same unnatural category.
Of course, naturalness can be a proxy for things that really do matter in food: safety, sustainability, animal welfare. But cultured meat fares far better than conventional meat on those metrics. If we dismiss cultured meat on the grounds of being unnatural then, to be consistent, we must also dismiss a vast number of other products that make modern lives better and easier.
It’s early days, but a number of companies are working to bring cultured meat to the table. As consumers, we have both the right and obligation to be informed about which products we choose to eat. Yes, we should be cautious with any new technology. But in my opinion, the objections to cultured meat can’t hold a candle to the potential benefits for humans, animals and the planet.
Lab-grown, cultured, cell-based – all these terms refer to cultivated meat, whereby animal flesh or byproducts are produced without any animal killing. And no, we aren’t talking about plant-based alternatives such as Beyond Meat or Omnipork. We’re talking about actual animal flesh grown inside bioreactors using cellular agriculture and tissue engineering instead of traditional animal livestock farming methods. For some, this might feel like science fiction, but dozens of companies (including a fair few in Asia) are already working to bring this technology to market within a couple of years so it’s time to get educated about this new sector of food technology. Here’s a rundown of reasons why food scientists and environmentalists are bullish on cultivated meat and its potential to bring about a healthier, safer and more sustainable food system.
1. It’s slaughter-free
Growing meat from cells means that no animal needs to be slaughtered to end up on your plate as a meal. Every year, around 70 billion animals are reared for food, the majority of which are in industrial farms where they live in cramped, dirty and inhumane conditions. Every day, 5 million animals are exposed to cruelty and added risks in transit to new countries via land and sea journeys that can span weeks. Whether they are funnelled into the global live animal trade or slaughtered locally, animals reared for food have to face a violent end to their lives.
Cultivated meat does not require the slaughter of animals, it is instead grown in laboratories using cells taken from an animal, using a small biopsy done under anaesthesia, and does not subject the animal to cruelty or violence, though it does mean that it is not suitable for vegans as it is still an animal-derived product. And cells from a single cow can produce as many as 175 million quarter pounders – far more than the 440,000 cows needed using traditional farming methods to produce the same amount.
2. It’s hormone-free
Given that it is grown in a clean laboratory environment, cultivated meats are also free from any artificial growth hormones that are typically used in the conventional meat industry to make livestock grow and gain weight faster. Synthetic oestrogen and testosterone are the most common hormones used in livestock and in dairy cows, and while industry-funded studies show no risk, there are independent studies that suggest a link between injected hormones and cancer. Since they don’t require any hormones, lab-grown versions are therefore safer for human consumption and do not come at the added hormone-related risks.
3. It’s antibiotic-free
All cultivated meats are produced in a sterile environment, which means that they do not require antibiotics either. Slaughterhouses are the opposite – industrial animal farms pack livestock into cramped, dirty conditions that are hotbeds for contamination. Some cases have led to foodborne illnesses amongst consumers, more serious outbreaks of diseases have created mass chaos such as the recent African swine fever that wiped out pork supplies across Asia and multiple avian influenza outbreaks that have affected chickens and other birds in the past years.
As the demand for meat continues to grow globally, so has the use of antibiotics in the animal meat industry. The overuse of antibiotics to prevent animals from getting sick is so rampant in the industry that to date, over 80% of all produced antibiotics is sold to livestock farms, according to the FDA. Experts have long warned that this is leading to the rise of antibiotic resistant superbugs, with a 2019 study a tripling of the occurrence of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing bacteria in livestock between 2000 and 2018.
Factory farms and slaughterhouses use antibiotics to prevent animals from getting sick in unsanitary conditions (Image Source: Dreamstime)
4. It supports local food production
Because cultivated meat facilities and bioreactors can be built virtually everywhere, it means that meat does not need to be transported from one continent to another. Grown indoors in controlled lab environments, it means that outdoor weather, temperature, land availability are all factors that are unimportant when it comes to this alternative source of protein, providing stable income to local communities and ensuring a resilient supply of protein, not to mention the big savings on transport emissions.
