Australian cultivated meat startup Magic Valley held a tasting for politicians in the New South Wales parliament last week.
Just months before cultivated meat makes it onto restaurant menus in Australia, some of the country’s policymakers got a taste of it themselves.
In the New South Wales parliament last week, politicians were treated to cultivated lamb meatballs and pork dumplings from Melbourne startup Magic Valley. And they were impressed.
“It was delicious,” said Alex Greenwich, an independent representative for Sydney. “This type of meat is guilt-free: no animal cruelty, no deforestation, and saves water and CO2 emissions,” he added, a nod to lamb’s status as the third most polluting food product (after beef and dark chocolate).
The tasting event came months after the firm received an A$100,000 ($63,000) injection from the federal government to transition from research to commercial production of its cultivated meat.
Cultivated meat as an economic opportunity for Australia
Courtesy: Magic Valley
The tasting was held at the parliament’s Rooftop Garden, attended by 17 politicians and ministers, including state treasurer Daniel Mookhey and innovation minister Anoulack Chanthivong. The dumplings were served with chilli oil and chilli crisp, and the meatballs featured a classic marinara sauce.
Magic Valley’s technology eschews fetal bovine serum and leverages induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). It takes a small sample of skin cells from a living animal, which are expanded and turned into iPSCs, which in turn can be converted into muscle and fat.
The cells are grown in a bioreactor, in a mixture of water, amino acids, and other nutrients. They’re harvested after a few weeks and turned into meat products. These can be made over and over again from the original cell sample, since the iPSCs can grow in an unlimited way.
According to the startup, its process can reduce emissions by 92%, land use by 95%, and water use by 78% compared to conventional meat.
The event came a year after it held a public tasting for its cultivated pork, serving it as part of baos at John Gorilla Café in Brunswick, Victoria. Magic Valley has also hosted a televised tasting on Australia’s Channel 7 network and appeared on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars Australia.
Highlighting why it was important for politicians to try it, founder and CEO Paul Bevan said that the event was about more than just food. “It’s about jobs, technology, and positioning Australia as a leader in one of the world’s fastest-growing industries,” he said.
Emma Hurst, a representative of the Animal Justice Party who hosted the tasting, concurred: “There is a real economic opportunity for New South Wales and indeed Australia to become a leader in the production, sale and export of cellular agriculture and to be part of this worldwide shift in the food system.”
Government support is critical ahead of cultivated meat debut
Courtesy: Magic Valley
Magic Valley expanded into a new pilot facility at bio-innovator and incubator Co-Labs in 2023, which can house bioreactors with a capacity of up to 3,000 litres, allowing it to potentially produce 150,000 kgs of cultivated meat annually.
As of now, it is raising capital to build its first manufacturing facility in the country, an effort backed by the A$100M grant from the government’s Industry Growth Program. The company is eligible for up to $5M in funding through the initiative.
“With support from both government and private investors, we can build advanced facilities, create regional employment, and export high-tech protein to the world,” said Bevan.
New South Wales is already home to one of the world’s leading cultivated meat startups. Vow, based in Sydney, makes cultured quail and foie gras, which have been on the market in Singapore since last year.
In April, the firm received preliminary approval from Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) for its quail product. With the final green light from ministers expected in June, Vow will debut its cultivated meat at “high-end restaurants and elevated fast-casual concepts” in Australia, before rolling out in retail later in the year.
These developments coincide with a decline in meat consumption among Australians, 42% of whom are either reducing or not eating animal protein at all. But a 2023 survey of Australians and New Zealanders found that 74% weren’t familiar with cultivated meat, while only 24% would readily incorporate it into their diets (and 48% said they wouldn’t do so).
Research has also found that when it comes to alternative protein policies, Australia ranks bottom of the list of the 10 most supportive governments in Asia-Pacific. So public tasting events and government support are key to building awareness and advancing the industry.
Home to a host of leading future food startups, California has established a special committee to advance innovation in the alternative protein sector.
While several states in the US are banning (or hoping to ban) cultivated meat from being sold within their borders, some are doubling down on their commitment to supercharge the future food industry.
Among those is California, which last month established the Assembly Select Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation to boost the state’s position as a leader in sustainable food systems.
The special committee is being chaired by Ash Kalra, a Democrat from San José, who was instrumental in California’s $5M investment in alternative protein research in 2022.
Why California is betting on alternative proteins
Beyond Meat is one of a number of alternative protein leaders hailing from California | Courtesy: Beyond Meat
In the US, select committees are established by the Senate for a limited time, and tend to be investigative rather than legislative in nature. These committees may or may not be given the authority to report legislation to the chamber.
California’s alternative protein committee will focus on efforts to support all pillars of the alternative protein sector, including plant-based proteins, fermentation-derived foods, and cultivated meat.
It will begin by organising information hearings to determine how California can expand its alternative protein economy while aligning with its climate and sustainability goals. “This committee is about more than just boosting a promising sector of our economy,” Kalra said. “It’s about investing in climate-smart food solutions that meet the needs of a growing population.”
In 2022, the state unveiled what it claimed was the world’s first detailed climate neutrality pathway, aiming to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 48% in 2030 and 85% by the target year of 2045. It also aims to save $200B in healthcare costs related to pollution.
California is also working to redirect 20% of food from being sent to landfills by this year, and reduce methane emissions by 40% (below 2013 levels) by the end of this decade. Targeting meat and dairy production is a key tenet of this latter target, considering that livestock is responsible for half of the state’s methane footprint.
In fact, animal agriculture is responsible for 70% of California’s total emissions from the food system, and takes up a third of its land area. Expanding its alternative protein ecosystem is therefore a critical step towards decarbonisation.
Producing foods from plant-based ingredients, microbes or cellular agriculture uses a tiny share of the land and water that animal proteins do, while emitting a fraction of the greenhouse gases as well.
The Golden State is already a leader in alternative protein
Courtesy: Wildtype
“Our state is a leader in alternative protein innovation and home to the first major plant-based protein companies, the first-ever cultivated meat startups, and numerous inventive fermentation food companies,” said Kalra.
Indeed, California is the birthplace of modern-day plant-based giants Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, and a host of leading cultivated meat startups. In fact, all four companies approved to sell cultivated proteins in the US – Eat Just, Upside Foods, Mission Barns, and Wildtype – hail from the Golden State.
It is also home to the Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein. Opened last year at the University of California, Davis, it is conducting research on speeding up these future foods’ path to market.
California also made the single-largest alternative protein R&D investment of any state back three years ago, with Governor Gavin Newsom signing a budget bill that provided $5M to UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and UCLA. As mentioned above, this effort was facilitated by Kalra.
Courtesy: UC Davis
“I look forward to holding informational hearings on the topic of growing this new economy and how it can support California’s climate and food sustainability goals,” the senator said.
Other states that have championed alternative proteins in recent years include Illinois, which poured in $680M in the iFAB Tech Hub to advance precision fermentation research and its biomanufacturing capabilities. Massachusetts, meanwhile, is home to Tufts University and its Center for Cellular Agriculture, and passed an economic development bill that pledged investment in the sector.
The state has pledged $10M for local companies and to match grants supporting these proteins, and another $115M for an infrastucture programme to support job growth in key tech sectors, including plant-based, fermented and cultivated foods with “sensory characteristics that are consistent with conventional meat and dairy”.
“I think it’s incumbent on us lawmakers to think long-term,” Senator Barry Finegold, chairperson of Massachusetts’s economic development and emerging tech committee, told Green Queen last year. “If we’re concerned about climate change, if we’re concerned about people’s health, then I think we have to take science seriously.”
In its latest conference in Doha, the International Islamic Fiqh Academy ruled that Muslims can consume cultivated meat if certain conditions are met.
The world’s two billion Muslims can eat cultivated meat, according to a fatwa by a leading Islamic authority.
At the 26th International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA) Conference in Doha this month, scholars deliberated on the consumption of cultivated meat and genetically modified food under Islamic law.
They approved the marketing and consumption of these foods, so long as they meet certain specific requirements, opening up the novel food market to a quarter of the global population.
What conditions does cultivated meat need to meet?
Courtesy: Aleph Farms
Operating under the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the IIFA is one of the world’s leading legal authorities on Islam. Its members include Muslim jurists, scholars and intellectuals with expertise in various fields, who provide guidance on how Islamic principles apply to contemporary issues in science, medicine, economics, and technology.
Its latest conference was held in Doha in early May, with 230 experts from over 60 countries attending. Among the issues discussed were artificial intelligence, video games, genetically modified foods, and cultivated meat.
On the latter, the IIFA laid out several conditions that need to be met before Muslims can consume cultivated meat:
The source cells must come from animals permissible to eat and be slaughtered according to Islamic law – so pork products are prohibited.
The animal cells must be cultured in a medium free from prohibited substances like blood. It means products can’t be produced with fetal bovine serum, which is derived from the blood of unborn calves.
The products must be developed under trustworthy regulatory supervision.
Additionally, the Academy stressed the need for full consumer transparency and adherence to food safety standards, noting that cultivated meat should complement – not replace – conventional sources of meat.
Meanwhile, the IIFA permitted the consumption of genetically modified foods when sourced from animals permissible to eat, processed in a safe manner, and compliant with Sharia law. It underscored the importance of disclosing relevant information about these foods and their preparation methods.
Growing recognition for cultivated meat under Islamic law
Courtesy: International Islamic Fiqh Academy
The IIFA ruling is the third fatwa in favour of Muslims’ consumption of cultivated meat. A fatwa is a non-binding legal opinion based on Sharia law, and is an important guideline for Muslims on matters not specifically defined in the Quran.
In 2024, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore issued a fatwa recognising these proteins as halal, a decision replicated by the Korean Muslim Federation earlier this year.
These were followed by similar conclusions by three leading Shariah scholars in Saudi Arabia in 2023, who told cultivated chicken maker Good Meat that cultivated meat can be considered halal, and the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America in 2022, who adjudged it as provisionally permissible by default, provided Halal criteria are followed.
Halal diets refer to food consumption in accordance with Islamic law. When it comes to meat, it means animals must be slaughtered in a prescribed way, and certain types of meat and byproducts – including pork and blood products – are prohibited. Globally, the Halal meat market is estimated to grow by 7% annually to reach $1.6T by 2032.
