Ohio-based Matrix F.T., a leading developer of plant-based scaffolds and microcarriers for the alternative protein industry, says it has developed the first cultivated chicken made in Ohio.
The team at Matrix F.T. says it has created a proof of concept cultivated chicken nugget to showcase its technology — edible microcarriers and scaffolds that function as key ingredients in cultivated meat products that look, cook, and taste like conventional.
Currently, the most common types of microcarriers used to provide a scaffold for cells are inedible and must be removed from cultivated meat before consumption. A number of companies and researchers are working to develop edible microcarriers. Last summer, UCLA researchers announced they had created an edible particle that produces a more natural muscle-like texture for cultivated meat. The researchers say they’re using a process that could be scaled up for mass production.
Ohio’s first cultivated nugget
Matrix F.T.’s headquarters include engineering labs and biological testing facilities where cell culture experiments are conducted to test performance, food safety, and sterility on its scaffolds and microcarriers. The company also conducts contracted research in its wet lab for cultivated meat companies.
GOOD Meat cultivated chicken | courtesy Eat Just
Microcarriers work by growing and proliferating cells in bioreactors. Scaffolding helps to mature and differentiate cells, signal gene and protein expressions, and turn cells into complex tissue structures, which become cultivated meat. It works with 3D extracellular matrices for cell growth and proliferation.
The company says its first chicken myoblasts — muscle cells — came from a University partner. The cells were cultivated by Heidi Coia, PhD., the Director of Product Development and Innovation at Matrix F.T. The harvested cells were combined with a proprietary mixture of plant-based proteins to create the hybrid chicken nugget.
“It had a great flavor, texture, and we were delighted to give a small example of how our customizable products can contribute to each of our customers’ unique cell-based foods that they are going to take to market,” Coia said.
Plant-based scaffolds and microcarriers
Matrix F.T. opened its new wet lab last April, aiming to expand its work in growing cultivated protein made with edible, plant-based nanofiber scaffolds and microcarriers.
The company said the new facility is instrumental in shortening the gap between engineering custom plant-based, nanofiber scaffolds and quickly delivering a final product for cultivated meat companies’ go-to-market timelines.
Upside Foods’ EPIC California factory, Courtesy
“Before opening the wet lab, Matrix F.T. relied heavily on customer feedback to learn if the scaffolds we custom-engineered for their applications were working,” Teryn Wolfe, Matrix F.T.’s VP of Corporate Development, said in a statement. “Now that we can provide partners with a more robust suite of R&D offerings, we’re able to have greater control and deliver results at the speed needed to help our customers scale. This is another important step in our ability to fuel innovation across the board, and we’re proud to continue to lead in the cultivated protein space, right here from Ohio.”
The new nugget launch is the latest in the quickly crowding cultivated chicken category. Late last year, California-based Upside Foods was the first U.S. company to receive the FDA’s GRAS status for its cultivated chicken. The company says it can produce 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat per year at its factory.
When it comes to cultivated meat, these ten governments are the most active in terms of funding, regulatory frameworks and research resources.
Cultivated meat is one of the key food solutions in our climate crisis-fighting arsenal. There are now over 100 startups globally working on this technology and 2022 saw some huge strides in the sector, from the largest funding round ever recorded to key product firsts.
As pundits continue to debate the topic of whether cultivated meat will become a common reality (It can’t scale! It definitely will scale!), one major issue that needs more attention is government support. From policy to subsidies, more needs to be done to boost the industry. Certain forward-thinking governments are making moves in terms of regulation and government funding, both of which are largely seen as the crucial next step to finally getting sustainable protein grown using cellular agriculture to diners’ plates. From regulatory updates in the US to more greenlights from Singapore authorities, we take a look at the ten most active governments across the globe that are helping to make cultivated meat a reality.
Editor’s Note: While this list focuses on countries that have allocated the most funds and/or made the biggest regulatory moves, this list is not exhaustive. There are a handful of other countries that are pushing ahead with regulatory frameworks and economic support- a few to watch include South Korea, India, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.
Source: Emerging Proteins NZ – September 2022 Report
1) Singapore
Singapore famously became the world’s first country to approve the sale of cultivated meat in December 2020 when it gave the go-ahead for Eat Just’s chicken nuggets. It has since approved a slew of the food tech’s products, including chicken breast, as well as a food processing license to Esco to manufacture foods using cell-ag tech. Aussie firm Vow says it is also expecting Singapore regulators to give the go-ahead for its cultivated quail soon. Cultivated meat products are approved by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) on a case-by-case basis, with producers submitting safety assessments to grant pre-market approval.
Aside from setting up its regulatory framework, which has been continually revised (four times and counting) to include new feedback from industry stakeholders, Singapore’s government has also poured money into the sector as part of its ‘30% by 2030’ local food production goal. Now housing an entire batch of homegrown startups like Shiok Meats, and foreign startups like Eat Just and Hong Kong’s Avant who have chosen the city as its Asia base, Singapore is likely to continue its lead in paving the way for global cultivated meat adoption.
Good Meat chicken.
2) Israel
Israel is another global leader in the cultivated industry, with its Innovation Authority demonstrating clear support with its latest $18M injection into a nationwide cultivated meat consortium. The group is made up of 14 companies and 10 universities and research bodies in the country. Aside from research funding, the government has also poured public funds into the sector, contributing over $13M to early-stage startups and infrastructure to the overall alt-protein industry.
Aleph Farms’ thin-cut beef steak.
3) United States
The US is making moves towards approving the sale and consumption of cultivated meat, which will likely come in 2023. Industry watchers are eyeing the milestone after California’s Upside Foods got through the first hurdle. In November, the startup received FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken, becoming the first American company to have its products deemed safe to eat. This is the initial pre-market step of the country’s joint framework to regulate cultivated meat products, with the USDA then in charge of the processing, packaging and labeling steps for certain products which fall under its oversight.
In terms of funding, the US government has backed the sector in several different ways. Most notably, the USDA awarded a $10M grant in 2021 to Tufts University for the creation of a new National Institute for Cellular Agriculture, which was the first-ever government-funded research project. The Biden administration doubled down on its promise to support alt-proteins in September 2022: the biotech program includes funding for “foods made with cultured animal cells”. More assistance came in the way of the administration’s Global Food Security Research Strategy released in October, as part of Biden’s plan to end hunger and foster food resilience.
Upside Foods chicken.
4) European Union
For cultivated meat products to be sold in the EU, regulators at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) will have to test the products as with any other novel foods. In addition to a pre-market safety evaluation, cultivated meat products that may use genetically modified ingredients will need to comply with the region’s GM foods regulations.
While the EU’s food safety rules are among the world’s most stringent, which may mean a slower pace for cultivated products to reach the market, the region is investing in the sector as part of its climate plan. In 2020, the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy included alternative proteins as a “key area of research” for a “fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system”, a sentiment lawmakers doubled down on within its 2021 Strategic Foresight Report. The EU’s core innovation and research funding program Horizon Europe also mentioned cultivated meat and seafood as one out of three of its core pillars, with around €7M set aside specifically for the sector. This means more money going into projects that will help make cultivated meats more cost-efficient, such as the necessary infrastructure and materials or ingredients, and scale-up efforts.
Mosa Meat burger.
5) EU powerhouses: The Netherlands and Norway
Within the EU, some of the leading governments accelerating cultivated meat includes the Netherlands, which has injected €60M into the Cellular Agriculture Netherlands consortium, and Norway, where authorities have set up a five-year research project into cellular agriculture with €2M in annual public funding.
Government funding into the overall alt-protein sector (includes plant-based, precision fermentation). Source: Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Newsletter
6) United Kingdom
Right now, the UK will require any cultivated meat products to go through pre-market authorization from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) as with any other “novel foods” in order to be sold on the market. There have been some signs that a novel regulatory framework “distinct” for cultivated foods could be on the horizon, with one government policy paper suggesting that adopting these changes would be a part of the country’s successful post-Brexit economic plan.
Ivy Farm sausages.
Some public funding has been injected into the industry, with the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) awarding £14M to nearly a dozen projects in May this year, one of which is the Royal Agricultural University’s research into transitioning livestock farmers towards cultivated meat. Previously, the UKRI has backed London-based Multus Biotech, a startup focused on developing cost-effective animal-free growth media to help scale cultivated meat production.
7) Australia and 8) New Zealand
In Australia and New Zealand, regulators say their existing Novel Foods Standard will already be able to accommodate foods made through cell-ag tech. This will include cultivated foods that may have used genetic modification technology, which will have to comply with additional regulations. Companies will have to submit their application to the FSANZ for pre-market approval. The capability of the existing standards and labeling requirements to cope with new cultivated meat products was accepted at the Food Ministers Meeting (FMM) in November 2022.
Japan is poised to see a new regulatory framework for cultivated meat, with its government stating it has already put together an expert team to begin assessing the safety of these products in June 2022. This will be spearheaded by the country’s Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry, whose panel is tasked with deciding the necessary safety precautions for the sector. These moves came after the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries launched a forum in 2020 made up of industry stakeholders, including companies and government agencies, to compile a strategy for building Japan’s alt-protein ecosystem.
In terms of funding, the Japanese government has supported homegrown startup IntegriCulture, awarding it a ¥240M (US$2.2M) grant in 2020 to build its first commercial bioreactor.
IntegriCulture meat.
10) China
China recently hinted that it will ramp up its investment in cultivated meats. Its latest five-year agricultural plan specifically included cultivated meat and “artificial protein” for the first time. Under the plan, the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Affairs outlined the development of “synthetic biology technology” as key to its goal of “upgrading of the food industry, and reduc[ing] the pressure on environmental resources brought about by traditional aquaculture”. According to state media Xinhua News, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated the need to develop new sources of protein. He commented that “developing biological science and technology” to supplement traditional livestock would be key to the country’s food resilience.
A new strategic partnership between investment platform Cult Food Science, the University of Alberta, and New Harvest Canada, aims to provide support for startups in the cellular agriculture industry.
Based at the University of Alberta’s Agri-Food Discovery Place, the Institute of Cellular Agriculture’s goal is to provide space and support for “new startups, researchers, students, entrepreneurs, and product development” in the emergent sector.
“We are at the horizon of an explosion of new ideas and ventures that will accelerate the global cellular agriculture industry,” Lejjy Gafour, CEO of Cult Food Science, said in a statement. “We are excited to be able to accelerate the launch and development of new ventures and ideas from individual founders, to supporting classic enterprises who want to adopt cellular agriculture as part of their strategy with our support.”
Cult Food announced another strategic partnership last year, joining forces with Singapore’s Umami Meats as part of a Seed funding round.