5. It bolsters food security
One major thing that the coronavirus pandemic exposed is the vulnerability of our global food supply chains. With lockdowns, travel bans and export restrictions to curb the spread of the virus came a massive supply shock of many staple foods, from wheat flour to fresh produce and of course, meat.
Food security is top of mind for many countries that are now exposed to the supply chain breakdown from coronavirus and are vulnerable to the climate crisis. Singapore, for instance, launched a SDG 30 million (US$21 million) fund dedicated to bolster local food production to provide a buffer in event of food supply shocks, with a great portion of the money going to support cultivated food techs that can produce local meat and seafood.
In addition to boosting self-sufficiency, locally grown meat will also slash carbon emissions from reducing transportation routes.
6. It requires far fewer carbon emissions (up to 96%)
On the topic of carbon emissions, cultivated protein also contributes a fraction of greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional meat. According to the United Nations FAO, animal agriculture alone generates 18% of global greenhouse gases – making it one of the leading causes of the climate crisis. It isn’t just the enormous resources that make raising livestock so carbon-hefty, but the methane emissions due to cows and their manure, which is anywhere from 20 to 30 times more potent and heat-trapping than carbon dioxide.
By contrast, cultivated meats can produce up to 96% fewer greenhouse gas emissions. While growing meat in labs will require significant amounts of energy, one study from the University of Oxford found that if facilities were powered by clean energy rather than fossil fuels, there are clear climate benefits to be reaped.
7. It requires a lot less land
Cultivated meat requires less land to produce. The world already uses the majority of arable farmland for livestock rearing – yet meat demand continues to rise due to rapid urbanisation and population growth. By 2050, we could be looking at a global population of 10 million, with demand for protein anywhere from 70% to 100% higher than today’s levels, according to the United Nations FAO.
Farmers are already being pushed to deliberately set forest fires, causing mass deforestation of rainforests, for more land to farm animals. Last year, large parts of the Amazon rainforest – one of the planet’s few remaining carbon-absorption tools against global heating – had been cleared to raise cows. In turn, this has led to mass loss of biodiversity, with estimates saying we could be losing 50,000 plant, animal and insect species every single year.
Performed in a closed system in indoor labs, it is projected that cultured meat production will use up to 99% less land than the current animal agriculture.
8. It’s feed-free
Another reason why animal agriculture uses vast amounts of land is feed cultivation. Cattle pasture is usually replaced by soy cultivation in order to grow enough feed for livestock. Recent deforestation in Brazil was fuelled by a cycle of soy-cattle-pasture-deforestation cycle that stimulated the need for further land clearing. It’s also happening in other neighbouring countries, including northern Bolivia, Argentina and Paraguay. With more and more rainforest being lost, the hope of keeping global heating at manageable levels is becoming less likely – unless we change the way meat is produced. When both livestock feed and grazing is accounted for, traditional meat production takes up almost half (45%) of the world’s total arable land.
Wildfires in the Amazon rainforest in 2019. (Image Source: AFP)
9. It saves a lot of water (compared to traditional ag)
Cultivated meat requires far less water to manufacture. Water scarcity is already a global issue, with the World Resources Institute (WRI) finding that a quarter of the world’s population across 17 countries are already suffering from extreme levels of high water stress due to the climate crisis and water contamination. Scientists doubled down on the warnings of water scarcity in 2020, with experts from the United Nations finding that poor water infrastructure is putting countries at a bigger health risk than the coronavirus pandemic.
In the UN report, the scientists said that water efficiency could be significantly improved if current agricultural farming methods changed. Using conventional animal farming, a single quarter pounder beef patty requires 5900 litres of water to produce – cultivated protein, by comparison, could reduce this by a whopping 96 percent.
To add to the issue of water usage, traditional animal livestock farming pollutes waterways too – runoff from pesticides and fertilisers can also flow into waterways, reaching oceans to harm marine ecosystems.