Cultivated meat producers understand the opportunity. A 44-company survey in 2023 revealed that complying with halal requirements was a priority for 87% of the firms. A lack of resources outlining how products can adhere to such religious certifications remained a significant entry barrier, the study added.
“Ultimately, this decision marks a major step forward in aligning food innovation with cultural and religious values, a crucial ingredient in creating a world where alternative proteins are no longer alternative,” said the Good Food Institute APAC, an alternative protein think tank.
“It also clarifies religious guidelines for Asia-Pacific companies developing such products, opens doors for regulatory collaboration and halal certification frameworks across the region, and encourages Muslim organisations in other countries to follow in the footsteps of Singapore and South Korea,” it added.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Kellanova’s plant-based RXBars, Vivera’s pre-frozen tofu, and a cultivated seafood tasting event.
New products and launches
Kellanova (formerly Kellogg’s) has launchedRXBar High Protein, a plant-based line of its famous clean-label bars. The peanut butter bars come in strawberry and vanilla flavours, and are packed with 18g of protein and only six ingredients.
Courtesy: Kellanova/Valerii Evlakhov/Getty Images
US wellness startup Happy Aging has launched a plant protein powder called Lean Muscle Formula. It contains 20g of pea and pumpkin seed protein and 5g of creatine monohydrate per 100g, and comes in vanilla and chocolate flavours. The product is available on its website for $55 per 725g pouch.
Israeli food tech startup Meala has partnered with DSM-Firmenich to launch a texturising pea protein called Vertis PB Pea. The ingredient is designed to replace modified binders like hydrocolloids to make cleaner-label meat alternatives, and is available in Europe.
Also in Israel, Efishient Protein has introduced a plant-based grouper fillet. It is working on a cultivated tilapia in the background.
Courtesy: Oshi
Speaking of alternative seafood, plant-based firm Oshi has begun direct-to-consumer sales of its vegan salmon, expanding from its foodservice-only model.
In more seafood news, Austrian mycoprotein startup Revo Foods has unveiled a BBQ flavour of its flagship product, The FIlet – Inspired by Salmon.
Chilean food tech firm NotCo has released the newest iteration of its AI-powered NotMilk, with a focus on a clean-label formulation. The NotMilk Avena SKU contains just oats, coconut butter, chicory fibre, and water, and is available in Chile and Brazil. It will soon roll out in Mexico too.
Courtesy: NotCo
French dairy-free brand Atelier Dessy has introduced a plant-based alternative to Icelandic skyr in raspberry and mango-passionfruit flavours.
Dutch vegan giant Vivera has introduced a pre-frozen firm tofu that absorbs marinades more quickly, responding to a TikTok trend of freezing the protein to make it spongier. It will be available in UK supermarkets from June 9 for £2.75 per 200g pack.
British food tech firm Myco, known for its oyster-mushroom-based burgers, has signed a deal to provide its Hooba ingredient to Teesside University as part of a blended meat range.
Courtesy: Treets/Candy Kittens
Planet A Foods‘s cocoa-free ChoViva chocolate is part of Candy Kittens and Treets‘s Crunchy Corn, Crispy, and Salted Peanuts dragées in the UK. They’re available online and at retailers including Boots.
South Korean food giant Pulmuone has revamped its dairy-free ice cream brand Planto with new packaging and label descriptors like ‘reduced sugar’ and ‘high dietary fibre’. The new products come in 90ml strawberry-raspberry and chocolate brownie packs, and will primarily be available online and through B2B channels, including Kurly, Coupang, and Shop Pulmuone.
Company and finance updates
Singaporean cultivated meat firm Umami Bioworksheld a public tasting for its white fish (served in a fish-and-chips format) and caviar (served plain and in canapé-style) at London’s Underground Cookery School.
Likewise, plant-based firm Simply Better Brands – which makes vegan protein powders and bars – has rebranded to Trubar.
Dutch fermentation startup The Protein Brewery has appointed former Cousin executive Thijs Bosch as its new CEO. He succeeds Sue Garfitt, who will transition into a non-executive role.
Courtesy: cReal
Swedish food tech firm cReal Food has opened a zero-waste oat milk powder facility in Bjuv, backed by a 300 million kronor ($31.3M) investment by Lindéngruppen and other investors.
Finnish startup Enifer has partnered with Brazilian ethanol producer FS to produce its Pekilo mycoprotein in Latin America, using thin stillage derived from corn ethanol as feedstock.
Research and policy developments
The Spanish city of Parla has become the country’s first city (and the world’s 40th) to sign the call for an international Plant-Based Treaty.
Vegans and vegetarians should receive special rations if the UK is hit with a major disaster, according to Prof Tim Lang, an emeritus professor of food policy at the University of London and an adviser to the National Preparedness Commission.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
With BBQ season upon us, a survey by Beyond Meat has found that 42% of Brits eat less meat during the week now than two years ago, and 47% say having plant-based options on the menu is important to them.
Two new studies show that the plant-based Portfolio Diet can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality, and improve heart health across diverse demographics.
A landmark study by the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture has revealed that the region can produce significantly more food with less money and fewer resources with regenerative agriculture systems.
San Francisco startup Wildtype has become the world’s first startup to get US regulatory approved to sell cultivated seafood, with its salmon now on the menu at Kann in Portland, Oregon.
Cultivated seafood has cruised to become a reality.
US startup Wildtype has received regulatory approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell its sushi-grade cultivated salmon in the country. It is now available at Kann, James Beard Award winner Gregory Gourdet’s live-fire Haitian restaurant in Portland, Oregon.
“We have no questions at this time about Wildtype’s conclusion that foods comprising or containing cultured coho salmon cell material resulting from the production process defined in [its application] are as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods,” the FDA said in a scientific memo.
It concludes a process that began three summers ago and required eight amendments as the startup’s process evolved and the regulator worked to confirm the safety of cell-cultured salmon.
“Cultivated seafood, apart from catfish, is regulated solely by the FDA; there is no subsequent USDA step as there is for chicken and beef,” Wildtype co-founders Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck told Green Queen in an email.
Wildtype’s salmon at Kann in Portland, Oregon | Courtesy: Wildtype
That cleared the way for Wildtype to begin offering its salmon to restaurants immediately. “Regarding the timing of our Kann launch, Wildtype salmon is on the menu now,” the founders confirmed. “It is available on Thursdays in June, and every day starting July.”
Backed by the likes of Robert Downey Jr, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeff Bezos, the startup is preparing launches with four other restaurants over the next four months. “Our plans for retail launch will follow our launch in foodservice,” they revealed.
It is the fourth cultivated protein firm to be allowed to sell in the US, and the third with full approval. Fellow Californian startup Mission Barns secured the FDA letter for its cultivated pork fat in March, though it is still awaiting USDA authorisation for its pilot plant and product labelling.
How Wildtype makes its cultivated salmon
Wildtype co-founders Justin Kolbeck and Aryé Elfenbein | Courtesy: Wildtype
Elfenbein and Kolbeck founded Wildtype nearly a decade ago, working to commercialise cultivated coho salmon saku, the most expensive part of the fish. Some populations of this species are either threatened or endangered, necessitating innovations like cellular agriculture.
Wildtype obtains living cells from Pacific salmon, which are adapted to suspension culture. They are grown in tanks similar to those used to make beer or kombucha, under temperature and pH conditions that wild fish thrive in, alongside a nutrient mix containing proteins, sugar, fat, salt, and minerals like iron and zinc.
The cells are harvested using bowl centrifugation, washed three times with a water and sugar solution, rapidly cooled using blast chillers, and stored frozen. They’re mixed with certain plant-based ingredients to replicate the structure and texture of conventional salmon, and the resulting product is used in raw sushi preparations like sashimi and maki.
“The composition of Wildtype salmon has always included cells as the primary ingredient after water,” Elfenbein and Kolbeck said, but did not confirm which other ingredients are used.
Wildtype’s cultvated salmon can be used in raw sushi applications | Courtesy: Wildtype
In 2021, Wildtype opened a pilot-scale Fishery in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighbourhood. At the time, it had the ability to produce 50,000 lbs of seafood per year, which could be expanded to 200,000 lbs at maximum capacity.
The firm has held numerous tasting events for its coho salmon across the US, teaming up with chefs like José Andrés, Rose Ha, and Adam Tortosa to rave reviews.
“You would have to tell someone that the Wildtype lox wasn’t conventional for them to suspect it was anything different,” suggested Brian Cooley, a technology expert who spent nearly three decades as CNET’s tech editor.
He tried the salmon as part of a $24 bagel at a pop-up event at Loveski Deli in Marin County, California earlier this year. “I think it’s actually better than conventional lox because it doesn’t have the occasional gristle or silverskin you find in conventional products,” he told Green Queen.
A ‘watershed moment’ for seafood and cultivated proteins
Wildtype’s salmon will debut at chef Gregory Gourdet’s Kann restaurant | Courtesy: Wildtype
At Kann, Wildtype’s salmon is paired in a summery dish with pickled strawberry, spiced tomato, strawberry juice, and an epis rice cracker.
“We take pride in the ingredients we utilise,” said Gourdet. “Introducing Wildtype’s cultivated salmon to our menu hits the elevated and sustainable marks we want our menu to offer guests who share a similar value system to ours.”
It is a milestone for the alternative seafood industry, which has long been an afterthought to beef, chicken, and pork analogues. There are several startups working on cultivated seafood, including BlueNalu and Umami Bioworks; Wildtype’s approval will likely usher them to advance their commercialisation efforts.
It comes at a time when cultivated meat faces both financial and political upheaval. After VCs pumped $1.3B into the category in 2021, investment has dipped dramatically. In 2023, funding fell by 75%, followed by another 40% drop in 2024, reaching just $139M. It means that in the last three years, this sector has cumulatively raised less money than it did in 2021 alone.
Wildtype itself has raised $120M, most of which came in a $100M Series B round in 2022. But its founders did not respond to a question about its fundraising plans now.
“Wildtype’s achievement is a watershed moment for domestic seafood production and for the cultivated protein industry overall,” said Dr Suzi Gerber, executive director of the Association for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, a cellular agriculture trade group.