A ‘pivotal stage’
Isha Datar, Executive Director of New Harvest, says cellular agriculture is at “a pivotal stage” and needs the proper infrastructure to allow the co-creation of innovation to deliver on its promises.
The range of cultivated fish from Umami Meats | Courtesy
“Canada, and Edmonton, Alberta in particular, can provide the optimal environment to support cross-disciplinary collaboration, and advance our research in areas like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning,” Datar said. “This new partnership will leverage the University of Alberta’s legacy in bioprocess engineering to bring novel technologies and innovations to the Canadian agri-food sector.”
Positioning the Institute at the University of Alberta allows companies working on cellular agriculture products, such as cultivated meat, access to research and innovation through the university’s broad network. It also helps to accelerate the advancement of experts in the space, providing opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students.
“This partnership with New Harvest Canada and its innovation partners will be pivotal in how our research and teaching addresses climate change, industry sustainability, and food security issues” said Dr. Heather Bruce, Chair of the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science at the University of Alberta. “New Harvest Canada and Cult Food Science will join a nexus of startup companies at the U of A’s Agri-Food Discovery Place that is launching agriculture and food production into the 21st century.”
Prepping for approval
The move comes as the industry is poised to enter the mainstream. Cultivated meat in the U.S. got its first victory in November when Upside Foods earned GRAS status from the FDA for its cultivated chicken.
Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy
Upside is also one of a growing number of cultivated meat producers with large-scale factories ready to go live once they receive regulatory approval. Upside operates a 53,000 square-foot California factory that it says can produce 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat a year.
The industry is also formalizing efforts around the naming convention for cultivated meat in order to smooth regulatory processes and appeal to consumers. A recent study found some cultivated meat terms including ‘lab-grown’ and ‘artificial’ to be off-putting.
New research takes a look at the terminology surrounding cultivated protein — meat and seafood grown from animal cell samples in bioreactors.
It’s been called a lot of things — from “clean” meat to lab-grown, cell-based, and cultured meat. Its critics have labeled it Frankemeat. The industry has settled on “cultivated meat”. But what do consumers prefer? A new study took a look.
The research, published in the journal Nature Portfolio looked at U.S. consumers and their terminology preferences.
The findings
“We surveyed U.S. consumers to compare nine different labels for cultivated meat and seafood products in terms of appeal, purchase intent, perceived safety, perceived allergenicity, and clarity,” Chris Bryant of the University of Bath, said of the research. “We tested terms that were suggested by stakeholders in recent USDA and FDA calls for comments, as well as some additional terms.”
Cultivated meat comes to its first butcher shop | Courtesy Eat Just
“Some had proposed that these products be labelled ‘artificial’ meat or seafood, but we found that this terminology was not a good representation of the nature of the products, and led to many people mistakenly thinking they would be safe for allergy sufferers. On the other hand, we also tested a completely new term, ‘Novari’, but we found that this had very low levels of consumer understanding,” Bryant said.
The terms earning the most favor were “cell-cultured” and “cell-cultivated.” “Artificial” and “lab-grown” were least favorable.
What the industry says
Ryan Huling, who leadscommunications and programs for the Good Food Institute’s Asia-Pacific region, says the researchers reiterate several important points that GFI has also made. GFI is the leading industry think tank. According to Huling, he’s not surprised that the nomenclature that invokes science and technology tends to have lower measures of appeal and purchase intent. “Put simply, consumers want to eat food, not tech,” he told Green Queen.
“It is also worth noting that this research was conducted in the U.S., where cultivated meat is not yet approved for commercial sale,” Huling said. U.S.-based Good Meat is the only company selling cultivated meat to consumers, currently; its cultivated chicken is available in Singapore. But the FDA recently GRAS status to U.S.-based Upside Foods, which is the first step in its path toward U.S. regulatory approval, bringing the country one step closer to the widespread availability of cultivated meat.
An ABEC bioreactor that produces Good Meat | Courtesy
“GFI conducted a consumer study in 2019 with Mattson which helped determine our initial decision to use ‘cultivated’ terminology, while a more recent 2021 GFI survey of the cultivated meat industry demonstrated that ‘“’cultivated’”’ is also increasingly the preferred industry term,” Huling said.
He says adding “cell” before “cultivated” is redundant because even conventional animal meat is composed of cells.
“Describing animal products as ‘cultivated’ has been broadly shown to be most effective at fostering positive responses from consumers, while also being both scientifically accurate and a clear differentiator from conventional animal products,” Huling said. “That’s why more than 30 industry stakeholders — including nearly every cultivated food startup in Asia Pacific, as well as multinational companies Cargill and Thai Union and regional coalition groups from China, Australia, Japan, and Korea—have unified behind the term.”
Huling says that from a narrative standpoint, “cultivated” also facilitates increased consumer awareness by “drawing clear parallels with the familiar process of plant cultivation.”
“Just as growing plants in a greenhouse involves snipping off a small cutting from a plant and allowing it to grow in a nutrient-rich environment before harvest, we can now make meat by putting a small sample of animal cells into a nutrient-rich environment — known as a cultivator — and then harvesting them. This is a comparison that consumers around the world can easily wrap their heads around,” he said.
Cultivated meat pioneer Mosa Meat is urging governments to support the growth of the category to fight climate change.
A new white paper released by Dutch cultivated meat producer Mosa Meat is urging global leaders to redirect funds from conventional beef production toward cell-based meat cultivation as a viable tool in the fight against climate change.
‘Beef needs a solution’
“Beef needs a solution. Industrial meat production continues to accelerate the climate crisis, while the world’s demand for beef is steadily growing,” Maarten Bosch, CEO of Mosa Meat, said in a statement. Animal agriculture accounts for nearly 60 percent of agriculture’s total global emissions. The sector is the second-largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.
“We are creating an alternative approach to producing real beef. With Mosa Meat’s rapid recent growth, creating the biggest scientific team in the industry and the largest cultivated meat campus in the world, I am very excited for what lies ahead as we help reshape the global food system,” Bosch said.
Mosa Meat wants to see widespread support for cultivated meat | Courtesy
The new review, entitled Cultivating Meat: The Mosa Approach, describes the recent accomplishments made by the cultivated meat sector and how it can play a positive role in not only mitigating global warming but also food security, preservation of natural resources, and public health.
Mosa Meat was founded after its co-founders, Dr. Mark Post and Peter Verstrate, were the first to unveil cultivated meat in 2013, setting the wheels in motion for a sector that experts say could be worth $25 billion by 2030 following widespread regulatory approval.
“We unveiled the first cultivated beef burger to the world in 2013 and a whole new cultivated meat sector has been developed, creating new value chains and collaborations,” said Bosch. “The next step for our field is to develop industrial and commercial-sized production facilities to maximize the potential impact. We call upon a range of financial, societal, governmental, and scientific institutions to collaborate and further invest into the development of cultivated meat.”
Advancing cultivated meat
Mosa Meat’s report says price parity with conventional meat is critical in the success of the category as is nutritional value and culinary experience. When Mosa unveiled the first cultivated burger in 2013, its production cost was about $330,000. Costs have dropped considerably, with companies saying they can reach price parity with more expensive cuts of conventional meat.
Cultivated meatball | Courtesy Mosa Meat
Last January, Mosa Meat announced it had successfully removed the controversial cultivated meat growth medium, fetal bovine serum, without genetically altering cells. It made its science public in the journal Nature Food in an effort to further advance the category.
“For real progress in the protein transition, new solutions are needed to give consumers exactly what they expect from meat,” Mosa Meat says in its review. “The true potential of cultivated meat is that consumers can keep eating the products they love, exactly as they are doing now — and we don’t need to bet on massive global consumer behavioural change to reduce the current negative externalities of meat consumption. This is the primary reason Mosa Meat was founded.”
Here’s the basic problem for conservation at a global level: food production, biodiversity and carbon storage in ecosystems are competing for the same land. As humans demand more food, so more forests and other natural ecosystems are cleared, and farms intensify and become less hospitable to many wild animals and plants. Therefore global conservation, currently focused on the COP15 summit in Montreal, will fail unless it addresses the underlying issue of food production.
Fortunately, a whole raft of new technologies is being developed that make a system-wide revolution in food production feasible. According to recent research by one of us (Chris), this transformation could meet increased global food demands by a growing human population on less than 20% of the world’s existing farmland. Or in other words, these technologies could release at least 80% of existing farmland from agriculture in about a century.
Around four-fifths of the land used for human food production is allocated to meat and dairy, including both range lands and crops specifically grown to feed livestock. Add up the whole of India, South Africa, France and Spain and you have the amount of land devoted to crops that are then fed to livestock.
Brazil’s enormous soy farms mostly produce food for animals, not humans. lourencolf / shutterstock
Despite growing numbers of vegetarians and vegans in some countries, global meat consumption has increased by more than 50% in the past 20 years and is set to double this century. As things stand, producing all that extra meat will mean either converting even more land into farms, or cramming even more cows, chickens and pigs into existing land. Neither option is good for biodiversity.
Meat and dairy production is already an unpleasant business. For instance, most chickens are grown in high-density feeding operations, and pork, beef and especially dairy farming is going the same way. Current technologies are cruel, polluting and harmful to biodiversity and the climate – don’t be misled by cartoons of happy cows with daisies protruding from their lips.
Unless food production is tackled head-on, we are left resisting inevitable change, often with no hope of long-term success. We need to tackle the cause of biodiversity change. The principal global approach to climate change is to focus on the cause and minimise greenhouse gas emissions, not to manufacture billions of parasols (though we may need these too). The same is required for biodiversity.
So, how can we do this?
Cellular agriculture provides an alternative, and could be one of this century’s most promising technological advancements. Sometimes called “lab-grown food”, the process involves growing animal products from real animal cells, rather than growing actual animals.
If growing meat or milk from animal cells sounds strange or icky to you, let’s put this into perspective. Imagine a brewery or cheese factory: a sterile facility filled with metal vats, producing large volumes of beer or cheese, and using a variety of technologies to mix, ferment, clean and monitor the process. Swap the barley or milk for animal cells and this same facility becomes a sustainable and efficient producer of dairy or meat products.
Animal cruelty would be eliminated and, with no need for cows wandering around in fields, the factory would take up far less space to produce the same amount of meat or milk.
The cultivation room at California-based Upside Foods which uses cellular agriculture to produce meat. David Kay / Upside Foods
Other emerging technologies include microbial protein production, where bacteria use energy derived from solar panels to convert carbon dioxide and nitrogen and other nutrients into carbohydrates and proteins. This could generate as much protein as soybeans but in just 7% of the area. These could then be used as protein food additives (a major use of soy) and animal feed (including for pets).
It is even possible to generate sugars and carbohydrates using desalination or through extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere, all without ever passing through a living plant or animal. The resulting sugars are chemically the same as those derived from plants but would be generated in a tiny fraction of the area required by conventional crops.