10. It’s cheaper
While cultured meat companies will still need to overcome a few technological and regulatory hurdles before large-scale production can be achieved, most industry experts do believe that it will reach price parity or even undercut the price of conventionally produced meats. Dutch food tech Mosa Meat, for instance, managed to produce a small scale burger back in 2013 for US$280,000, but believe that within the next two years, as the technology matures and production scales up, the cost of a lab-grown hamburger is projected to be as low as US$10. Upside Foods, another food tech company based in California, is hoping to lower the cost of a single lab-grown burger patty down to US$5 within the next couple of years, while Israel-based Future Meat Technologies believes that they can reduce the cost to an impressive $2.30 to $4.50 by the end of the decade. Once the price becomes accessible and achieves parity with industrially reared meat (whose costs are predicted to rise over the next few years), it’s all systems go the ultimate in cruelty-free animal protein.
Good Meat, the Eat Just division focused on cultivated meat, has partnered with ABEC on a multi-year agreement to boost its production of cell-based protein.
ABEC, which has been making bioreactors since the 1980s, will help Good Meat develop the “largest known” bioreactors for cell culture production of bird and mammal meat, the company said in a statement.
Currently, Good Meat is the only company with cultivated meat on the market. It received regulatory approval in Singapore in 2020 for its cell-based chicken, and has partnered with several food service providers on distribution in the years since.
Scaling cultivated meat
According to Good Meat, the ABEC development will allow it to bring online ten 250,000-liter bioreactors. “When fully operational, the complex will have the capacity to produce up to 30 million pounds of meat without the need to slaughter a single animal,” the company said.
Good Meat says chicken and beef are up first, which it says it can distribute to “millions” of customers across the country once there’s regulatory approval in the U.S., which could be anywhere from 18 to 24 months.
“Our first step was receiving regulatory approval and launching in Singapore. Our second step has been selling to customers through restaurants, street vendors, and delivery platforms. We’ve learned that consumers want this, and we’re ready to take the next step to make this happen at commercial scale. I am very proud to partner with the ABEC team to make this historic facility happen,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just.
ABEC is also designing bioreactors for Good Meat’s headquarters in Alameda, California, which is expected to be operational before the end of the year. It’s also working to develop a facility in Singapore early next year to help meet the demand in the region.
Innovating in the protein industry
“We are proud that our capabilities will help enable this exciting new industry. We look forward to continuing our tradition of innovation and supporting Good Meat’s success,” said Scott Pickering, CEO and Chairperson of ABEC.
“I think our grandchildren are going to ask us about why we ate meat from slaughtered animals back in 2022,” Tetrick said.
“Cultivated meat matters because it will enable us to eat meat without all the harm, without bulldozing forests, without the need to slaughter an animal, without the need to use antibiotics, without accelerating zoonotic diseases,” he said.
“The bioreactors will be far and away the largest, not only in the cultivated meat industry, but in the biopharma industry too,” Tetrick said.
“So the design and engineering challenges are significant, the capital investments are significant and the potential to take another step toward shifting society away from slaughtered meat is significant.”
San Francisco-based startup cultivated meat Orbillion has announced that it projects reaching price parity with conventional meat by 2026, with commodity pricing for beef to follow by 2030. The declaration comes as CE and co-founder Patricia Bubner is due to give a speech at the World Economic Forum, held in Davos, Switzerland. The focus of her presentation will be the democratisation of cultivated meat and increasing access to it.
Orbillion claims that it can work faster and cheaper than other cultivated companies. At its first pre-regulatory approval public tasting event, held last year, three types of meat were presented. Each took four months to develop, leading to estimations that Orbillion is moving 18x faster than most of its peers. This is largely attributed to members of the founding team meeting while already working within bioprocessing, thus having a working knowledge of the cultivated methodology.
Laying the foundations for a cultivated market entry
A Y Combinator alumnus, Orbillion is a female-founded biotech focussed on developing multiple heritage meat lines in parallel. To support its multi-variety approach, the startup secured $5 million in seed funding last year, before joining the Alliance for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation). Together with fellow cultivated big hitters, including Blue Nalu and Upside Foods, the collective seeks to nurture consumer acceptance for future products. It also looks to work with stakeholders, to expedite the path to market.