“The thoughtful, evidence-driven review proves that innovative food technologies meet the highest safety standards, and can play a vital role in healthy American diets, while strengthening our food system’s domestic production and resilience, supporting the president’s executive order to expand seafood production in the US,” she added.
While pet food brands tout the use of animal byproducts as sustainable, a new analysis shows that products made with cultivated meat generate a fraction of the emissions.
Producing meat from cellular agriculture instead of conventional farming can drastically lower the climate impact of pet food producers, according to a new analysis.
Many believe pet food to be a sustainable product due to the use of animal byproducts, since this is waste from the production of meat for human use that would otherwise be discarded. In fact, some use this argument to suggest that pet food actually offsets the impact of the human food industry.
In reality, these products aren’t emission-free, and to highlight the true reduction potential for pet food, Austrian-American food tech startup BioCraft Pet Nutrition commissioned a carbon footprint analysis of its cultivated mouse meat and the conventional beef byproducts used in the industry.
Conducted by corporate environmental consultancy ClimatePartner, the assessment showed that the firm’s BioCrafted Meat emits one-twelfth of the carbon dioxide of beef byproducts.
BioCraft co-founder and CEO Dr Shannon Falconer ascribed the difference to the startup’s “unique production process, which harvests the full contents of the bioreactor, which also makes it quite different from cultivated meat production”.
Byproducts don’t make pet food as sustainable as you think
Courtesy: BioCraft Pet Nutrition/ClimatePartner
The analysis was based on internationally recognised methodologies, including the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (GHG Protocol), and used emissions factors from databases like Ecoinvent and the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
BioCraft’s emissions were calculated based on its ingredients being produced with mixed energy in Europe, considering all relevant greenhouse gases and calculating their values as CO2 equivalents.
ClimatePartner’s analysis revealed that, based on standard EU beef production processes, beef byproducts emit 21.28kg of CO2 per kg. In comparison, BioCraft’s cultivated mouse meat produces just 1.73kg of CO2 for the same amount, offering manufacturers a 92% reduction.
While the use of offal, bones, blood, and fat instead of prime beef cuts makes many consumers regard byproducts as low-impact alternatives, that isn’t necessarily the case. “The environmental impacts of raising cattle are caused by the entire animal, not merely the portions used in the human food supply,” said Falconer.
Research shows that only around a quarter of animal byproducts produced in wealthy nations go towards the pet food industry, which competes for these ingredients with the likes of the livestock, energy and pharma sectors.
Some studies have contended that byproducts actually have a worse environmental impact because of their poor nutritional content. “For dog food, using animal byproducts rather than human-grade meat requires 1.4 times more livestock carcasses, and for cat food, 1.9 times more,” a recent analysis found.
“Hence, animal byproducts are less efficient to produce than human-grade meat. Their production requires significantly more livestock carcasses. This has the potential to increase the number of livestock animals required, and the associated environmental impacts,” its authors explained.
Courtesy: BioCraft Pet Nutrition
Cultivated meat presents climate wins as alternative pet food heats up
BioCraft’s unstructured ingredient is grown from cultured mouse cells and doesn’t require additional downstream processing. It’s also cost-effective. Typically, animal-derived growth media – the mix of proteins, sugar and nutrients that feed animal cells in a bioreactor – cost hundreds of dollars per litre.
BioCraft has developed a plant-based growth medium formulated to provide a nutritious boost to the end product, allowing its pet food ingredient to be priced at $2-2.50 per pound.
Importantly, the carbon footprint analysis looked at manufacturer-driven life-cycle stages – from raw material extraction and pre-processing to packaging, delivery, and disposal. It didn’t take into account the emissions from the manufacturing of final products or consumer use, since BioCraft solely operates as a B2B supplier of raw materials.
Still, this gives a glimpse of the emissions reduction potential for pet food producers that swap beef byproducts with cultivated meat. BioCraft’s ingredient has a comparable consistency and nutritional profile to conventional slurry, and so can be used as a one-to-one replacement in wet or dry pet food at similar inclusion levels.
Courtesy: BioCraft Pet Nutrition
The firm recently received registration from Austrian authorities to use Category 3 animal byproducts (ABPs) in the EU, allowing it to sell the cultivated mouse meat to pet food producers in the region. It is already working with Partner in Pet Food and Prefera Petfood to bring the ingredient to market, having earmarked early 2026 for its debut.
Czech startup Bene Meat Technologies was the first to register cultivated pet food as an EU feed material back in 2023, although it did so under the fermentation category instead of as an ABP. It claims that its cultivated meat generates 84-95% fewer emissions than beef, though this analysis did not focus specifically on byproducts.
It is a ripe time for alternative pet food. The UK became the first country where consumers could buy cultivated meat for their cats and dogs off the shelves this year, while Germany’s Marsapet rolled out a kibble product for dogs using Calysta’s gas-fermented FeedKind protein in Europe.
Meanwhile, British vegan pet food maker The Pack was acquired by Prefera Petfood, and fellow London-based startup Omni saw sales shoot up by 130% with 20,000 new customers in the three months after securing an investment from Steven Bartlett and Deborah Meaden on Dragons’ Den.
Elsewhere, one US startup has conducted feeding trials in pursuit of regulatory approval in the US, and Bene Meat has filed for approval there too. Meanwhile, California’s Friends & Family Pet Food Co has inked two deals to launch stateside and in Singapore.
California Cultured, a food tech startup making cocoa via cellular agriculture, has transitioned to large-scale biomanufacturing in a key breakthrough for the industry.
US startup California Cultured has successfully moved from lab-scale shake flash experiments to large-scale manufacturing of its cell-based cocoa, proving the viability of using cellular agriculture to make commodity foods facing multiple risks.
The expansion to precision-controlled bioreactor fermentation was executed with the help of Berkeley-based biomanufacturing firm Pow.Bio, and validates the economic and technical feasibility of producing cell-cultured cocoa on a commercial scale.
It is a major win for the cellular agriculture industry and comes at a time when the chocolate industry faces numerous climate and supply chain threats, which have driven cocoa prices to record highs and threatened the future of the industry as we know it.
How California Cultured reached commercial scale
Courtesy: California Cultured
Founded in 2020 by CEO Alan Perlstein and COO Harrison Yoon, California Cultured collects samples from a cocoa plant with ideal organoleptic properties. These are then cultured in fermentation tanks that mimic the conditions of the rainforests where cocoa thrives. Within three to four days, the cells are ready to be harvested, fermented and roasted.
To optimise it cocoa fermentation process for commercial volumes, it worked out of Pow.Bio’s newly commissioned 25,000 sq ft facility, which offers clean room capabilities, dual-chamber continuous fermentation systems, and real-time AI-based process control.
Pow.Bio helps synthetic biology companies commercialise faster and at competitive cost advanatges through its AI platform, which rapidly identifies better-performing process conditions for fermentation, helping increase outputs from existing infrastucture in a short time frame.
The project with California Cultured focused on the culture media optimisation (which makes the bulk of the cost of cell-based foods), oxygen transfer rates, and pH control to improve cell growth and metabolite production.
Among its core development goals were boosting metabolic efficiency to enhance growth kinetics and flavonoid and lipid synthesis (which are crucial for replicating the taste and mouthfeel of conventional chocolate). In addition, it tested scalable feed strategies and conducted continuous bioprocess monitoring to lower the cost per kg while maintaining product consistency.
“This scale-up marks a major achievement in the food tech sector,” said Scott Mitchell, CEO of Cult Food Science, an investor in the startup. “By unlocking scalable, ethical alternatives to traditionally resource-intensive commodities like cocoa, California Cultured is helping shape a more sustainable global food system.”
Cellular agriculture has the potential to drastically reduce emissions, resource use, water consumption, and land use, but the industry has historically been hampered by high costs, thanks in part to the use of pharmaceutical bioreactors that are ill-suited for food production.
Cult Food Science called California Culture’s breakthrough a “key inflexion point” for the alternative cocoa category, and suggested that it laid the “foundation for future innovations, including continuous fermentation and commercial launch of cocoa and coffee-based ingredients and products”.
Alternative cocoa is becoming more important by the day
These companies are aiming to address an urgent problem. Producing dark chocolate already emits more greenhouse gases than every other food except beef, while each bar of chocolate requires 1,700 litres of water on average. Add to that the vast amount of deforestation linked to the cocoa industry, thanks to increasing demand and the widespread use of palm oil.
The cocoa industry finds itself in a two-sided bind: it is both exacerbating climate change and facing the full force of its impacts. Global cocoa stocks have dropped to their lowest levels in a decade. Ivory Coast and Ghana – the two largest producers of the crop – have been the biggest victims, thanks to extreme weather and crop diseases (as well as reduced plantations in favour of illegal gold mining).
Scientists have warned that cocoa trees are threatened, and a third of them could die out by 2050, which could lead to a global chocolate shortage.
All this has already caused major price hikes. In 2024, cocoa futures broke all-time records, and the cost will continue to remain high this year. That has hurt the sales of industry behemoths like Hershey’s, whose profit forecast for 2025 is below analysts’ expectations.
Some are now turning to alternative cocoa products – Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest cocoa manufacturer, is using precision-fermented sunflower seeds for some of its offerings in Europe. Others, like Lindt & Sprüngli and Sparkalis (the VC arm of bakery and confectionery group Puratos), are investing in cell-based cocoa startups.
Sparkalis is also an investor in California Cultured, which opened its new 12,000 sq ft facility in West Sacramento earlier this year. Additionally, it is co-developing products with Japanese chocolate giant Meiji as part of a decade-long partnership. “Meiji came to us because unpredictable weather patterns – including heavy rainfall – have disrupted cacao cultivation, leading to a consecutive year of supply shortages,” California Cultured’s head of strategy, Steve Stearns, told Green Queen last year.
“This scarcity has driven futures prices to unprecedented levels, reflecting the strain on supply and demand dynamics within the chocolate industry.”
After a decline in alternative protein investments in 2024, funding further fell by 28% in Q1 2025 compared to the same period a year ago. Analysts blame AI, high costs, and low sales.