What to do with old farmland
These new technologies can have a huge impact even if demand keeps growing. Even though Chris’s research is based on the assumption that global meat consumption will double, it nonetheless suggests that at least 80% of farmland could be released to be used for something else.
That land might become nature reserves or be used to store carbon, for example, in forests or the waterlogged soils of peat bogs. It could be used to grow sustainable building materials, or simply to produce more human-edible crops, among other uses.
Gone too will be industrial livestock systems that produce huge volumes of manure, bones, blood, guts, antibiotics and growth hormones. Thereafter, any remaining livestock farming could be carried out in a compassionate manner.
Longhorn cattle on a rewilding project in England: if we got most of our protein and carbs through new technologies, this sort of compassionate and wildlife-friendly farming could be scaled up. Chris Thomas, Author provided
Since there would be less pressure on the land, there would be less need for chemicals and pesticides and crop production could become more wildlife-friendly (global adoption of organic farming is not feasible at present because it is less productive). This transition must be coupled with a full transition towards renewable energy as the new technologies require lots of power.
Converting these technologies into mass-market production systems will of course be tricky. But a failure to do so is likely to lead to ever-increasing farming intensity, escalating numbers of confined animals, and even more lost nature.
Avoiding this fate – and achieving the 80% farmland reduction – will require a lot of political will and a cultural acceptance of these new forms of food. It will require economic and political “carrots” such as investment, subsidies and tax breaks for desirable technologies, and “sticks” such as increased taxation and removal of subsidies for harmful technologies. Unless this happens, biodiversity targets will continue to be missed, COP after COP.
It’s been a whirlwind year for the alternative protein industry. That’s why we’re taking a look back on some of the biggest headlines of 2022, spanning across the globe. Here, we review what the cultivated meat sector brought to the table, from major funding milestones to product launches.
1. Upside Foods earns GRAS status
Upside Foods’ chicken taco.
California-based cell-based chicken maker Upside Foods received the milestone GRAS status from the FDA this year. In November, it became the first U.S. company to obtain the “No Questions” letter from the authorities to deem its products safe to eat. It’s a big deal for the cultivated industry, with this move seen as the first step towards gaining regulatory approval for producers to sell to consumers directly in the country for the first time. The announcement comes just short of a year after Upside acquired cultivated seafood startup Cultured Decadence.
2. First-ever cultivated yogurt becomes a reality, thanks to Wilk
In a global first for the sector, Israeli food tech startup Wilk says it has developed yogurt using cell cultures derived from human and animal milk. The yogurt product, released in November, contains cell-based milk fat that rivals the nutritional benefits of conventional dairy-based milk fat.
3. Cultivated chicken gets served at COP27…then sold at a butcher shop
Good Meat’s cell-based chicken.
With the sustainability of our food system a subject of focus at the United Nations COP27 summit this year, cultivated chicken was served up for the first time. Guests at the event, which took place in Egypt in November, got a taste of Good Meat’s real chicken meat grown directly from cells. Good Meat is the cultivated protein arm of San Francisco-based Eat Just, the brand known for its plant-based JUST Egg product. Weeks later, Good Meat’s cultivated meat, which evolved from a nugget format last year to now a satay chicken skewers (and soon, even chicken skin), landed on the bistro menu and display case at a Singapore butcher shop for the first time.
4. APAC agrees on ‘cultivated’ nomenclature
Perhaps the alternative protein nomenclature wars have come to an end–or at least in the cultivated meat world. In APAC, cell-based food producers came to an agreement that the preferred English-language term would be “cultivated”. Those who signed the memo in October include the Good Food Institute’s (GFI) regional arm, as well as over 30 other major stakeholders in the category, from Cargill to the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture. While terms such as “cell-cultured” and “cell-based” have been previously been touted as the top terms to describe this sector of alternative proteins, the GFI has long been a proponent of the word “cultivated” since 2019.
5. Africa welcomes its first cultivated beef burger
Mzansi Meat’s beef burger.
In April, we saw cultivated beef land in the African continent for the first time. South African startup Mzansi Meat launched its first cell-based burger, serving it at a special event to Cape Town’s mayoral committee member Alderman James Vos. Other African startups racing to bring their cell-based meats to the table include chicken-focused Mogale Meat and Sea Stematic, which has its eye on seafood.
6. Governments around the world formally back cultivated meat
Cultivated meat got a big boost from governments around the world. From the €60 million investment made by the Dutch authorities to Israel’s go-ahead for the country’s cultivated meat consortium, it’s clear that states are finally seeing the sector as a promising solution to global food security and sustainability. Global superpowers are on it too. The Biden administration gave huge backing to the biotech industry, which was largely seen as paving the way for cultivated meat regulatory approval. Meanwhile, China’s 5-year plan specifically included cell-based protein for the first time, which certainly boosted investment sentiment for players like CellX, a Shanghai cell-ag firm that bagged $10.6M in its Series A this year.
7. Vow to become world’s second approved cultivated meat brand in Singapore
French onion dish with Morsel, Vow’s first product.
Australia’s Vow revealed it will soon gain regulatory approval from Singapore to sell its cultivated quail meat. The announcement was made as the food tech sets a record with its $49.2M Series A funding, which came soon after it opened one of the world’s largest cultured meat factories capable of churning out 30 tons per year. The factory joins the strong league of cell-based producers that turned its machines on this year, from Ivy Farm’s plant in the U.K. (which is Europe’s largest), and Asia’s biggest facility in Singapore spearheaded by Good Meat.
8. Cultivated food ecosystem get organized across the globe
In October, three of the world’s biggest cultivated food industry associations hosted a meeting in Singapore. The first-of-a-kind alliance is made up of U.S.-based Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), Cellular Agriculture Europe (CAE), and the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA). Together, these societies hope to get ecosystem stakeholders together to speed up the process of creating a global regulatory framework, time to market and educating consumers about the welfare benefits and sustainability solutions the industry has to offer. The latter was founded by 11 companies across the Asian region, which only just launched in March this year.
9. 2022 is a year of firsts for cell-based product launches, from smoked duck breast to fish balls
Forsea Foods’ eel.
2022 marked an incredible year for cultivated protein product rollouts. Some of the major ones include Meatable, which is set to launch cell-based pork in Singapore by partnering with the city-state’s contract manufacturer ESCO Aster, Meatiply’s regional-first cultivated smoked duck breast, and Israel-based Future Meat’s ground lamb meat. There’s also Umami Meats’ fish balls, Forsea Foods’ eel, and Joes Future Food’s pork belly for its pork-loving domestic market–all cultivated directly from cells. Even cell-cultured fish fat is now a thing, thanks to ImpacFat.
10. Foie gras makers Gourmey bag record funding
Finally, French startup Gourmey made headlines for closing a record-breaking €48M Series A in October. The oversubscribed round will go towards making its culinary-grade cultivated foie gras a reality by building a 46,000-square-foot commercial production facility in Paris, due to open in 2024.
SciFi Foods has conducted the world’s first Life Cycle Analysis on cultivated beef and the findings show significant benefits for the planet.
Researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) conducted the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) on cultivated beef — the first peer-reviewed research on the climate impacts of lab-grown protein versus its conventional live animal counterparts. The findings were published in the journal Sustainability.
The researchers looked at burgers made from cultivated beef along with plant-based ingredients including soy protein, produced by ScIFi Foods, the Bay Area startup that emerged from stealth mode earlier this year.
The findings
According to the findings, the SciFi Foods’ burgers reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 88.5 percent when compared to conventional beef burgers. Energy use dropped more than 37 percent, land use dropped more than 90 percent, and water used dropped by nearly 97 percent when the beef was grown in bioreactors.
The researchers note that some parts of the process were very similar to conventional beef, such as cold storage, packaging, and distribution, but they note “there was little doubt overall that the SciFi Burger had a significantly smaller environmental impact.”
“There are many ways engineering and bioengineering is being utilized today to create a more sustainable future,” lead study author, Dr. Bhavik Bakshi, Richard M. Morrow Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at OSU, said in a statement, “and this is just the onset when it comes to what science can do for the food system.”
While the study only looked at SciFi’s products, the researchers say the findings validate the entire category — a significant milestone as regulatory approval nears in the U.S., following Upside Foods’ recent FDA GRAS status.
‘Leaving a positive mark on the planet’
[W]e’re proud to prove that yes, what we’re doing is truly making an impact, because as much as this is about delicious burgers, the crux of it is about leaving a positive mark on the planet,” said SciFi Foods’ co-founder and CEO Joshua March.
Photo by Joachim Süß on Unsplash
The researchers say the study does not assume exclusive use of renewable energy, suggesting a shift to renewable resources could prove even more climate-friendly than conventional cattle farming.
Animal agriculture is a leading producer of emissions. According to the OSU researchers, agriculture and the food industry is responsible for 25 percent of all global emissions. The world’s leading climate scientists and public health organizations have called for drastic dietary shifts to reduce animal products in order to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C.
Eat Just’s Good Meat is now available through a Singaporean butcher shop, Huber’s Butchery.
Eat Just’s cultivated Good Meat is coming to the display case and bistro menu of Huber’s Butchery in Singapore, beginning early next year. The launch includes a tasting preview happening this Saturday.
‘Another historic moment’
“Offering this new approach to making meat at a butchery is another historic moment in the long road to making our food system more delicious and sustainable,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, said in a statement. “I’m very proud to partner with the Huber’s team to give people a whole new way to experience our cultivated chicken in the new year.”
The news follows several recent launches across Singapore including a partnership with the delivery platform Food Panda, and a recent partnership with a number of hawker stalls, as well as fine dining restaurants.
Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat | Courtesy
Last month, during the COP27 conference in Egypt, Eat Just served its Good Meat chicken to global climate leaders, media, and consumers for the first time outside of Singapore. Cultivated meat is poised to reduce the protein industry’s carbon footprint by producing fewer emissions than conventional meat production — some estimates put it at 90 percent fewer emissions. It’s also less resource intensive, requiring less land and water than conventional meat.
The Huber’s partnership will see the company’s first placement alongside conventional butcher shop meat, something Huber says aligns with its longstanding commitment to quality.
“When we founded our butcher shop, we made it our mission to provide top quality and exceptional tasting meat products with the highest food safety standards at an affordable price. Partnering with GOOD Meat is in keeping with that vision and the realities of our ever-changing food system,” said Huber’s Butchery Managing Director Ryan Huber.
Executive Director Andre Huber said cultivated meat “could be one of the solutions to over-farming due to increased population size and density and an increase in animal protein consumption in many parts of the world.”