“We are advocates of a wide range of solutions that can help make our food system more sustainable, nutritious, and reliable, and we see cell-cultured meat and alt proteins as an important “and” solution to regenerative agriculture. We all must work together,” Bubner said in a prepared statement. “Realizing the potential of cell-cultured meat means making it accessible. We know from extensive consumer and foodservice research around the globe, that price is key to making that happen. I’m so proud of the team that in less than one year, we’ve reduced the cost of production by 98%. Very eager for what’s ahead.”
Orbillion has what it refers to as ‘advanced bioprocessing’ capabilities, which allow muscle cells to be isolated, screened and selected faster than other platforms can manage- in other words, they save costs by being more efficient. Choosing the cells most suitable for scaled food production leaves little to no waste and lets the company move from prototype to product more quickly than most competitors.
It should be noted that price parity for Orbillion is significantly simpler to reach, as it focusses on high-end and heritage meats which are, traditionally, expensive. Parity with premium meats is the first target, before bringing costs down as production can be scaled further. To date, Orbillion has raised $9.5 million to support its endeavours.
Strengthening the leadership team
As Orbillion plans to launch products in 2023, it has sought to put key leadership figures in place. The most recent appointment is Greg Hiller, a globally recognised expert within the bioprocessing and cell cultivation fields. Hiller joins as an advisor.
“I saw how the founding team has leveraged their academic and engineering expertise to achieve commercial success in the past and I knew I needed to learn more. I had the opportunity to hear in-depth about Orbillion’s approach to bioprocessing, scale up and manufacturing and was very eager to be involved,” Hiller said in a statement. “There are so many interesting challenges and innovation opportunities here – I’m proud to be a part of the advisory board for this important effort.”
Orbillion has confirmed that its first commercial product will be cultivated Japanese-bred Wagyu beef. It cites its developments as a potential solution to the increased food insecurity being faced by global populations, in line with food price hikes.
Wading into the Wagyu race
Potentially the only startup to be looking at cultivated Wagyu beef, Orbillion is not alone in developing alternatives to the conventional Japanese heritage meat.
Last month, Hong Kong’s Alt Farm revealed its plans to seek launch 3D printed plant-based Wagyu in 2023. The startup, an offshoot of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has earmarked China and Australia as key markets for its growth. A combination of soy, pea and algae protein is currently being tested, with first prototypes anticipated to debut next year.
Canada’s Top Tier Foods has given the world a taste of vegan Wagyu steak, through its Wamamae Foods subsidiary. Last month, attendees of the TED2022 conference were served the beef alternative, ahead of commercial launch. Full rollout is anticipated for spring this year after a trial launch garnered positive responses from consumers.
According to non-profit think tank the Good Food Institute’s State of the Industry 2021 report, over $5 billion was invested into alternative protein startup last year, up from over $3 billion the year before. As huge challenges continue to plague the global food supply chain, alternatives to industrially produced animal proteins derived from industrial agriculture are in high demand. Returning for its second year, Future Food-Tech’s dedicated Alternative Proteins Summit on June 21-22 looks to connect the movers and shakers across the global ecosystem, reuniting entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, corporates and more.
The conference, which will take place in New York City, looks to explore new approaches to scaling novel food technologies via panels, debates and presentations, offer attendees unparalleled networking opportunities and give attendees the chance to taste the future of food.
Below, we roundup our favorite highlights of Future Food-Tech’s sophomore event:
NotCo’s Opening Panel and Keynote
NotCo’s CEO and Founder, Matias Muchnick will give an opening keynote to present ‘Offering Cleaner, Greener, and More Delicious Products for Consumers’ to set the scene over the two days at the summit.
Bloomberg’s Deena Shanker will then moderate the opening panel discussion ‘From R&D to Commercial: Turning the Science Project into a Business’. She will be joined by Thomas Jonas, Co-Founder and CEO at Nature’s Fynd, Lisa Dyson, Founder and CEO at Air Protein, Arturo Elizondo, CEO at The EVERY Company and Stephen Chambers, Managing Director at IndieBio NY. The Founders and CEOs will take the spotlight to share their perspectives on stage to a global audience of food-tech innovators, brands, technology companies and investors.