There’s no other way to put it: 2024 was a bleak year for food tech. Post-Covid geopolitical tensions and higher living costs continued to threaten both shoppers’ wallets and investor sentiment, and startups aiming to futureproof the food system bore the brunt of the impact.
It hasn’t gotten any easier, with 2025 bringing its own set of headwinds. President Donald Trump’s tariff war, Robert F Kennedy Jr’s attack on ultra-processed food and regulatory pathways, more bans on cultivated meat, a resurgence of beef and dairy both stateside and in Europe, and continued sales declines in several markets have all contributed to the storm engulfing the alternative protein industry.
Graphic by Green Queen
After a 44% drop in 2023, VC investments in plant-based food, fermentation-derived ingredients, and cultivated meat fell by a further 27% in 2024, according to Net Zero Insights data crunched by the Good Food Institute (GFI)
Q1 2025 investments in the sector declined by 28% YoY, falling to $235M. Fermentation startups capture the bulk of this, attracting $146M, while plant-based ($54M) and cultivated protein firms ($35M) continued to falter.
So who – or what – is to blame? And are there any bright spots for alternative protein?
Fermentation continues to thrive
Looking at the figures for both 2024 and early 2025, one segment sticks out: fermentation. It was the only alternative protein pillar to witness an increase in investment last year (by 43%), against decreases for both plant-based food (-64%) and cultivated meat (-40%).
In Q1 2025, fermentation startups attracted half of all funding flowing into the sector, with precision fermentation particularly piquing investor interest. This tech vertical was responsible for the three largest rounds of the quarter: Formo’s $36M venture debt loan from the European Investment Bank, Vivici’s $33.8M Series A round, and Liberation Labs’s $31.5M investment.
The only other investment round above $25M in this period was for Israeli cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms, which secured $29M as part of a larger fundraise in the coming months.
Courtesy: GFI
“Many of the fermentation companies that received large investments are focused on leveraging agricultural and food industry sidestreams as a sustainable feed source, helping produce food more efficiently and affordably – both of which are attractive propositions for investors,” Helene Grosshans, infrastructure investment manager at GFI Europe, wrote last year about the success of fermentation.
Still, fermentation investment totals fell year-over-year in Q1 2025, according to Daniel Gertner, lead economic and industry analyst for the organisation, yet ranked in the top half of the 10 most recent quarters.
So while alternative protein funding remained subdued in the first quarter of this year, he warns that “few meaningful trends can be identified in a single quarter”.
Can Europe keep up its momentum?
Alongside fermentation, European startups showed promising signs, collectively raising $509M in 2024 (a 23% annual increase). This included a record year for Germany, where alternative protein firms attracted $145M (although $61M of that came from Formo’s Series B round).
Here, too, fermentation shone. Biomass fermentation startups saw a 10% hike in investment in 2024, while those working on precision fermentation bagged more than thrice the funding totals of 2023. As mentioned above, that trend has continued this year, thanks to Vivici and Formo’s latest rounds.
Courtesy: GFI Europe
While at first glance it may seem that plant-based and cultivated meat startups performed miserably, context is crucial. As GFI Europe’s Grosshans points out, the decline for the former category is due to Oatly’s large $425M raise over two deals; if you discount publicly traded companies, privately held plant-based firms in Europe actually saw investment grow by 37% last year.
Similarly, two relatively large deals for Mosa Meat and Meatable, totalling $53.3M, skewed the data for cultivated meat, too, where funding dipped by 59%. These two Dutch startups are preparing to enter the market soon, so they’re not reflective of where most of the sector is.
AI has wrecked the investment landscape for everyone else
In 2024, there was a 38% dip in climate tech venture funding, thanks to a shift in investor interest towards artificial intelligence (AI), where financing crossed $100B.
In the first 12 weeks of this year, AI propelled global venture financing to its highest quarterly levels in nearly three years. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, raised $40B – that’s with a ‘B’ – which led AI to account for 58% of VC deal value in Q1 2025.
Non-AI sectors, however, experienced their weakest deal activity in a decade, notes Gertner. “Recent growth in overall venture funding has largely been driven by surges in AI investments, which have likely redirected capital flows from other industries,” he tells Green Queen.
“Alternative protein funding has slowed amid this increased investor focus on AI, while elevated interest rates, high production costs, and topline sales declines have also weighed on investment activity,” he adds. “Alternative proteins are not alone in this trend: adjacent industries like climate tech and consumer packaged goods have experienced similar investment slowdowns.”
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
Indeed, the wider food tech sector’s $2.2B funding in Q1 2025 was the worst quarterly performance in years. Matthieu Vincent, co-founder of strategy consultancy firm DigitalFoodLab, ascribes this to contextual reasons, as opposed to structural factors like the VC ecosystem being unsuited to long-term innovation.
The Q1 decline is linked to “the current economic uncertainties, notably on tariffs and their impact on the overall agrifood industries”, he explained in his newsletter.
Trump’s tariffs have already had investors worried, with Grey Silo Ventures’s investment manager, Matteo Leonardi, telling Green Queen last month: “As we are dealing with an industry that is already fighting to survive on the slightest of margins – and at industrial scale, let alone at pilot scale – US tariffs could result in a complete erosion of those already-thin margins.”
Adam Bergman, managing director of EcoTech Capital, predicted the downturn to continue in 2026. “I expect that over 70% of agtech and food tech companies will either go bankrupt, cease operations, or be liquidated in a fire sale. It is likely that a similar percentage of the capital invested in these companies will never be recouped,” he wrote.
The way forward for alternative protein
“As AI dominates investor attention, alternative protein companies are either developing novel applications of AI for alternative proteins or choosing to compete for a smaller slice of non-AI capital,” Gertner wrote in a recent newsletter, signalling the pivots this sector may need to make to survive.
Leading companies also need to turn their sales around, and fast. Addressing misinformation about meat, dairy, and plant-based alternatives is a crucial step.
“Instead of creating more noise, we have been systematically engaging with registered and renowned dietitians, nutritionists and key opinion leaders, arming them with science-based facts about our category and our products, so they can be advocates for the truth,” said Daniel Ordonez, COO of Oatly, which recorded a 0.8% year-on-year decline in revenue in Q1 2025, but cut its losses by 73%.
Courtesy: Oatly
Beyond Meat’s fortunes worsened in Q1 after two quarters of revenue hikes, with sales dipping by 9% in the first three months of this year, with its founder and CEO Ethan Brown suggesting misinformation played a big part. Like Oatly, he added that the “truth is starting to come out” now, and that the meat alternative maker has “made it through that really intense pressure cooker”.
Despite its disappointing sales, it did receive $100M in debt financing from Unprocessed Foods, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ahimsa Foundation, proving that investors still have an appetite for plant-based burgers. “The overall macro environment is challenging for alt-protein, but we are confident of the leadership and the outlook,” Ahimsa Foundation president Shaleen Shah told Bloomberg News.
The volatility of the market was highlighted by Meati’s $4M sale this month. Once valued at $650M, its $100M Series C round was the largest alternative protein investment of 2024, but a technical default led its lender to unexpectedly sweep two-thirds of its cash reserves, leading to the sale at the paltry valuation.
One of the issues in alternative protein is that there aren’t enough exits for startups, though there has been a rapid wave of M&A in the sector of late, from Danone and Chobani’s acquistions of Kate Farms and Daily Harvest, respectively, this month, to Ahimsa Foundation’s takeover of Wicked Kitchen, Simulate and Blackbird Foods in the last year. But exits like Meati’s don’t fill venture capitalists with confidence.
It’s worth noting that despite the VC decline, public sector investment was still strong in 2024, reaching $510M, in line with the year before.
Courtesy: GFI
“Going forward, the companies demonstrating clear competitive advantages, unique value propositions, and strong business models will have the best chance of securing funding,” Gertner tells Green Queen.
“However, venture capital is only one piece of the investment puzzle,” he adds, outlining the importance of additional avenues for companies pursuing investment, like equipment leasing, strategic partnerships, sovereign wealth funds, blended finance, and government programmes.
“Alternative protein companies and founders should continue exploring these creative and multipronged funding strategies to support growth,” he says.
British pet food startup Meatly has announced a wave of breakthroughs that significantly slash the cost of cultivated meat, bringing it closer to price parity with chicken.
Food tech innovators are continuing to make advancements that close the price gap between cultivated meat and conventional animal proteins.
That limited-edition, co-branded product – titled Chick Bites – was priced at £3.49 per 50g pouch – or £69.80 per kg. And that only contained 4% of cultivated meat. In comparison, an oven-baked chicken treat by Good Boy is priced at £23.08 per kg. Conventional dog food can be three times cheaper than cultivated meat right now, but that may be about to change.
Meatly has announced several tech breakthroughs in its production process, including the development of a new bioreactor and the optimisation of its protein-free culture medium, which allow the startup to inch closer to price parity with conventional chicken.
“Many have cast doubt that the industry would ever reach this point – but we’re pleased to prove these critics wrong,” says Meatly co-founder and chief scientific officer Helder Cruz. “We are showing the world that we can produce meat in a kinder, better way, and we can make it at a price which makes it easy for brands to incorporate Meatly Chicken as an affordable ingredient in their existing product range.”
Meatly breaks away from pharma bioreactors
A rendering of Meatly’s future cultivated meat facility | Courtesy: Meatly
According to consultancy giant McKinsey, to meet the industry’s growth demands, cultivated meat firms would need up to 22 times more fermentation capacity than currently exists in the global pharmaceutical sector.
But it’s not just the capacity. Much of the biotechnology created to make pharmaceuticals isn’t purpose-built for cultivated meat. The per-tonne demand for cultivated meat is seven times higher than for biopharma drugs produced from mammalian cell cultures.
There’s also a perception problem. People have more concerns about GMOs in food than in medicines, while the accepted ideal costs for biopharma drugs are between $500,000 and $1M. For cultivated meat, this is as low as $5-10 per kg.
It necessitates the need for more modern, purpose-built bioreactors. Meatly has successfully built and conducted a first cell growth run in a custom-designed, pilot-scale bioreactor with a capacity of 320 litres. It has the biocompatibility, longevity, scalability and overall performance to meet the cell culture requirements of an industrial-scale facility with multiple 20,000-litre bioreactors.