Cultivated protein poised for regulatory approval
The launch into the family-run butcher overlaps with the two-year anniversary of Good Meat’s approval in Singapore; it’s currently the only company with regulatory approval to sell its cultivated meat.
Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy
But that will likely change in 2023 as fellow U.S.-based cultivated meat company, Upside Foods, has completed the first regulatory hurdle with the FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken.
The meat is likely to receive USDA approval within the next year, which would make it legal for sale and consumption across the U.S.
A new cultivated meat factory slated to open in North Carolina will be the world’s largest.
In what Israel-based Believer Meats says is a watershed moment for the cultivated meat industry, its forthcoming 200,000-square-foot factory, which doesn’t yet have a target opening date, will be able to produce 22 million pounds of meat annually once operational, making it the largest cultivated meat factory in the world.
The facility, which broke ground earlier this week, is coming to Wilson County, North Carolina — the heart of the state’s hog farming industry. North Carolina is the third-largest hog-producing state in the U.S. The facility will bring as many as 100 jobs to the region over the next three years, and an investment of $123.35 million to Wilson County. The company has raised more than $387 million since its 2018 launch.
One step closer to commercialization
“Our facility propels Believer forward as a leader in the cultivated meat industry,” Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, Believer’s CEO said in a statement. “Our brand has continually proven our commitment to scale production technology and capacity, and with our new U.S. production center, we are one step closer to commercialization. Believer is setting the standard globally to make it possible for future generations to eat and enjoy meat.”
Believer, formerly Future Meat Technologies, said it specifically targeted North Carolina because of its talent pool and its success in integrating technology-driven solutions.
Courtesy Believer
“We’re pleased to welcome Believer Meats to North Carolina,” said North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper. “This important decision to build its first U.S. commercialization operation in Wilson County validates our innovative research and development and highly skilled talent while further cementing our state as the best in the nation to do business.”
The new facility will feature custom-made bioreactors that Believer says can achieve high cell densities and yields. The company has developed cultivated lamb, which it hails as an R&D breakthrough.
Robert Rankin, Executive Director of the Association for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS) oday’s hailed the announcement as “another example of the growth, progress and increased interest in this cutting-edge industry,” he said.
The announcement also earned praise from the industry think tank, the Good Food Institute.
“We celebrate this milestone and are thrilled to see the North Carolina and Wilson County officials and community providing critically important support to scale cultivated meat production. These steps pave the way for cultivated meat to come to market in the U.S. at scale and helps ensure as many consumers as possible have access to these groundbreaking products,” says Liz Specht, Ph.D., Vice President of Science and Technology at the Good Food Institute. “Further government investment like this will advance the sector toward commercialization, helping to feed a growing population more sustainably, spurring economic growth, and improving environmental and global health outcomes.”
The future of protein
Johnson-Hoffman said Believer, and the cultivated meat industry at large, are “on the path” to creating change. “Through affordability, approachability, and availability, we want our products to become the meat of choice globally, and with the announcement of our new production facility, we are well on our way.”
Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy
Believer’s new facility will be among a growing handful of dedicated cultivated meat factories across the globe. Upside Foods’ EPIC factory in California could soon be operational as the company just earned FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken. Once it receives USDA approval it could begin producing for commercial distribution.
Eat Just, which is currently the only company with approval for cultivated meat in the world, is expected to bring its Good Meat factory online in Singapore early next year. The company says it will be able to produce tens of thousands of pounds of meat per year.
Elsewhere, Ivy Farms opened the largest cultivated meat factory in Europe last summer, capable of producing three tons of cultivated meat annually. And in October, Australian cultivated meat company Vow debuted Factory 1, its NSW-based factory capable of producing 30 tons of cultured meat per year.
Collaborating with synbio tech solutions provider Solar Biotech, cultivated meat pioneer Orbillion Bio says it can produce upwards of four million pounds of cultivated meat per year.
Known for its premium cultivated Wagyu beef, California-based Orbillion Bio says the new partnership with Solar Biotech will see it scale up to 20,000L bioreactors — enough to produce more than four million pounds of cultivated meat per year.
The announcement follows the recent FDA GRAS status for Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken, moving the cultivated meat industry closer to U.S. regulatory approval.
In position for mass production
The partnership is the first of its kind for Solar Biotech, marking its official entry into the cultivated beef industry, following its launch into animal-free chicken and work with Motif Foodworks on a yeast-derived heme protein.
Orbillion’s founders Samet Yildirim, MSc, MBS, Patricia Bubner, PhD, and Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay, PhD
“At Solar Biotech, we develop world-class bioprocessing technology together with leading players in biotech. We now want to bring our knowledge and decades of experience into creating real impact in the sustainable food tech space, and there is no better partner than the Orbillion Bio team. We see our technical synergy with Orbillion as an opportunity to enter a rapidly growing higher value cellular agriculture segment, which will yield long-term significant recurrent revenue for both parties with attractive profit margins” Alex Berlin, CEO and CTO of Solar Biotech, said in a statement. “They bring significant expertise in world-class bioprocessing and food, and we are looking forward to investing in this partnership to bring cost-effective and nutritious foods to market.”
The partnership marries Orbillion’s proprietary cell culture platform with Solar Biotech’s scale-up bioprocess development capabilities and infrastructure, proprietary AI-driven bioprocess controlling software, new biosensing technologies, and vertically integrated engineering, and previous experience commercializing mammalian cell cultures for animal-free meat, the companies said in a statement.
Quality, parity, and sustainability
“Orbillion’s innovative business model will bring to market the highest quality cultivated beef, while being cost competitive,” Patricia Bubner, CEO of Orbillion, said in a statement. “Our unique technology has already allowed us to produce meat that comes from non-GMO cells and that is free of fetal bovine serum (FBS), and by partnering with Solar Biotech we can move more swiftly to reach price parity.”
The new partnership will see Orbillion produce its meat at lower costs — part of its commitment to achieving price parity with conventional meat by 2026, and commodity pricing for beef by 2030.
Orbillion Wagyu beef | Courtesy
It will also help tackle the food industry’s emissions. Orbillion says if produced using renewable energy, cultivated meat could reduce global warming impacts by between 85 and 92 percent versus conventional beef. Lab-grown meat also reduces the amount of land needed to produce protein, and requires fewer resources including fresh water.
As the cultivated protein sector positions itself for widespread regulatory approval, Orbillion hope it is setting itself apart with a focus on premium meats. In addition to its Wagyu beef, it’s also developing elk and lamb meat. A recent partnership with Luiten Foods will bring its range of cultivated meats to Europe by 2025, pending regulatory approval.
A new report by Green Queen Media argues that while plant-based meat sales may be flat in the US and Europe, in Asia Pacific, the alternative protein industry is booming.
Green Queen Media has published the 2022 edition of its award-winning APAC Alternative Protein Industry Report today, titled The Future is Asian and presented by plant-based chicken leader TiNDLE. The 150-page report, now in its third year, is the result of over 14 months of original reporting and dozens of first-hand interviews, as well as featuring expertise and insights from over 30 ecosystem insiders and sector investors.
Both the 2020 and 2021 editions grabbed the top prize in the category of Special Awards for best Global Report at the Hallbars Sustainability Reports Awards in Sweden. Hallbars is an organization that recognizes the best climate-forward publications around the world.
Representation matters
It’s been a challenging year for alternative protein, particularly for plant-based meats, with flat sales in the US and some European markets, a challenging environment for public plant-based companies like Beyond Meat and Oatly, and constant media attacks by pro-meat and pro-dairy lobbies. However, these headlines belie the global picture. “Across the Asia Pacific region, alternative protein companies have been going from strength to strength, hitting major milestones, attracting significant government support and raising record funding rounds,” said Sonalie Figueiras, the report publisher and Green Queen Media’s founder and editor-in-chief, in a statement. “Our report illustrates the importance of reporting and media representation. Western-centric media would have you believe that alternative protein is an industry in trouble. In reality, the sector is headed for boom times in Asia and beyond.”
“What is perhaps obvious to some, but became incredibly clear upon writing the report and working with our industry experts, is just how differently the various countries within APAC approach alternative proteins, both in terms of technology and consumer behaviour,” said Nicola Spalding, the report author.
The future is Asian
Where the 2020 report focused on examining making the case for why alternative protein was necessary in a region that boasts 60% of the world’s population but only 20% of the world’s agricultural land, and the 2021 report provided an exhaustive look at the industry in APAC and dug deep into the three technology pillars, the 2022 edition highlights the 10 most important growth stories and historic firsts that the industry has achieved, as well as the unique products created to serve consumers with vastly different food traditions, culinary tastes and dining preferences.
On the funding front, record-breaking rounds made headlines across the globe, as APAC was home to both the largest cultivated meat Series A ever and the largest plant-based meat Series A ever. The report chronicles every round raised in 2022, with an emphasis on the 10 biggest.
In addition, precision fermentation, which in 2021 was a fledging sector in Asia, experienced real traction this past year, with China’s first animal-free dairy company coming out of stealth and the launch of the region’s first animal-free dairy milk onto supermarket shelves amongst many other announcements.
Several APAC cultivated meat players celebrated major product firsts, from the first cultivated pork belly to the first cultivated duck breast to the first cultivated fishball to the first cultivated Dokdo shrimp- huge leaps, especially given how young the sector is.
The Future is Asian features extensive interviews with 10 local ecosystem insiders from Japan to Taiwan to India, and spotlights the insights of the top venture capitalists investing in the region’s startups.
For the first time, the report authors provided recommendations aimed at the many players of the region’s ecosystem on the road ahead amidst a changing global landscape fraught with supply chain disruption, the ongoing Ukraine war, rising food inflation and the looming threat of a worldwide recession, on top of a worsening climate crisis.
In-depth: APAC’s alt protein pioneers
After years of ecosystem building, the region now boasts hundreds of startups working towards a future of food that promises to feed over three billion people sustainably, safely, and ethically.
The report showcases a range of in-depth case studies spotlighting some of the region’s most exciting players such as South Korean cultivated meat and seafood startup CellMEAT, Singaporean plant-based chicken and seafood player Growthwell Foods, US-Australian animal-free casein maker Change Foods, global fats leader AAK, specialty distributor Classic Fine Foods, Californian precision fermentation company Perfect Day and Hong Kong-based foodtech accelerator Brinc.
Also included are greater China-based plant-based pork and dumpling brand Plant Sifu, US whole-cut fermentation-based seafood pioneer Aqua Cultured Foods, Singaporean cultivated seafood startup Umami Meats and Swiss flavor manufacturer Givaudan.
The climate crisis presents a clear and present danger for Asian countries. The region will feel the brunt of many of the worst tolls of environmental degradation from worsening air pollution to mass climate migration to declining food security. As Figueiras writes in the report’s introduction, “Alternative protein is an important part of the future food toolbox if we are to build a stronger, more resilient regional food system that will face water shortages, land degradation, and more frequent climate-related weather events, amongst many other challenges.”