Source: Future Food-Tech
Experience The Magic: Taste Lab and Food-Tech Experiences
Delegates will be able to join small tasting sessions hosted by Founders to introduce novel foods. Product launches, experiences and tastings include Bee-io’s bee-free cultivated honey, Brevel’s high-functionality and novel microalgae in plant-based cheese, Thimus’ new hardware and software platform for quick evaluation of human response to food experiences and v2food’s plant-based chicken nuggets and sausage rolls.
PIP International will debut its Ultimate Pea Protein (UP.P) at the summit’s first networking coffee break. Meati Foods will host a lunch break to serve Meati Chicken shawarma pita and grilled za’atar Meati Steak and vegetable kabobs and Nowadays will also host a lunch break to serve its plant-based chicken nuggets.
Also on the summit menu: Eclipse Foods plant-based ice cream, Brave Robot cake, ENOUGH chicken, Beyond Meat and Triton Algae Innovations’ algae-based dumplings
Ultimate Pitch Competition: Gone in 60 seconds
Six early stage innovators will reveal their technology’s ground-breaking potential in just 60 seconds. It will then be up to you the audience to vote for three start-ups to present later the same day and take questions from the audience and the judges: Costa Yiannoulis, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Synthesis Capital and Hadar Sutovsky, VP External Innovation, ICL Planet.
Who will be crowned the winner out of these six pioneering start-ups?
CellaFarms uses breakthrough technologies to transform agricultural crops into complete nutritional products for consumers.
NewSchoolFoods focuses on whole-muscle seafood, made from plants.
SeaSpire is developing fresh, whole-muscle seafood alternatives with clean label plant and synthetic biology biomass coupled with proprietary additive manufacturing technology.
SudhinBiopharma uses high-intensity cell culture and harvesting technologies via BioSettlers to achieve and maintain high cell densities and viabilities.
Vertage combines deep culinary expertise with breakthrough ingredient technologies to create cultured and fermented cheese that delivers excellent taste, superior nutrition, and great value.
WandaFishTechnologies has developed a disruptive platform that produces delicious, nutritious cultivated whole-cut fillets using native fish fat and muscle cells.
Source: Future Food-Tech
Breakfast Briefing: Canadian Innovation
Protein Industries Canada will host a breakfast briefing at the summit (open to all in-person delegates) to spotlighting collaboration with Canada’s innovative ecosystem to create the next generation of products. Protein Industries Canada’s CEO, Bill Greuel will invite the Presidents and Founders of Canadian start-ups Big Mountain Foods, New School Foods, Wamame Foods and by investor Blair Knippel of T Base 4 Investments to showcase the country’s integrated food-tech community.
Designed For Knowledge-Sharing, Networking and Debating the Future of Food
750 of the world’s most influential and renowned decision makers are set to attend the summit in New York (and online). Delegates will be able to meet and network one-to-one with the sector’s changemakers through networking breaks, small group roundtable discussions, dedicated meetings hub, the exhibition and at the summit’s evening cocktail hour.
Delegates will explore how the industry can cultivate new partnerships to achieve scale in plant-based, fermentation and cell-culturing technologies and address investment opportunities, regulatory approval and consumer adoption.
Moderated by Forbes’ Head of Food, Chloe Sorvino, this new interactive session will see on-stage speakers engage directly with the audience of food-tech leaders to debate whether plant-based will still have shelf space once novel foods achieve global scale.
They’ll also hear future focused perspectives as Allyson Fish (ADM) gives a keynote on supporting the next generation of food leaders and the summit will explore the future of protein in 2050 with Elysabeth Alfano, (VegTech Invest), Aylon Steinhart (Eclipse Foods), Matt Gibson, (New Culture), Miller Tran, (Triton Algae Innovations), Lalana Thiranusornkij (CPF Food), Thomas Couteaudier, (Louise Dreyfus Company).
Future Food-Tech takes place June 21-22 2022 in New York City; get tickets.
) at the summit’s first networking coffee break. Meati Foods will host a lunch break to serve Meati Chicken shawarma pita and grilled za’atar Meati Steak and vegetable kabobs and Nowadays will also host a lunch break to serve its plant-based chicken nuggets.