Meatly intends to develop tanks with the latter capacity as part of its next funding stage, but its new 320-litre equipment costs just £12,500 ($16,900), making it 95% cheaper than traditional fermenters, which can cost up to £250,000 ($338,000).
It is one of several companies that have announced bioreactor breakthroughs. US startup Mission Barns, whose cultivated pork was approved for sale in the country this year, has developed a novel bioreactor that makes a departure from the single-cell suspension tanks of the biopharma sector, making cultivated meat production more efficient, easier to scale, and cheaper.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Ever After Foods is working with Bühler Group to build a commercial-scale system that can produce cultivated meat using equipment at least 10 times smaller than the industry standard.
Culture media wins will enable price parity at scale
Courtesy: Meatly
Meatly’s second crucial advancement concerns its culture medium, a mix of nutrients that facilitate the growth of animal cells. Typically, culture media cost hundreds of pounds per litre and account for the majority of the costs involved in the entire process.
But last year, the London-based startup created a protein-free medium that contains no serum or animal-derived components, steroids, hormones, antibiotics or growth factors. The startup’s innovation is food-safe and used in its suspension culture bioreactors without microcarriers, which are typically needed to help cells proliferate and enhance their density.
This has lots of advantages when it comes to cost and quality controls. “But in the composition of the cells, not so much,” Cruz told Green Queen last year. “Of course, we can always play with some nutrients, but not necessarily proteins, to fine-tune the composition – like fatty acids, some amino acids and so on.”
Then, this culture medium cost £1 ($1.25 at the time) per litre. But now, it has further reduced this price to 22p (30 cents) per litre, which will further reduce to 1.5p (two cents) at industrial scale.
“We’ve achieved this reduction by successfully replacing costly components such as albumin, transferrin, insulin, and all growth factors in our culture media – an industry first,” Meatly co-founder and CEO Owen Ensor tells Green Queen.
“Additionally, we’ve managed to replicate performance using food-grade ingredients. This breakthrough has significantly lowered costs and improved supply chain resilience.”
Additionally, the medium is now capable of supporting cell growth for over 175 doublings, a substantial improvement on historical media performance. It will allow Meatly’s cultivated chicken to be priced competitively with average EU chicken breast prices once scaled.
Meatly confident in fundraising despite industry-wide downturn
Courtesy: Meatly
“Our continued development of this protein-free culture medium marks a significant milestone for both Meatly and the broader cultivated meat sector,” says Ensor. “By setting a new cost benchmark, we’re addressing one of the industry’s most persistent challenges – bringing production costs down to make cultivated meat commercially viable and reach price parity with traditional products.”
The company, which has raised £5M to date, is now kickstarting a funding round for a low-cost industrial facility to profitably scale production of its cultivated meat.
“We’re confident in securing the capital we need. While we’re not disclosing the exact target publicly at this stage, we have a healthy runway in place and are actively engaged with several interested partners,” says Ensor.
Convincing investors to bet on cultivated meat today is a tall order – the sector saw funding decline by 75% in 2023, and a further 40% in 2024. In fact, in the last three years, this sector has cumulatively raised less money than it did in 2021 alone.
Graphic by Green Queen
“We recognise that the current investment climate is more cautious, particularly within the cultivated meat sector, so we’re taking a measured approach. That said, we’re well-positioned to scale quickly once funding is secured. Updates like the ones we’re making today show how Meatly is focused on continuing to prove there is a fast, efficient way to scale cultivated meat,” says Ensor.
Fellow cultivated pet food startup BioCraft Pet Nutrition has also developed a plant-based growth medium that reduces the cost of its ingredient to $2-2.50 per lb. And in Israel, SuperMeat has made several breakthroughs to produce its cultivated chicken for $12 per lb, while Believer Meats has described how its continuous process can potentially produce cultivated chicken for $6 per lb at scale.
As for Meatly, Ensor notes that the Chick Bites were a “one-off” product launch. “We’re now working on providing our Meatly Chicken for additional products in the near future,” he says, without going into any specifics. He teases more information on new products “in the coming months”.
Its costs advancements are vital for the mainstream adoption of cultivated meat. According to a recent 4,000-person survey in Europe, three in five consumers feel cultivated meat will only be successful if it’s affordable for everyone. In fact, nearly half expect it to be cheaper than conventional meat, and only 15% would buy it if it’s more expensive (versus 60% who wouldn’t).
“By reaching price parity, it then becomes a simple and easy choice for consumers to buy better meat for their pets,” says Cruz.
Beef and lamb are among the foods that face the biggest threats from competition with cultivated meat, underscoring why some lawmakers want to ban the latter.
One country and six US states have so far passed laws that prohibit companies from making or selling cultivated meat within their boundaries.
For Italy, the reason behind the ban was a threat to its cultural identity. For policymakers in the US, while the arguments often touch upon food safety concerns, more often than not, they are tied to the same theme: protecting the ranchers.
Take Nebraska, the latest state to join the list. Its governor is Jim Pillen, owner of one of the country’s largest pork processors, who has repeated this rhetoric over the last few months. “It’s important we get on the offence so that Nebraska farmers and ranchers are not undermined,” he said last year when making a promise to ban these proteins.
Jack Williams made a similar comment when putting forward a similar proposal in Alabama. “Meat comes from livestock raised by hardworking farmers and ranchers, not from a petri dish grown by scientists. We are protecting our farmers and the integrity of American agriculture,” he said, before the law came into effect last October.
Then there’s Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, on a mission to “save our beef”. “Some people think Florida is theme parks, South Beach and maybe some oranges, but they don’t understand that we have one of the top cattle industries in the country,” he said when signing the bill to ban cultivated meat last May.
“What we’re protecting here is the industry against acts of man, against an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem, that views things like raising cattle as destroying our climate.”
Those are all strong words, based on a common theme: cultivated meat is a threat to the livestock industry. And a new study seems to confirm those fears, highlighting how this novel food leaves staples like beef and lamb susceptible, and the planet happier.
Carbon taxes could threaten high-polluting foods
Courtesy: AI-Generated Image via Canva
The socio-economic analysis was conducted by researchers at the UK’s James Hutton Institute and Norway’s Ruralis Institute for Rural and Regional Research. They modelled two scenarios – one with a carbon tax, one without – to measure the impact of cell-cultured foods on both the food system and global emissions.
Funded by the Research Council of Norway, the authors noted how cultivated meat offers much better benefits for the planet. Studies have shown that when produced via renewable energy, these proteins can have a 92% lower impact on global heating, need 95% less land, and use 78% less water compared to conventionally farmed beef.
The issue, however, is that the livestock industry is backed by vast government subsidies that enable producers to keep animal proteins cheap, and make it much more difficult for cultivated meat, already a highly expensive technology, to compete on price.
For example, in the EU, over 80% of farm subsidies are directed towards animal agriculture (and 44% alone went to the production of feed for livestock. This sum is four times higher than the amount invested in plant-based farming, whose inputs are a key part of cultivated meat production.
The researchers focused on Norway and found that some animal products will be affected more adversely than others. Conventional beef, lamb, milk and egg are more likely to lose their market share to cultivated meat than pork and chicken, regardless of a carbon tax.
When the tax is implemented, though, the loss of market share is much quicker and more dramatic due to the increased costs. Pork and chicken, which have relatively lower climate footprints, proved more resilient to the carbon tax in the study.
As part of the project, the researchers conducted a related survey to find that consumers would be willing to treat cultivated and conventional proteins as “broadly interchangeable” up to a certain market share. The main factor influencing choice is price.
Cultivated meat firms must focus on cost reductions
Courtesy: Believer Meats
“While there are still plenty of uncertainties here – such as whether technologies will ever improve to the point where cultivated proteins are commercially viable – this study suggests that sheep and cattle rearing could be most vulnerable to competition, especially if a carbon tax is introduced,” said Nick Roxburgh, a social systems simulation modeller at the James Hutton Institute.
The research confirms the results of numerous polls and studies: for cultivated meat to succeed, the cost needs to come down rapidly. The industry has already made tons of progress, having lowered the average cost of these proteins by 99% in less than a decade. According to McKinsey, however, it will take until at least 2030 for cultivated meat to reach price parity with its conventional counterparts.
To that end, Israel’s Ever After Foods has developed a bioreactor platform that offers a 90% reduction in cultivated meat prices for its B2B clients. Meanwhile, Israeli startup SuperMeat has made several breakthroughs to produce its cultivated chicken for $12 per lb, and Believer Meats has described how its continuous process can potentially produce cultivated chicken for $6 per lb at scale.
Consumer research underlines the importance of these advancements. According to a 4,000-person survey in Europe, three in five consumers feel cultivated meat will only be successful if it’s affordable for everyone. In fact, nearly half expect it to be cheaper than conventional meat, and only 15% would buy it if it’s more expensive (versus 60% who wouldn’t).
Farmers are more game for cultivated meat than politicians
Courtesy: RESPECTfarms
“Given the potential for disruption, it will be important to plan carefully for the possible impacts of cultivated proteins on livestock farming and rural livelihoods,” said Roxburgh.
Livestock farmers will undoubtedly be the group most acutely affected if cultivated meat takes off on a large scale, but it doesn’t necessarily represent an end to their livelihoods. One project from the Netherlands is working with farmers to show how this industry could be an additional source of income for them.
Farmers in the UK also recognise the opportunities presented by cultivated meat, and are more worried about the social issues brought on by these proteins, like Big Food controlling the market or the knock-on effects on rural communities, than the impact on their bottom lines. And when considering changing weather patterns and global commodity markets, the threat of competition from cultivated meat feels like a “slow burn” to them.
Andy Jarvis, director of the Bezos Earth Fund’s Future of Food scheme, debunked the idea that cultivated meat is completely detached from farming. “The [culture] media are sugars, and all sorts of minerals and things that are coming from crops, and they’re farmed goods,” he told Green Queen last year.
“This is not an anti-farmer sector; this is a sector that is using farmed products in new ways. And generally using farmed products that are more profitable and highly sustainable in the way they’re produced.”