Download The APAC Alternative Protein Industry Report 2022 – The Future is Asian now.
The nutri-tech start-up Novella is taking a page from cell-based meat production and growing botanical ingredients without the whole plant.
Israel-based Novella says it’s growing plants in bioreactors in a method similar to cultivated meat, and reducing the inefficiencies of field-based crop production.
“We don’t need the whole plant to get access to specific bioactive compounds,” Kobi Avidan, CEO and co-founder of Novella, said in a statement. “It also isn’t necessary to discard up to 99 percent of a plant and incur tons of agricultural waste just to derive specific nutrients. We have the technology where we can narrow the harvest of an entire field for its plant essence in a single bioreactor.”
According to Novella, the traditional “field to bottle” method of producing nutraceuticals involves a long and complex journey that is labor intensive and limited by the reaches of agricultural land. Ingredients are often grown and harvested across the world before reaching their final destination, further complicating the process, making traceability more difficult, and producing more emissions.
Bypassing the field
Even as urban farms take foot offering locally-grown fruits and vegetables, Novella says no one has tackled the nutraceuticals arm of botanical micronutrients.
Rather than growing the whole plant, Novella is identifying plant tissues such as those in stems, fruits, leaves, and flowers. It then pulls a cell culture, just like companies using the tech for growing meat in bioreactors.
Novella founders (left to right), Itay Dana, Kobi Avidan, and Shimrit Bar-El
The result is a powdered botanical product composed of whole-cell and nutrient-rich plant tissue. The process also eliminates exposure to pesticides and herbicides common in field-based agriculture.
“Growing nutrients outside the plant is actually a simpler process than growing meat cells outside of the cow,” says Avidan. “Moreover, we can now cultivate any ingredient close to the market of interest. This will be instrumental in lowering costs, as well as lightening their ecological footprint.”
Growing kale bioreactors
The startup has begun exploring plants including the dark, leafy green vegetable kale, which is used for its range of vitamins and antioxidants.
“Kale has captured the interest of the functional food, supplement, and pharma industries due to its long list of vitamins and minerals,” says Shimrit Bar-El, PhD, co-founder and CRO of Novella. “But it is very difficult to work with and process. We are specifically exploring the vegetable for its vitamin K and unique carotenoid composition.”
Courtesy Novella
Vegetables are often at risk of contamination from bacteria such as E Coli and salmonella — typically the result of run-off from animal agriculture operations.
Consumers are increasingly demanding products that are microbiologically safe, natural, and without chemical additives, says Itay Dana, B.Sc., MBA, co-founder and BDO for Novella. “There is an increasing demand for natural botanicals, accompanied by incremental rises in prices resulting from a shortage of such products,” Dana says.
“By shifting the cultivation of popular micronutrients to the lab, the Novella platform can help free up extensive agricultural terrain for rededication to the growth of food crops while making high-value nutraceutical ingredients more readily available at affordable prices.”
ImpacFat has unveiled the world’s first cultivated fish fat during the Big Idea Ventures Demo Day showcase underway in Singapore.
With a rich mouthfeel and increased nutrition profile, ImpacFat’s newly cultivated fish fat is the latest cultured fat poised to disrupt the alternative protein sector.
The company is holding tasting sessions today for select participants following approval from the Singapore Food Agency. Tastings are taking place at the Big Idea Ventures’ 6th Demo Day happening at Singapore’s National Gallery, following the culmination of its five-month accelerator programs in Singapore, New York, and Paris. Big Idea Ventures is a leading impact investor in the food tech space.
The fat market swells
“As a consumer, we may think that fat is bad and want to reduce our fat intake. However, ImpacFat wants the world to know that fat can be good too,” Mandy Hon, Managing Director, ImpacFat Pte. Ltd., said in a statement. “Since fat is essential in our diet, why not take the healthiest one? ImpacFat aims to give that healthiest fat that you will want to gain, while at the same time protecting the animals and environment. We can’t wait to let everyone taste our healthy and tasty fish fat,” Hon said.
Photo by Tony Sebastian on Unsplash
Fat cells play a key role in animal products, delivering mouthfeel and texture. In the case of fish fat, there are also beneficial oils including those in the omega category. ImpactFay says there has been a lack of focus on fat production, and it’s one of the biggest gaps in addressing consumer concerns about alternative protein.
According to ImpacFat, its cell-based fat is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which it says are more resistant to oxidation and other chemical or physical changes than conventional fish oils.
The company also touts the sustainability of its products, free from the impacts overfishing is having on the world’s oceans and fish stocks. Like other cultivated products, ImpacFat’s fish fat requires fewer resources and produces fewer emissions than conventional animal products.
Redefining fat
The cultivated fish oil delivers another benefit: the absence of heavy metals such as mercury, microplastics, and pathogens.
“Consumers want alternative proteins that exceed the taste and nutrition profiles of the conventional meat and seafood they know and love—a standard most believe the sector has not yet achieved,” says Mirte Gosker, Managing Director, The Good Food Institute APAC—Asia’s leading alternative protein think tank. “The addition of cultivated fish fat, developed by expert-led startups like ImpacFat, could be exactly what’s needed to take such products to the next level.”
ImpacFat has been the recipient of several awards including Grand Finalist at The Liveability Challenge 2022 and Winner of Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit pitch day 2022.
Photo by Richard Bell at Unsplash
The company joins a bevy of alternative fat producers using cell-based tech. Last month, German cultivated fat startup Cultimate raised €700,000 in a pre-seed funding round to bring its fat tech to the alternative protein sector. In October, U.K.-based Hoxton Farms closed a $22 million Series A funding round for its novel cultivated animal fat.
As attention turns toward agriculture in the fight against climate change, cellular agriculture emerges as an invaluable solution.
During COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced its plan to develop a roadmap for agri-food systems to better address the 1.5°C Paris Agreement climate targets. Zitouni Ould-Dada, Deputy Director of FAO, set a COP28 deadline for publishing the roadmap.
A map to net-zero
“Investors representing $18 trillion, led by FAIRR, have made their voices heard,” Jeremy Coller, Chair of FAIRR Initiative and Chief Investment Officer at Coller Capital, said of the announcement, which came at the urging of FAIRR, and was announced during the FAIRR-hosted COP27 Blue Zone event.
“We welcome the FAO’s commitment to producing a roadmap for food and agriculture which will provide much-needed clarity to both companies and investors, which will allow companies to plan for the transition and investors to assess investment risk and opportunities. It’s a huge challenge and investors will be looking for the roadmap to include clear guidance on methane emission limits, halting deforestation, scaling up alternative protein production, and support to ensure a just transition for farmers.,” Coller said.
Photo by Zubair Hussain on Unsplash
“Without a map to get to net zero, the food sector will never get there,” Steve Waygood, Chief Responsible Investment Officer at Aviva Investors, said. “That’s why the FAO commitment to set a clear path towards 1.5°C is so important. It will help investors to better determine where capital should flow in order to finance those businesses and sectors best placed to deliver both food security and the low-carbon transition.”
According to FAIRR, only 16 of 54 OECD countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) have agricultural targets, despite the industry’s significant impact on climate change.
“A roadmap for the food system will help investors to identify new, sustainable investment opportunities, and to identify risks for companies that are not aligned to the likely direction of future policies,” Chris Dodwell, Head of Policy & Advocacy at Impax Asset Management, said. “The IEA’s net zero roadmap has provided much-needed guidance for investors in the energy sector, but there is a gap when it comes to the food sector that we hope the FAO’s roadmap will fill. The roadmap will also give countries the confidence needed to include the agriculture sector within their NDCs and develop the policies needed to move us closer to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.”
Cellular agriculture’s role in the future of food
World leaders are also being urged to prioritize cellular agriculture as part of their plans to reduce emissions. The urging comes from a new global alliance formed during COP27 earlier this month. The new alliance is made up of the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA), and Cellular Agriculture Europe (CAE).
“It is great news that the FAO has committed to producing a climate roadmap for food and agriculture next year,” said Robert E. Jones, President of Cellular Agriculture EuropeJones. “We encourage them to include a full suite of solutions to reform the global food system to make it sustainable for people and the planet.
“Cellular agriculture can be a powerful tool in that mix, but we need governments to step up and help create the enabling conditions necessary for it to thrive and scale up quickly,” said Jones. “Considering the role agriculture is playing in the climate crisis, world leaders should be as committed to innovations in food production as they are to the energy transition.”
COP27 attendees from approximately ten countries attended events featuring cell-based meat, presented by California-based Eat Just, which brought its cultured Good Meat to the Singapore Pavilion. Cell-based meat is currently only approved for sale in Singapore, but a major milestone came to the U.S. last week when California’s Upside Foods earned the FDA’s GRAS status for its cultivated chicken.
Courtesy Upside Foods
Some experts put cellular agriculture’s impact on the environment at more than 90 percent lower than conventional agriculture. Recent findings suggest technologies such as cellular agriculture could feed the entire global population on a fraction of the land currently used to raise livestock. The industry is tied to a number of issues beyond just emissions leading to climate change; livestock production is linked to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and overuse of resources, including medically important antibiotics.
Dr. David Tonucci, President of AMPS Innovation, applauded the COP27 events. “It is great that cellular agriculture was part of the conversation,” he said. “Now we need to see concrete efforts to lift up this important innovation into the policy frameworks for emissions reductions around the world.”
Dr. Sandhya Sriram, President of APAC-SCA, said countries must also be “ready and willing to use public resources to level the playing field for innovative and sustainable protein production methods like cellular agriculture.”
Current food production methods are responsible for one-third of the climate crisis, according to Sriram. “Just reforming conventional animal agriculture methods will not be enough alone to sustainably feed ten billion people in 2050, especially with the FAO predicting meat consumption rising over 50 percent in the same time period,” Sriram said.
With full regulatory approval expected in the U.S. and elsewhere soon, cell-based meat is being looked at as a key alternative to emissions-heavy conventional meat production.
Wilk, the publicly traded Israel-based food tech company developing cell-based human and animal milk, says it has developed the world’s first yogurt made from cell cultures.
External laboratories verified that Wilk’s yogurt meets all necessary chemical and biological requirements to qualify as yogurt. Wilk says its yogurt is a first-of-its-kind development using cell-based milk fat that mirrors the nutritional benefits of real milk fat.
Cell-based milk fat
The release follows Wilk’s announcement over the summer that it was working to develop cell-cultured milk fat for use in yogurt. The milk fat will be the only cell-based ingredient in the new yogurt, which typically also contains dairy-based whey, but it’s an important step toward greening the dairy industry.