In the US, too, livestock farmers themselves have opposed the numerous bans on cultivated meat, noting that they didn’t need the government’s help to compete with cultivated meat. One farmer told the AP that he welcomes cultivated meat producers to “jump into the pool” and try to compete with his Waygu beef, going on to describe his disdain for lawmakers’ efforts to stifle competition in a free market.
This is also the view of the North American Meat Institute, the country’s oldest and largest trade association (representing 95% of the US’s meat output). In a letter sent to DeSantis in March 2024, it called Florida’s ban “bad public policy”.
“These bills establish a precedent for adopting policies and regulatory requirements that could one day adversely affect the bills’ supporters,” it said, stressing the importance of consumer choice.
A techno-economic analysis has found that French cultivated meat startup Gourmey’s bioreactor system can reach production costs of $3.43 per lb.
When you remove the politics of it all, people aren’t as resistant to cultivated meat as some would have you believe.
In a 16-country survey last year, support for the sale of these foods – if they pass regulatory assessments – ranged from 48-69% in Europe. Those who backed a ban on cultivated meat, meanwhile, were largely in the minority.
One of the most influential barriers to any potential intake of cultivated meat isn’t cultural, as Italy’s ban seems to suggest. Instead, it has to do with the price tag.
According to a 4,000-person survey in Europe, three in five consumers feel cultivated meat will only be successful if it’s affordable for everyone. In fact, nearly half expect it to be cheaper than conventional meat, and only 15% would buy it if it’s more expensive (versus 60% who wouldn’t).
While the cost of producing meat by culturing animal cells in bioreactors has long been prohibitive, things are changing quickly.
Among the companies spearheading the price shift is Gourmey, a French startup culturing duck cells to produce cultivated foie gras (and working on cultivated chicken and turkey too). It is pursuing approval in six markets, and was the first to file an application in the EU.
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
A techno-economic analysis by consulting firm Arthur D Little has revealed that the firm’s production model can dramatically lower costs, allowing it to potentially manufacture cultivated meat for as little as $3.43 per lb.
The assessment validates the economic viability of Gourmey’s 5,000-litre bioreactor system, and confirms that it can reach these costs without relying on speculative technologies or mega-scale infrastructure.
Gourmey CEO Nicolas Morin-Forest explains that the analysis was conducted on a finished product containing about half cultivated cells, with the rest made up of plant-based ingredients like fats or proteins. “This approach can hence apply to a very wide range of cultivated products,” he tells Green Queen.
How Gourmey keeps cultivated meat cost-effective
Founded in 2019 by Morin-Forest, Jérôme Caron and Antoine Davydoff, Gourmey’s platform is built around a “second-generation” technology stack that replaces legacy biopharma techniques with food-grade, cost-effective, scalable processes. It combines continuous production, undifferentiated cell biomass, and suspension-based cell cultures to support efficiency and consistency.
“One of the main reasons we can keep costs low is that we use stem cells with natural, endless self-renewal capabilities. These cells can be cultivated for very long periods, allowing us to continuously apply selective pressure and adapt them to the most efficient cell feed formulations, all while maximising yields,” explains Morin-Forest.
“Our stem cells are extremely robust and grow very quickly, doubling in less than 16 hours, which lets us reach exceptionally high cell densities,” he adds, outlining how this has enabled the breakthrough of its proprietary cell culture medium.
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
“Because our cells thrive without proteins or growth factors, we can bring our food-safe feed price down to around 20 cents per litre, just a fraction of what’s typical in the industry,” he says. “The stability and performance of our stem cells also make them ideally suited for continuous manufacturing, and we’re able to avoid traditional scale-up bottlenecks like scaffolding and micro-carriers to drive costs down even further.”
Arthur D Little’s analysis finds that Gourmey’s modular and repeatable platform can enable it to keep capital expenditure under €35M per facility, with an output of 1,700 tonnes using just six 5,000-litre bioreactors. These benchmarks can be met via “achievable and clearly defined process optimisations”, the startup says.
“The main levers are about relentlessly increasing cell densities by refining our proprietary, food-safe cell feed to reduce its cost while maintaining performance,” says Morin-Forest. “One of the industry’s challenges is minimising waste and making sure that every single compound in the cell feed is genuinely used for cell growth. We’re speeding up these developments with advanced modelling that predicts cellular behaviour, so we can cut iteration time.”
He adds: “Ultimately, much of the cost reduction comes from trivialities: scaling out by adding more bioreactors and unlocking economies of scale as we ramp up cell feed purchases, just like in any industry.”
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
Gourmey expects Singapore approval soon, hints at broader portfolio
Gourmey currently operates an innovation centre and a pilot facility in central Paris, where its team runs multiple 400L bioreactors. “In addition, we have a dedicated setup with a 5,000L bioreactor, the largest bioreactor for cultivated meat in Europe to our knowledge,” says Morin-Forest.
“Most of the scale effects on production cost are already delivered at the 5,000L scale, allowing us to reach $3.43/lb, or €7/kg in a commercial setup, without the need for even larger, unproven bioreactors.
Gourney”s approach keeps operational complexity, industrial risk, and capital needs much lower. Our production process is so efficient that scaling beyond 5,000 litres simply isn’t necessary.”
The company has so far raised €65M via public and private investments: when asked about future fundraising plans, it declined to comment. No other cultivated meat company has filed regulatory dossiers in as many markets as Gourmey, which is awaiting approval in the US, Singapore, the UK, Switzerland, the EU, and another undisclosed region.
“We expect our first approval in Singapore soon,” Morin-Forest reveals.
It has been gearing up for launch over the last year, forming an advisory board with Michelin-starred chefs Claude Le Tohic (One65), Rasmus Munk (Alchemist), and Daniel Calvert (Sézanne), holding talks with major protein producers, and securing deals with premium foodservice and distribution partners.
Three-Michelin-starrd chef and One65 owner Claude Le Tohic | Courtesy: Sherry Hack
Its cultivated foie gras is a high-margin product that takes on an industry marred in controversy. More than a dozen countries have banned the prized delicacy out of animal welfare concerns (geese and ducks are traditionally force-fed to fatten their liver). Gourmey’s version “significantly lowers the environmental footprint” and does away with the cruelty.
It is not the only company making cultivated foie gras. Australia’s Vow unveiled its innovation last year under its Forged brand and has rolled it out to restaurants in Singapore. It will launch in its home country later this year, following final ministerial approval.
As for Gourmey, the demand for their product is already outpacing its supply. “We’re a B2B company and our first customers are premium food wholesalers serving the world’s best tables,” says Morin-Forest. “Demand from premium food service and distribution partners now exceeds our planned production capacity.”
And it isn’t stopping here. “Cultivated foie gras is our launchpad for a broader portfolio, including additional poultry proteins and other species,” he says.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Impossible Foods’ new vegan chicken, Quorn’s Mission: Impossible collab, and a new kind of tempeh.
New products and launches
Mycoprotein pioneer Quorn has launched a summer marketing campaign with Paramount Pictures to align with the launch of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. The brand hired a Tom Cruise lookalike to sign autographs in London’s West End while eating its Cocktail Sausages, and also has a Mission Snack Swap ad campaign featuring its farm animal puppets.
Courtesy: Quorn
British oat milk brand Minor Figures has teamed up with Nigo‘s lifestyle label Human Made on a clothing and accessory collection, featuring a sweatshirt, apron, milk bottle, milk sleeve, an art toy, and more. It will be featured at a pop-up at StandBy in Harajuku, Tokyo this weekend (May 31 to June 1).
Also in the UK, vegan meal kit maker Grubby has launched an eight-recipe menu featuring Symplicity Foods‘s plant-based meat alternatives. It includes a BBQ Smash Burger with Carrot Slaw, Hoi Sin Garlic Chilli Noodles, and Symplicity Schnitzel with Curried Potato Salad.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
Plant-based meat leader Impossible Foodsteased its new Crispy Chicken Fillets at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago. It has 17g of protein and half as much saturated fat compared to conventional fillets, and will roll out at restaurants soon.
US startup LiveComplete will soon launch a new protein powder made using its NutriMatch technology, which blends plant proteins in a way that mirrors human muscles.
Courtesy: Upside Foods
To protest Indiana’s upcoming ban on cultivated meat (which comes into effect on July 1), Upside Foodsserved cultured chicken sandwiches at the Indianapolis 500 race on Memorial Day weekend.
Canadian vegan fast-food chain Odd Burger has earned an exclusive listing at 7-Eleven for four of its retail products. The Crispy ChickUn Fillet, Chickpea Burger, Smash Burger and Breakfast Sausage will be available at over 500 locations, with select stores stocking them from next month.
Courtesy: Daiya
Fellow Canadian plant-based company Daiya has introduced a single-serve cream cheese featuring its fermented oat cream. The 1oz packs are aimed at foodservice operators. It will soon also launch a dairy-free cheese sauce.
Danish biosolutions giant Novonesis has rolled out Vertera Velvet, an ingredient aimed at tackling weak foam and curdling in plant-based barista milks, with a specific focus on oat, pea and blended milks.
Courtesy: Umami Bioworks
And Singaporean food tech startup Umami Bioworks has partnered with Japanese seafood firm Maruha Nichiro to co-develop and commercialise cultivated tuna.
Company and finance updates
German retailer Rewe Group has joined Food Fermentation Europe, a trade association representing the fermentation-derived food sector.
Courtesy: Kind Kones
Singaporean vegan ice cream maker Kind Kones has secured an undisclosed sum of funding from female-led firm Epic Angels. It will use the capital to expand its presence in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, specifically Dubai.
Australian precision fermentation firm All G has filed a patent application for an infant formula innovation that includes all five major human breast milk proteins.
Courtesy: Solar Foods
Finnish gas protein firm Solar Foods has verified its pilot production parameters at an industrial scale at its first facility, confirming that the company’s upcoming Factory 02 will be profitable and enabling the production of its Solein protein in the US.
Fellow Nordic fermentation startup Norwegian Mycelium (or NoMy) has received €1.25M in a funding round led by Nippon Beet Sugar Manufacturing Co (Nitten), listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It comes months after the company set up a subsidiary in Japan.
Courtesy: NoMy
In the three months since its appearance on Dragons’ Den, where it earned €75,000 from investors Deborah Madden and Steven Bartlett, UK vegan dog food maker Omni has added 20,000 new customers with a 130% growth in sales. It is now approaching £10M in annualised revenue.
Research, policy and events
Drive-thru coffee chain 7 Brew has scrapped the dairy-free milk surcharge at all its 360 locations across the US.
Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable will join the Alternative Proteins mission at the Dutch Pavilion at World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan, next month to outline its optimisations in cell feed, which have helped reduce its preparation time from several days to just 30 minutes.
Courtesy: Meatable
Yet more research has come out proving the environmental superiority of plant-based eating. Focused on Iceland, the study found that vegan diets generate just half the emissions of an omnivore diet, and are overall more compliant with macronutrient recommendations.
At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, one researcher is looking to develop a new kind of tempeh with peas and chickpeas. Backed by a four-year, $387,000 USDA Pulse Crop Health Initiative grant, the protein could help counteract health risks associated with the Western diet, like obesity, fatty liver, and diabetes.
Courtesy: Vivici
Finally, biotech startups Agrobiomics and Vivici have won the Feike Sijbesma Sustainable Innovation Award 2025 for their work in climate-resilient farming and precision-fermented protein production at the F&A Next conference in Wageningen. Each received a $12,500 prize.
In Germany, a quarter of consumers are open to trying cultivated meat made from a 3D printer, a much greater share than in 2019.
As Europe’s leading plant-based market, Germany has always shown openness to food tech innovation, especially its youth.
Last year, one survey found that young Germans trust food produced via new technologies and are willing to buy it three times more than older respondents, who worry about potential health risks.
Now, another poll shows similar results, with 24% of Germans open to trying cultivated meat produced in bioreactors and formed with a 3D printer, much higher than the 13% who said the same six years ago – but older generations seem the least likely to want to give such products a go.
Conducted by Bitkom Research, the survey covered 1,004 Germans aged 16 and over between March and April this year, who were asked if they could imagine eating 3D-printed cultivated meat, and what drove or kept them from doing so.
Cost remains a big concern for 3D-printed cultivated meat
Openness to novel food was greatest among 30- to 49-year-olds, 35% of whom expressed interest in trying 3D-printed meat. This was followed by the 16-29 age group (33%).
However, only 18% of 50- to 64-year-olds say they’d eat cultivated meat made this way, a number that falls to 16% among those aged 65 and over.
That said, about a third (31%) of consumers are convinced that cultivated meat from a 3D printer can contribute to a more sustainable food system. While that’s proof that Germans are aware of the climate benefits of these proteins, it highlights the need for further education.
Perhaps more crucial to consumers is the cost to their wallet, with only 7% willing to pay more for these foods. In fact, a sixth of them viewed 3D-printed food as purely a luxury product.
It’s reflective of a key bottleneck for the cultivated meat industry. Since it’s a new technology currently being produced on a small scale, these proteins are expensive. A lot of work has been done over the last decade to bring prices down – and dramatically so, in some cases. According to McKinsey, it will take until at least 2030 for cultivated meat to be cost-competitive with its conventional counterparts.
And in line with some expectations from the survey, some cultured meat startups have focused on high-value species and positioned them as premium products for the cost economics to make more sense. For example, BlueNalu is working on bluefin tuna toro, Forsea Foods on Japanese eel, and Vow on quail and foie gras.
Germans are also most likely to be introduced to these proteins through a foie gras product, with Parisian startup Gourmey submitting the EU’s first regulatory dossier for cultivated meat last year. Months later, Dutch firm Mosa Meat applied to the EU for its cultivated beef fat, which is mixed with plant-based ingredients to produce burgers and reduce overall costs.
Germans envision 3D-printers becoming mainstream
Courtesy: Steakholder Foods
“Food printers are currently still relatively expensive and rely on specialised ingredients. Therefore, they are not yet suitable for mass production, but are primarily used in the catering and food industry,” explained Margareta Maier, digital farming officer at Bitkom.
Still, 16% of Germans say they’d like to use a 3D printer to produce food tailored to their preferences and needs, and 15% believe they will become an integral kitchen equipment in the future.
“The process makes it possible to give products an appearance and texture similar to conventional meat – but with a significantly smaller ecological footprint,” Maier said. “More and more people are open to plant-based alternatives and innovative technologies – 3D-printed food could therefore become even more important in the future.”
Cultivated meat manufacturers often use 3D printing to build scaffolds that dictate how cells grow and differentiate. Israel’s Steakholder Foods, Believer Meats and Aleph Farms, and California’s Good Meat BlueNalu have all been known to leverage this tech.
3D printing is among a number of techniques used to make scaffolds, with manufacturers also able to use polymer spinning technologies (like electrospinning), decellularisation, hydrogels, and even mycelium.
Germans’ receptiveness to the tech, though, chimes with previous research. One survey found that nearly half (47%) of its citizens say they would eat cultivated meat, and that the government should support its development and help farmers capitalise on the opportunities. This comes at a time when more and more Germans are cutting back on meat; a third of its consumer want to reduce their meat consumption, and 38% want to replace it with plant-based food.
“From food tech in industry and gastronomy to smart farming in the field and in the stable, digital technologies play a central role in saving resources in food production and making agriculture more environmentally friendly, robust, and animal-friendly,” said Maier.
Cultivated meat isn’t approved for sale in Europe yet – but that hasn’t stopped this entrepreneur from setting up an online shop for these proteins.
Forget Michelin-starred restaurants and famed butcheries. What if you could get cultivated meat delivered to your doorstep at the click of a button?
David Bell has taken that idea and run with it. An e-commerce and digital marketing expert by day, he has established an online store for cultivated meat in 18 European countries, even though regulatory approval for these novel foods is at least a year away in the EU.
“Everything starts before it’s ready. Waiting until products are on the shelf means playing catch-up,” Bell explains when asked why he decided to set up the e-store now.
“Launching now gives us time to build awareness and visibility, educate the public, earn search presence and digital momentum, and position ourselves as the natural home for cultivated products,” he adds. “This space is moving fast. We’re creating the infrastructure before it’s urgently needed.”
The website is CultivatedMeat.co.uk, and Bell aims to list a vast range of cultivated meat products (some, like crocodile, aren’t in development commercially, though Australian startup Vow has previously said it is working with the animal’s cells), as well as offering educational guides and a blog with science and industry news. “We’ve built a site that makes cultivated meat visible and tangible, even in concept,” he says.
He’s based in the UK, where cultivated meat briefly appeared on shelves earlier this year – albeit for pet food. “We’ve secured the cultivated meat domains in 18 other European countries, so local versions will roll out imminently,” Bell notes. “Each of these will be localised as approvals come through.”
Will an online shop work for cultivated meat?
Courtesy: CultivatedMeat
Bell has been vegan for 13 years, primarily for ethical reasons – the health benefits were a bonus. “Even so, I’ve always missed the taste and cultural aspects of meat. I just never thought there’d be an alternative that made sense to me,” he says. “Cultivated meat makes it possible to eat real meat again without causing suffering.”
The website has sections for a variety of species, from beef, chicken and pork to duck, seafood, and even kangaroo meat, each of which is displayed next to an image of the living animal. Aside from the shop, it has guides and blogs describing how cultivated meat is made, its environmental benefits, and how you can cook it at home.
So far, the few cultivated meat products that have made it to market have been launched into either high-end restaurants or premium butcher shops. In the US, Mission Barns’s cultivated pork products will be the first to debut in a supermarket when they roll out at Sprouts Farmers Market later this year.
“That’s normal at the start – small batches, tight control. But long-term, consumer access will be the game-changer,” says Bell, explaining the rationale behind an e-store.
“Early adopters will be looking online first. That’s always how new categories start,” he suggests, outlining the Internet’s capability to build “clustered interest, niche education, and targeted communities”.
“Even as cultivated meat moves into the mainstream, physical retailers won’t carry every product, but we will. This site becomes the long-tail destination for the full range of cultivated meat options,” he says. “An online store also allows controlled launches per country, direct-to-consumer storytelling, data feedback for producers, and a single point of discovery for all cultivated meat.”
Is ‘cultivated meat’ the best term to attract consumers? “Yes. It’s the most widely accepted term across media, policy, and industry. It avoids the baggage of ‘lab-grown’ while clearly describing what it is,” he contends. “Personally, as a long-time vegan, I see cultivated meat as a reconciliation of ethics, science, and taste. The word reflects that balance.”
As he waits for cultivated meat to be approved for human food in Europe, his platform is focused on building its email waitlist, publishing educational content, and developing partnerships. “It’s not just a shop – it’s a public front door for the cultivated meat movement from a consumer perspective,” he notes.
Courtesy: CultivatedMeat
Cultivated meat startups in talks with online store
Speaking of partnerships, Bell is already in talks with several cultivated meat firms, both in Europe and beyond. “We’re shaping what launch partnerships might look like,” he says.
He says he is in contact with several organisations across the ecosystem. “We bring the consumer front-end. That makes us a useful partner for groups focused on research, policy, or production,” he explains.
CultivatedMeat’s business model is flexible, both in terms of revenue and logistics. The platform will handle distribution in some cases, and pass it on to producers or third-party firms in others.
“We already have access to specialist cold chain partners for frozen and chilled delivery for when this is ready,” he notes. “Most early product rollouts will be closely managed, so logistics will be smaller-scale and controllable to begin with.”
As for the revenue stream, some partnerships might follow a classic buy-sell model, and others might be based on a margin, affiliate, or distribution partnership. “Longer term, revenue will come from retail markups or commissions, exclusive product collaborations, brand placement and launch support, sponsored content, and media visibility,” outlines Bell.
Courtesy: Romain Buisson/Gourmey
So far, only two cultivated meat companies have publicly filed for novel food approval in the EU: France’s Gourmey (for foie gras) and Dutch startup Mosa Meat (for beef fat). The process can take around 18 months, and Gourmey has indicated its plans to sell its product via restaurants by 2026.
Both these firms have applied in Switzerland and the UK, as has Israeli cultivated beef producer Aleph Farms. The latter country is a frontrunner in Europe – it has already approved Meatly’s chicken for pet food applications, and is assessing human-focused applications from Vital Meat and Ivy Farm Technologies too.