“This is a significant milestone, not just for Wilk, but for the Israeli FoodTech space and wider global industry,” Tomer Aizen, CEO of Wilk, said in a statement.
Photo by micheile dot com on Unsplash
“It signifies a major breakthrough in demonstrating our ability to produce functional cell-cultured milk components that can be integrated into a wide array of dairy products and brings us closer to realizing our goal—to produce authentic dairy products in a sustainable and environmentally conscientious manner that will drive the industry forward,” Aizen said.
According to Wilk, it chose to develop cultured milk fat because it is necessary for adding flavor and texture to dairy products like yogurt. The company says the milk fat is also critical in its human breast milk as it plays a key part in infant digestive, brain, and nervous system development for infants. The company is one of several working to create human breast milk from cell cultures for sustainable alternatives to infant formula.
Fueling the future of dairy
The launch follows Wilk’s 2021 announcement that Coca-Cola Israel invested $2 million into the company and will help develop products made with Wilk’s cell-based milk and milk fat.
Courtesy Canva
“We will continue investing our efforts and resources to develop cell-cultured milk and breast milk components that will help our partners produce healthier products in a more sustainable manner,” Aizen said over the summer.
Wilk’s announcement follows news from Australian food tech company Me& that it has developed the world’s first cell-based fortified human breast milk. Like Wilk, Me& is working to address infant nutrition needs while also reducing the carbon footprint of the conventional dairy industry.
Australia’s first cell-based milk startup, Me&, says it is developing cell-based breast milk just like a human mother would.
Me&’s cellular and molecular technology captures the inbuilt program in breast tissue cells allowing it to control the cell-based milk development and modify its composition to offer superior nutrition. The company recently closed an oversubscribed $2.5 million seed round led by Horizons Ventures and CSIRO Fund Main Sequence.
It’s the latest company to bring novel tech to the infant formula category. Israel-based Wilk and U.S.-based Biomilq are using cell tech to develop human breast milk, and U.S.-based Helaina is using precision fermentation to ‘brew’ breast milk in microbes.
Breast milk from cells
“I’ve had two babies born prematurely and spent their first weeks of life in the NICU,” Esha Saxena, Me& co-founder. She developed the product alongside Dr. Luis Malaver. Combined, they bring together more than 30 years of experience in product development, bioengineering, and cell biology.
Saxena saw the dire need for change when her children were in the NICU, but her motivation also comes from decades of wanting to change the planet for the better. “I was born in India and at a very young age, about 3 [years old], I made a deliberate choice to stop eating meat, almost overnight,” she said.
The Me& team including co-founders Esha Saxena (left) and Luis Malaver (centre).
“It was a big surprise to my family, none of whom were vegetarian at the time, there was nothing I was exposed to that introduced me to the idea, and my mum took me to many pediatricians to have me tested for intolerances, food aversions, all of whom concluded it came down to nothing but, a choice I had made a lot earlier than expected.”
Saxena says there is a global lack of supply and a critical need for human milk “to ensure adequate development of preterm and newborn babies,” she said. “My inspiration for this business is to fill this much-needed gap, and reduce the reliance on cows’ milk that we know is not good for babies, the environment or the animals.”
Bill Bartee, General Partner at Main Sequence says the product is an example of science changing the world for the better.
“We are in the midst of an exciting time in history,” he said. “Advances in science have provided us with the tools to deliver bio-based engineering solutions and build new ways of doing things. The technology has come together to enable us to build biological factories to make new things — and do it very efficiently. The Me& team have harnessed this expertise and paired it with a market need to create a world-first innovation—cell-based fortified human milk.”
Replicating the infant nutrition response of breast milk
The company is based at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. The institute is a world leader in medical research on infant and child health and development.
“Being based at the Hudson allows us to be part of the translational research ecosystem contributing to critical initiatives in infant health,” Malaver says. “We are fortunate to be next door to world-leading neonatologists and an extensive NICU hospital to stay connected with our customers and tiniest little consumers.”
Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash
According to the founders, there is a very broad spectrum in infant nutrition, and what’s available now is not ideal, they say. Infant formula, most of which is cow’s milk-based, covers the nutritive and non-bioactive factors. Some formulas are including prebiotics, which are critical for gut health development. But these formulas pale in comparison to traditional mother’s milk.
Me& says there are scientific theories that mammary gland receptors interpret the saliva from the baby sucking for bacteria and viruses and the mother’s body can alter the milk’s immunological composition in response. Breast milk is also dynamic in other ways, changing the composition depending on the weather‚ such as offering more hydration on a warm day. Breast milk has more melatonin at night to promote sleep, for example.
Like other cell-based products, Me&’s breast milk delivers near-identical nutrition benefits but at a lower impact than dairy milk—the go-to substitute for human breast milk. Animal agriculture is resource intensive and a leading cause of climate change and deforestation.
“I have fallen in love with the potential of deep biotechnology to solve the problems we are facing today,” Malaver says. “Cell-based human milk represents a huge opportunity to make an impact in both helping vulnerable kids and contributing to ethical and sustainable food production.”
Vow says its Series A funding round comes as it expects approval from Singapore to begin selling its cultivated meat in restaurants later this year.
Australian cultivated meat producer Vow has closed a record-setting $49.2 million Series A funding round to help bring its cultivated quail meat to Singapore. Funding was led by Blackbird and Prosperity7 Ventures, an Aramco Ventures growth fund, with backing from Toyota Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Grok Ventures, Cavallo Ventures, Peakbridge, Tenacious Ventures, HostPlus Super, NGS Super, and Pavilion Capital. The new funding comes nearly two years after Vow raised $6 million in seed funding.
Vow says its first product, dubbed Morsel—a cell-based quail meat—will hit Singapore restaurants before the year’s end, joining California-based Eat Just’s Good Meat as the only other cultivated meat approved for commercial sale and distribution in the world.
Changing the way billions eat
“When Vow was founded, we knew to change the way billions eat we had to do more than recreate what we know,” says Vow CEO and co-founder George Peppou.
“We’re thrilled to be toe to toe with the best companies in this space, moving at speed to reach huge milestones with a fraction of the capital of other companies,” he said.
Vow’s kangaroo dumplings
“Our food diet is standardized, and neither healthy nor sustainable,” says Nadav Berger, general partner and co-founder of PeakBridge. “Much of our proteins come from limited animal-based sources which are harmful for both biodiversity and our health. Solutions and technologies that explore alternatives to conventional animal-based protein without compromising on taste, texture, nutrition and climate impact are here to stay.”
Vow is taking a unique approach to cultivated meat, replicating exotic meat including kangaroo and alpaca, along with quail, rabbit, and goat meat. The quail-based Morsel quail is expected to take meat in a new direction, Peppou said, with chefs using it in novel ways. The company says Morsel has a roasted umami flavor with seafood notes.
“By inventing new meats that are tastier, more nutritious, and serve functions traditional meats can’t, we can have an enormous impact,” Peppou said.
Fueling the cultivated meat category growth
The market approval and funding follow Vow bringing its first factory online in New South Wales last month. Dubbed Factory 1, the facility can produce approximately 30 tons of cultivated meat per year. The company says it’s also already working on Factory 2, which will be capable of producing meat at 100-fold the output of Factory 1.
Vow’s Factory 1
“With Factory 1 Vow has quietly become a world leader in cultured meat, we are now operating at world leading scales and have achieved all of this in just three and a half years, with a fraction of the capital,” Peppou said.
Morsel is expected to hit restaurants in Singapore later this year.
With backing from Big Idea Ventures, ProVeg International, and Realum.cloud, cultivated fat startup Cultimate has raised €700,000 in a pre-seed funding round.
The German-based Cultimate Foods is working to upgrade meat alternatives with cultivated fat that produces the taste and mouthfeel of conventional animal products. The new funding will allow the company to scale up its production processes and fully validate its cultivated fat product solution and prepares the technology for the pilot stage.
Animal fat for plant-based food
“Our ultimate goal is to deliver a game-changing ingredient for the plant-based meat industry. We are focused on developing the most important part of meat experience, fat. Cultimate will deliver all the properties of meat that are currently lacking in the available meat alternatives,” co-founder of Cultimate George Zheleznyi, said in a statement.
Could cultivated fat improve Impossible Burgers? | Courtesy Impossible Foods
The company has expanded its research and development team as well as launched its own laboratory in Göttingen, Germany.
“I believe science is the answer to many of the problems of the food industry and, by extension, to climate change. With our technology we can give consumers the meaty taste that they want while reducing animal farming and CO2 emissions,” said Eugenia Sagué, co-founder of Cultimate, who previously held several positions in the plant-based food industry.
Cultimate is the latest company focused on the hybrid market—bringing cultivated animal cell products to alternatives such as plant-based or fungi-based protein.
Sustainable food demand
Demand for sustainable and ethical protein continues to rise and so is meat consumption; global meat consumption could double by 2050. The world’s leading climate and health organizations routinely urge consumers to reduce meat consumption for their health and to slow the impact of climate change. Meat production is a key producer of greenhouse gases.
Cultimate says the hybrid market offers significant opportunities for the global food system, which could lower production costs as well as impact.
Hoxton Farms founders Max Jamilly (left) and Ed Steele (right) | Courtesy Hoxton Farms
The funding announcement follows several other funding rounds in the animal fat sector. Last month, Hoxton Farms and Nourish Ingredients both raised Series A rounds; Hoxton is using a similar cell-cultured approach and Nourish is working with microbial fermentation to replicate the texture and function of fat.
It’s not just animal fat getting the tech makeover; earlier this month, C16 Biosciences, the biotech company backed by Bill Gates, announced it will launch its first consumer-facing palm oil products next year.
A new survey from Israel-based food tech company SuperMeat, finds the vast majority of chefs, 86 percent, are interested in serving cultivated meat—an indicator of the potential for the category once countries grant regulatory approval.
The new SuperMeat survey interviewed 251 chefs and food service professionals earlier this year. The research was conducted in partnership with Censuswide, an independent market research consultancy.
Results of the survey were overwhelmingly in favor of cultivated meat—protein that’s grown from animal cell samples in bioreactors instead of on farms. The tech has thus far only received approval in Singapore, with the Bay Area company Eat Just the first, and currently, the only, company approved for sale and consumption.
The lack of regulatory approval has not slowed progress for the sector, though. Recent reports show record funding raises and a number of start-ups entering the category.
Cultivated meat demand and acceptance
But despite the interest from investors, consumer opinion on the tech has been mixed, with some critics lumping it in with genetic modification—a technology typically used to make plants more resistant to heavy applications of herbicides.
Still, consumers do want more ethical and sustainable choices. Sixty-five percent of chefs said they’ve seen increased demand in the last five years; 87 percent of Midwest restaurants and 82 percent of fast-food restaurants said they’ve seen increasing demand for meat alternatives.
Courtesy SuperMeat
Widespread acceptance of cultivated meat from the culinary world could help sway consumers on the fence about the tech. Eighty-four percent of the chefs surveyed said they would consider replacing conventional meat altogether on their menus with cultivated meat if cost-effective. Seventy-seven percent though said they would pay a premium, particularly for poultry; more than 66 percent of the chefs said they would pay as much as 11 to 15 percent more for cultivated meat.
The Midwest chefs were most willing to pay a premium for cultivated meat—87 percent said they’d opt for the higher ticket price in order to put the options on their menu. Western chefs said they’d be willing to pay higher premiums, with 16 percent saying they would pay as much as 16 to 20 percent more for cultivated meat. Chefs cooking Mediterranean were right behind, with 83 percent saying they’d be willing to pay 11 to 15 percent more for cultivated meat. Italian and Mexican chefs were willing to pay five to ten percent more.
Poultry was the top choice, with 51 percent of chefs saying they’d be interested in trying cultivated chicken and other poultry products; 38 percent said they’d be interested in beef, and 35 percent indicated seafood and pork. Tastes ranged regionally, the survey found. Chefs from the South favored beef and exotic meats; fine-dining chefs favored pork. Chicken was the top choice for fast-food and American cuisine. Italian cuisine favored seafood, and chefs across France, Japan, and Indian cuisines all favored exotic meats.
Regulatory approval
The chefs surveyed were overwhelmingly in favor of adding cultivated meat shortly after approved; more than half said they would add the products to their menus within two months of approval. Chefs in the Northeast and West said they would add it even sooner and chefs in the South were the most hesitant, wanting to wait as long as six months.
GOOD Meat cultivated chicken | courtesy Eat Just
“It is great to see the interest and positivity from the professional culinary community for cultivated meat. This demonstrates that chefs are more than intrigued by cultivated meat, understand the benefits, and are ready to see it served in mainstream dining,” Ido Savir, CEO of SuperMeat, said in a statement. “SuperMeat is thrilled to continue our work to commercialize cultivated meat products and be among the first to bring these options to menus across the U.S..”
U.S. regulatory approval is expected in the near future, but no date has been confirmed. Experts suggest it could be within the next year or as long as 18 to 24 months.
With support from Mondelēz International, Barrel Ventures, and Regba Group, along with Trendlines, Celleste Bio is closer to bringing its cell-based chocolate to market.
New cell-based food tech startup Celleste Bio, which hails from Israel, is out to tackle chocolate’s sustainability and labor issues. The company is producing high-quality cocoa using conventional cell culture methods.
Cacao trees, which grow in tropical regions across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, are expected to face threats as climate change increases temperatures and impacts growing seasons. The industry is also linked to deforestation and biodiversity loss.
Chocolate’s not-so-sweet side
The cocoa industry’s ongoing human rights violations also make alternatives more appealing. Despite pledges from the world’s leading chocolate producers including Hershey’s, Mars, and Nestlé to ensure their chocolate is free of child labor, problems are ongoing. The industry is also tied to other human rights violations including mistreatment of women, unfair wages, and human trafficking.
Cell-based chocolate is one potential answer to the industry’s problems. Like the tech replicates animal cells for meat and dairy, Celleste, co-founded by experts in the food tech space Hanne Volpin, PhD, CTO of Celleste, Avishai Levy, MSc,E., Orna Harel, PhD, and Daphna Michaeli, PhD, says it will reproduce cacao cells without the use of genetic modification or manipulation.
Celleste’s Hanne Volpin | Courtesy
“We want to offer people the pleasure and health that high-quality cocoa products provide while eliminating the challenges of sustainable production that we face in cocoa production today,” Volpin said in a statement.
“Trendlines believes that the global need for more sustainable cocoa ingredients today and in the future, represents a tremendous opportunity for all stakeholders,” said Trendlines Agrifood Fund CEO, Nitza Kardish, PhD.
Disrupting Big Cacao
Celleste joins several other cocoa alternative producers. Last month, Seminal Biosciences emerged from stealth mode with its precision fermentation cocoa butter that performs just like conventionally grown cocoa butter.
“In addition to making chocolate more sustainable, with stateside production via bioreactors, this technology will improve the security and reliability for a key ingredient used across a variety of industries,” Alka Roy, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Seminal Biosciences, said in a statement.
Waim bars, courtesy WNWN
U.K.-based WNWN is also working to replace conventional chocolate but it has turned to other plant-based ingredients instead of cell cultures or fermentation. It’s using barley and carob in a process that it says replicates the flavor and mouthfeel of conventional chocolate without all the negatives.
“Chocolate has a truly dark side with more than a million child laborers estimated to work in Ivory Coast and Ghana, where three-quarters of the world’s cacao is grown, and more CO2 emissions pound for pound than cheese, lamb or chicken,” WNWN CTO Johnny Drain said in a statement earlier this year. “Using fermentation we’re able to create a suite of the same flavor compounds found in cacao. We can dial up certain aromas and even adjust the acidity to bring out notes found in premium single-origin chocolates.”
Cell-cultured chicken meat will make its debut at the COP27 climate conference being held in Egypt this month.
Good Meat, the cultivated meat division of the Bay Area food tech company Eat Just, is bringing its lab-grown chicken to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the site city for the U.N. climate event.
Eat Just is currently the only company to have received regulatory approval for the sale and distribution of cultured meat; its chicken received approval from the Singapore government nearly two years ago. The chicken will be showcased as part of COP27’s Singapore Pavillion for the first time outside of the city-state.
An ABEC bioreactor that produces Good Meat | Courtesy
“We hope our guests at COP27 find their cultivated chicken meals both delicious and thought-provoking and they leave the summit with a new appreciation for the role food innovation can play in combatting the global climate crisis,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, said in a statement. “There is no better place to launch our next version than right here at the world’s most consequential climate change gathering.”
The chicken will be served this coming weekend, from Saturday, Nov. 12 through Monday, Nov. 14 at invitation-only events, Eat Just said.
COP26 food criticism
Last year’s COP26 came under fire for serving animal products throughout the two-week conference. Critics compared it to serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference. Agriculture is a leading cause of climate change, producing more than 14 percent of all global emissions; animal products are responsible for at least 60 percent of the sector’s emissions, according to a study published last year in the journal Nature Food.
“To produce more meat you need to feed the animals more, which then generates more emissions,” Xiaoming Xu, University of Illinois researcher and the lead author of the paper said in a statement last year. “You need more biomass to feed animals in order to get the same amount of calories. It isn’t very efficient.”
Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat | Courtesy
The United Nations’ own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also recently called for drastic reductions to agricultural emissions including methane, which is produced by ruminants including cattle and sheep. Methane doesn’t linger in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but while present it traps more heat, accelerating the impacts of climate change. A recent IPCC report called for at least a 30-percent drop in methane emissions before the end of the decade.
Cultivated meat in the fight against climate change
Cultivated meat is expected to play a key role in reducing the industry’s emissions footprint once more countries approve it for sale and consumption.
Cultivated meat, which is grown with real animal cells in bioreactors instead of requiring raising and culling livestock, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 96 percent compared to conventional meat, according to recent findings from Oxford.
Good Meat’s chicken | Courtesy
Good Meat is partnering with the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific (GFI APAC) and others in the Singapore Pavillion to showcase efforts underway across the region.
“Singapore was the first country to allow the sale of meat made without tearing down a single forest or displacing an animal’s habitat, and we look forward to other countries following in their footsteps,” Tetrick said.
COP27 runs from November 6 through November 18, 2022. More information can be found on the event website.
Wild Earth, the Bay Area pet food company focused on alternative protein sources, has developed a cultivated chicken broth topper aimed at making the category more sustainable.
Cultivated meat isn’t just novel tech designed to revolutionize the global food system for humans—it holds equal, if not more potential, for our furry friends.
Wild Earth has been working to revolutionize the pet food industry since its $550,000 Shark Tank deal with Mark Cuban in 2019. Since then, the company, which produces vegan pet food made from cultured koji—a type of protein-rich fungus—has also been working to develop cell-based cultured meat.
Reducing pet food’s paw print
“Our pets’ environmental paw print accounts for 30 percent of meat consumed in the United States and it doesn’t have to,” Ryan Bethencourt, co-founder and chief executive officer of Wild Earth, said in a statement. “By replacing factory-farmed products with clean, sustainable, cruelty-free cell-based meat we can tackle the issues of low quality and often contaminated meat used for our pets’ food and transform the sustainability of the entire pet food industry.”
Courtesy
The company is driven by the environmental and ethical implications of the current pet food industry. Dog and cat food produce around 64 million tons of CO2 per year—the equivalent of more than 13 million cars. The industry is also rife with health risks—much of conventional pet food comes from animals not fit for human consumption, which can mean a higher risk for contaminants and poor-quality food.
“Wild Earth has always been on the cutting edge of plant-based pet food and I look forward to seeing their continued growth as they step into the cell-based meat space,” said investor Mark Cuban.
The broth topper will be available to consumers next year; it’s made from cultivated chicken cells, which eliminates the need for raising livestock. It also reduces the environmental footprint by 96 percent and reduces water consumption by between 82 and 96 percent, according to recent Oxford data.
Cell-based pet food
“Cell-based meat is the future of food for us and our pets, and this development marks an important milestone in our mission to disrupt the pet food industry for the better,” Bethencourt said. “We walk the walk when it comes to taking steps to reduce the destructive impact the industry has on our pets’ health and on our environment.”
Because, Animals cultivated mouse meat
Last year, Colorado-based pet food company Because, Animals debuted the first pet food made from cultured mouse meat. “The public launch of Harmless Hunt is a milestone for us, for the cultured and alt-protein industry, for pet food, and for animals raised and slaughtered to feed cats and dogs,” co-founder and CEO Dr. Shannon Falconer said in a statement.
“We are finally able to provide pets with a healthier, safer, greener choice at a price that will be on par with other premium retail products.”
Cellular agriculture producers across the APAC region have come to a consensus: the preferred English-language term for the category is “cultivated.”
The cultivated meat sector has gone through a number of naming conventions including “clean meat” and “lab-grown” meat. But “cultivated” may be what sticks. That’s according an historic memo of understanding signed by the leading companies and organizations in the sector across Asia-Pacific countries.
APAC aligns on ‘cultivated’
Signatories of the memo include Good Food Institute APAC, APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture, and more than 30 other key industry stakeholders including multinational companies Cargill and Thai Union as well as regional coalition groups China’s Cellular Agriculture Alliance, Cellular Agriculture Australia, the Japan Association for Cellular Agriculture, and Korean Society for Cellular Agriculture. The agreement was signed during Singapore International Agri-Food Week.
Cellmeat’s Cultivated Dokdo Shrimp
“Nomenclature and regulatory harmonisation are vital for the long-term success of the cultivated foods industry and this MOU establishes a regional precedent that can be replicated in other markets around the globe,” said APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture President Dr. Sandhya Sriram and Program Manager Peter Yu.
“The location of this historic announcement was no coincidence,” Good Food Institute APAC Managing Director Mirte Gosker said. “In recent years, Singapore has invested the necessary resources to make the city-state a welcoming ecosystem for food innovation and multilateral collaboration. This MOU is the latest proof that the Lion City is trading its traditional reliance on food imports for a new role as the place where the alternative protein sector’s biggest decisions are forged, announced, and exported to the world.”
Regulatory approval can’t come soon enough
While the naming of cultivated meat may be sorted out, the sale and distribution are still a waiting game for the growing industry. Currently, only Singapore has approved the sale of cultivated meat—Eat Just received approval for its Good Meat cultivated chicken in 2020.
Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat
But with more than $2 billion in funding and more than 120 startups innovating in the space, approval can’t come soon enough for the industry.
Earlier this week, three of the leading cultivated food industry associations announced plans to formalize the launch of a global alliance to advance cultivated foods. The members include the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture, and Cellular Agriculture Europe.
“[G]lobal challenges require global solutions,” Gosker told Green Queen. “By bringing together regional industry coalitions from Europe, the US, and Asia Pacific, this timely, new worldwide alliance has the potential to be a game-changer.”
The cellular agriculture industry receives a big boost with The Netherlands’ €60 million investment and additional €25 million in financing.
The Dutch government’s investment is now the largest government grant in the world into the novel cultivated and cell-cultured animal tech. The funding is in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality.
Sector growth, emissions reductions
By 2050, the investment should yield big returns; the Dutch government says it expects €1.25 – €2.0 billion in growth in Dutch earning capacity by the middle of the century. It also calculated the emissions savings, anticipating cultivated meat and similar tech will reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 1.8 million tons and reduce ammonia by 15 to 20 kilotons per year.
Cultivated beef meatballs. Photo by SpaceF.
“We are very pleased that we can now start with the first activities to stimulate and consolidate cellular agriculture in the Netherlands.” Ira van Eelen, said in a statement on behalf of the Cellular Agriculture Netherlands Foundation. “With this we can guarantee that the Netherlands remains the ideal place for cellular agriculture to thrive. We have a rich history in cellular agriculture and are a global leader in biotechnology, alternative proteins and food innovation. Supported by this visionary leadership that the Dutch government is showing again today, we will expand our team in the coming months and roll out the first activities around public research, scaling up and education.”
The Cellular Agriculture Netherlands Foundation now includes nearly three dozen organizations ranging from NGOs and educational institutions to startups. With the new funding, the foundation will set up a new office to engage with potential partners and implement programs.
Cultivated meat approval and support
Currently, only Singapore has approved cultivated meat for sale, but the Netherlands could be next—and soon. Earlier this year it legalized sampling of cultivated meat. The Netherlands put cultivated meat on the map in 2013 when Dutch-based Mosa Meat debuted its first meat grown from cells.
Mosa Meat steak tartar. Photo by Mosa Meat.
“Cellular agriculture is a Dutch invention and we do not want to lose our competitive advantage,” Robert Jones, head of public affairs for Mosa Meat said in an interview with Dutch publication Innovation Origins.
Dutch consumers are ripe for alternatives to conventional meat as well. A survey conducted in February found that more than 25 percent of Dutch residents want more meat-free options to help decrease the country’s carbon footprint.
The new funding will give the sector a boost and aims to attract startups in the space to the Netherlands. The government funding will support private equity startups and and bring more expertise and investment to the cellular agriculture sector.
For the first time, three leading cultivated food industry associations are hosting a first-of-its-kind meeting this week in Singapore to formalize the launch of a global alliance to advance cultivated foods on the global stage.
The alliance is made up of the U.S.-based Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA), and Cellular Agriculture Europe (CAE) and represents 31 of the leading cultivated meat, seafood, and dairy companies. According to alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute’s database, there are currently more than 120 startups working on cultivated food globally, and collectively they have raised over $2 billion in funding to recreate animal protein at a fraction of the emissions, water and land cost of industrial agriculture.
In an email statement, Mirte Gosker, Managing Director of GFI APAC,told Green Queen that “global challenges require global solutions. By bringing together regional industry coalitions from Europe, the US, and Asia Pacific, this timely, new worldwide alliance has the potential to be a game-changer.”
Historic Meeting at SIAW
At a meeting held during Singapore International Agri-Food Week (SIAW), the leaders and management committees of each organization, including Sandhya Sriram Ph.D., APAC-SCA (Shiok Meats), Robert E. Jones, Cellular Agriculture Europe (Mosa Meat) and David Tonucci Ph.D., AMPS Innovation (SCiFi Foods), will discuss how to better leverage the new tripartite alliance to push forward regional synergies, better advocate for regulatory frameworks and communicate more effectively about the benefits of cellular agriculture.
SIAW, a week-long series of food and agriculture industry events where regulators, investors, startups, MNCs, and other stakeholders are gathering from all over the world to showcase the latest developments and products, offers the perfect backdrop and timing for this historic meeting.
Currently, Singapore remains the only country in the world that allows for the sale of cultivated meat. Californian company Eat Just was granted regulatory approval for its cell-based chicken back in December 2020 by the nation-state’s government and since then, there has been little progress in other geographies.
“Unfortunately, current regulations for alternative proteins lag behind consumer demand and few standardized best practices or technical recommendations have so far been implemented,” says Gosker.
“Establishing consistent, efficient, and science-based global regulatory frameworks for cultivated foods is critical to maximizing the sector’s potential to mitigate environmental degradation, strengthen food security, and alleviate global poverty.”
Ira Van Eelen, co-founder of KindEarth.Tech and a key figure in the world of cultivated meat, agrees that a cohesive global alliance is necessary for further progress. “This is a smart move and another sign of the maturing of the cultivated meat industry. As regulations are developed around the world, their [the industry’s] voices will be more powerful together and there is a lot that they can learn from each other in building the regional ecosystems it will take to scale up and support a thriving industry,” she told Green Queen via email.
Van Eelen is the daughter of Willem Van Eelen, the Dutch scientist who pioneered cell-based meat technology. The rights to his work were later acquired via patent by Eat Just.
A New, United Voice To Advocate For Novel Foods
The new alliance hopes to have a united voice at the upcoming COP27 event and engage more strategically with the likes of Codex Alimentarius (Food Code), a joint effort between the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) designed to create international food standards.
In March 2022, the Codex Alimentarius Commission issued a call for comments after recognizing the need for the development and production of foods like cultivated meat and said it plans to use the feedback to conduct an “assessment of the range and suitability of Codex tools that could be used to progress work on safety, quality, labeling, nutrition and/or fair trade practices” for such novel foods.
Cellular agriculture is one of the pillars of the alternative protein industry, which also includes plant-based analogues and fermentation-enabled technologies and counts over 1,000 startups and companies working to reduce the ill effects of industrial animal agriculture. As the global food system faces unprecedented challenges from an energy crisis to water shortages to supply chain woes and the worsening effects of climate change, new means of food production are essential for future food security. As the global population nears 8 billion this November and experts predict 9.7 billion by 2050, alternative proteins provide a sustainable, ethical and healthy solution to the growing demand for animal protein.
Lead image courtesy of Higher Steaks and Tailored Brands.
Singapore-based Umami Meats has filed a patent for a novel single-stem cell technology that it says can build both muscle and fat in cultivated seafood.
The new patent for mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) lines from fish is aimed at helping Umami meats make its cultivated seafood more accessible by lowering costs and scaling production. Current standards for cultivated meat and seafood require multiple cell lines and types to produce muscle and fat. Umami says its new MSC technology reduces that to one cell line and one production line for a variety of tissues. The company has also created plant-based and algae-based growth media that it says are cheaper and easier to scale. The cost of growth factors has historically been a roadblock to price parity with conventional meat.
‘Faster and more efficient cell growth’
“So far, we have established MSC lines from three species, including our flagship species, Japanese eel. This innovative approach to cell lines builds the foundation for faster and more efficient cell growth. Our technology advances are a critical driver of lowering costs, increasing scalability, and making cultivated seafood affordable for mainstream consumers,” Mihir Pershad, Founder and CEO of Umami Meats, said in a statement.
According to the organization WorldFish, global seafood demand is expected to double by 2050 despite the pressures already being felt by the world’s oceans and fisheries. Umami Meats says its cultivated fish and seafood play a critical role in addressing rising global demand.
Photo by Caroline Attwood at Unsplash.
“What makes Umami Meats different in the cultivated food industry is our method for cultivating premium seafood with the vision of reducing overfishing of endangered and difficult-to-farm species,” Pershad said. “Our single-stem cell method will be a game changer in enabling us to reduce the price of cultivated premium seafood to match that of traditionally-sourced fish.”
Umami Meats says cultivated seafood can also address contamination risks widespread in wild-caught and farm-raised fish. “Advancements in cultivated seafood technologies could help address health risks like mercury and microplastic contamination in seafood or the growing risk of extinction for dozens of the most consumed seafood species,” the company said.
Alternative seafood demand
A recent survey by Good Food Institute APAC found a growing number of Asian consumers are shifting away from conventional seafood in favor of alternatives because of contaminants including heavy metals and microplastic. Plant-based seafood options are already making waves in the category, and while cultivated meat offers a solution, the category has yet to receive widespread regulatory approval outside of Singapore. By 2030, cultivated meat and seafood have the potential of becoming a $25 billion market, a recent McKinsey report noted.
Cultivated seafood also addresses the increasing depletion of key species. Some species of eel and tuna, for example, are facing the threat of extinction if current fishing practices and ocean threats continue.
Courtesy Martin Widenka via Unsplash
“We know it will take multiple scientific and production process breakthroughs to make cultivated seafood affordable. But we are committed for the long term because we want premium cultivated seafood to be an everyday option for consumers,” Pershad said.
‘’The team is working diligently to shift the cost paradigm and will be increasingly leveraging advanced machine learning tools to accelerate the process of optimizing and scaling up production,’’ Pershad said. “The promise of cultivated seafood is compelling; our priority is bringing the tremendous potential of our scientific breakthroughs to commercial viability. We want to realize that promise and bring it to sufficient scale to create real impact for the world.”
The announcement comes just days after California-based BlueNalu announced it developed technology to help it achieve scalability and reduce production costs by 75 percent for its cultivated seafood.
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.