Bell is leveraging his online expertise to be ready for when these regulators eventually greenlight the products for sale. “As someone who’s worked in digital commerce for years, launching this platform felt like the most natural and meaningful thing I could do,” he says. “I’m just combining what I know about online ecosystems and ethical consumerism to help move this space forward.”
Nebraska has become the sixth US state to ban cultivated meat, after Governor Jim Pillen signed the bill that he had initially requested.
Jim Pillen, owner of the largest pork producer in Nebraska, happily signed a bill sent to his desk on Tuesday. It was one he himself had dreamt up months ago, and it would protect the very industry he’s built his fortune on.
The Nebraska governor put pen to paper on LB 246, officially banning the production, sale or import of cultivated meat within state boundaries. Anybody violating this would face penalties under the Pure Food Act, and as well as the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
“We need to be willing to protect and preserve our state’s vital ag industry as well as our consumers,” said Pillen. “These products are grown from harvested cells in bioreactor machines. The health consequences are unknown, and so are the long-term effects to consumers.”
It marks the culmination of what Pillen had labelled “a full-blown attack on lab-grown meats and fake meat” in August, when he signed an executive order putting restrictions on these proteins and announcing his intention to ban them in 2025.
At his request, Senator Barry DeKay brought forward the bill in January, which describes cultivated meat as an “adulterated food product”. While there was apprehension from some fellow Republicans, as well as the very industry Pillen said he was aiming to safeguard, the bill finally made it through the state chambers.
Nebraska’s ban helps Gov Pillen more than anyone else
Courtesy: Phelan M Ebenhack/AP
When signing his executive order in August, Pillen indicated his desire to protect animal agriculture from the “extraordinary, crazy views out there that there’s going to be different ways to feed the planet”.
He took a jibe at Bill Gates, who has invested in a number of alternative protein companies, including California’s Upside Foods, which has sued Florida for a similar ban. “There’s a guy that made some money in building computers. He needs to stay in the computer space and knock this stuff off thinking that he’s going to promote lab-grown meat. He’s lost his brains,” said Pillen.
“We are the beef state,” he added. That’s the issue, though. Agriculture is the largest source of Nebraska’s emissions, contributing to 42% of the state’s climate footprint – and beef production alone accounts for 55% of this share, and 23.7% of the state’s overall emissions.
Courtesy: EPA
Pillen said Nebraska’s farmers and ranchers (which includes himself) “are committed to producing the best food products anywhere”.
“We feed the world, and we save the planet more effectively and more efficiently than anybody else, and I will defend those practices with my last breath,” he said.
Pillen’s hog farm operation has made him a multimillionaire. Pillen Family Farms is one of the nation’s largest pork producers and received a $286M loan from a lender in 2023. It has also come under scrutiny for having dangerously high nitrate levels in its farms’ water supply, which puts the health of both farmers and consumers at risk.
So it’s a little tough to take Pillen at his word about who this cultivated meat ban would benefit.
Farmers opposed cultivated meat ban in Nebraska
Courtesy: Governor Jim Pillen/X
Nebraska’s ban faced more opposition than Pillen perhaps anticipated. Lawmakers like Senator Merv Riepe, as well as the Nebraska Farm Bureau preferred to address the labelling of cultivated meat instead of outlawing it, especially since it’s not available in the state yet.
Opposition also came from ranchers and farming groups, who said they didn’t need the government’s help to compete with cultivated meat. One farmer told the AP that he welcomes cultivated meat producers to “jump into the pool” and try to compete with his Waygu beef, going on to describe his disdain for lawmakers’ efforts to stifle competition in a free market.
He noted that governments should only be limited to regulating product labels and inspecting facilities – something the US Department of Agriculture already does when reviewing regulatory applications for cultivated meat. “After that, it’s up to the consumer to make the decision about what they buy and eat,” said the beef farmer.
The final bill didn’t pass unanimously, with 11 lawmakers voting against it. Now that it has succeeded, Nebraska has become the sixth state to ban cultivated meat – and the fourth in the last couple of months. It joins Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, South Dakota and Indiana (the latter has placed a two-year moratorium).
It reflects the shifting political and cultural landscape in the US, with President Donald Trump and colleagues like JD Vance and Robert F Kennedy Jr all denouncing “fake meat”, just as consumers spend more on meat than ever before.
While more such legislation are likely on the way (as are legal challenges like that of Upside Foods), it does feel like a colossal waste of resources to ban something that has barely made it out of the gates, and is only trying to safeguard the future of an industry causing copious amounts of pollution, and being subsequently ravaged by climate change.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Nutella Plant-Based’s UK launch, Oatly’s collab with Chris Parnell, and Nestlé’s new biotech centre.
New products and launches
Ferrero has announced that it will launch Nutella Plant-Based in the UK on May 25. It will be available at Sainsbury’s for £3.99 per 350g jar, before rolling out to other retailers next year. For context, the classic Nutella is 30p cheaper for the same size.
Courtesy: Ferrero
US startup Nature’s Bakery has released two new products: a gluten-free strawberry flavour of its flagship Fig Bar, and a raspberry and lemon oatmeal crumble bar. The plant-based treats are available at Target and on its website for $7 per six-pack.
Vegan snack brand Hippeas has rolled out Cheezy Cheddar Pops made from yellow peas and chickpeas. They contain 3g of protein and 2g of fibre per 1oz serving, and are available at Target, Walmart, and on Amazon and its website in various sizes.
Courtesy: Hippeas
French plant-based startup Hari&Co has launched Moroccan-inspired keftas, made from wheat and pea protein. They contain 20g of protein per 100g, have an A rating on the Nutri-Score scale, plus a 90/100 score on product-scanning app Yuka.I
Slovenia’s Juicy Marbles is bringing its plant-based whole cuts to Spain via a distribution deal with Zyrcular Foods.
Courtesy: Juicy Marbles
Germany’s Veganz Group has signed a deal with Jindilli Beverages to export its Mililk line of oat and almond milks in Tetra Pak formats to North America, Australia and New Zealand. The agreement also includes a new non-dairy creamer called Mililk Drops.
Also in North America, Canadian vegan fast-food chainOdd Burger has secured its own distribution agreement with Dot Foods, which will see its retail and foodservice products expand their national grocery and restaurant chain footprint.
Courtesy: Odd Burger
Vegan pizza maker Blackbird Foods has rolled out its frozen products at 88 Hy-Vee supermarket locations across the Midwest. They’re available in Margherita, Supreme, and Pepperoni flavours (the latetr features Beyond Meat).
And Indian startup Cosmix has launched No-Nonsense Plant Protein PRO, a yeast protein powder with the maximum protein digestibility score (akin to whey)
Company and finance updates
Speaking of India, New Delhi-based vegan egg startup Plantmade has ceased operations after four years.
As part of its Blind Love campaign, Oatly has launched a spoof ad with comedian and Saturday Night Live alum Chris Parnell to spread the word about what it has termed Dormant Oatmilk Condition: five times more Americans prefer oat milk in their coffee over dairy, but they don’t know it yet.
In Switzerland, Nestlé has opened a biotech centre to advance its nutritional solutions across a range of verticals, including early life, women’s health, and weight management. Among the hub’s credentials are enhanced capabilities in precision fermentation.
Meanwhile, Beyond Meat has amended its lease on its headquarters, giving up 61,000 sq ft of its office space back to HC Hornet Way for a one-time termination fee of $1M. It continues to rent 220,000 sq ft of space, but expects to incur $600,000 in modification costs. This comes after a disappointing Q1 for the plant-based meat maker.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Food tech startup High Time Foods, which makes ambient plant protein products, has raised $1.2M in a new funding round. Following the deal, it has relocated from the US to India, and is gearing up its product development and international expansion efforts.
Aussie firm Levur, which is working on a precision-fermentated alternative to palm oil, has also secured $1.2M in pre-seed funding.
Courtesy: Daniel Hine/Fable Foods
Fellow Sydney-based startup Fable Food has posted a 50% year-on-year revenue growth, and projects an even better performance this year, thanks to its shiitake-mushroom-based products (which have taken the blended meat world by storm).
In New Zealand, Opo Bio – a B2B supplier of livestock cells for cultivated meat production – has secured investment from Epic Angels to expand its R&D efforts and patent portfolio.
Courtesy: EatKinda
Forbes has named Mrinali Kumar, co-founder and CEO of cauliflower ice cream brandEatKinda, and Emily McIsaac, co-founder and COO of precision fermentation firmDaisy Lab, on its 30 Under 30 list, under the Arts and Industry, Manufacturing & Energy categories, respectively.
Canada’s Lovingly Made Flour Mills and Botaneco are working with British firm Stars UK R&D and the University of Leeds to develop Canadian-grown legumes and sunflower ingredients to improve the juiciness of plant-based burgers.
Courtesy: Eat Just
California’s Eat Just has hired Kristie Middleton as its VP of foodservice sales. She was most recently the chief relationship officer at vegan chicken maker Rebellyous Foods.
Also in California, cultivated meat startup Omeat has appointed Eric Schulze as its CTO. He is a former regulator at the FDA who later spent seven years at Upside Foods.
Research, policy and events
In the UK, The Vegan Society will celebrate its 80th year with the Veganism: Past, Present and Future exhibition at the Library of Birmingham from May 17 to August 24.
Cellulaire Agricultuur Nederland and the Dutch Research Council (NWO) are preparing to open a €4M research call focused on scaling up the production and reducing costs of foods produced via precision fermentation and cell culture.
Retail sales of plant-based meat in the US fell by 7.5% to $1.13B in the year ending April 20, 2025, according to SPINS. Refrigerated burgers bore the burnt of the fall, with sales dipping by 26%.
The number one reason deterring people from plant-based milk is taste. At the Technical University of Denmark, researchers suggest the solution lies in the same microbes found in kimchi: lactic acid bacteria.
Courtesy: HackSummit
Finally, Argentinian gut health startup Future Biome has won this year’s FoodTech World Cup at the HackSummit for its new class of fungi-based prebiotic solutions.
Dutch cultivated meat startup Mosa Meat has filed for regulatory approval in the UK, where it’s part of a government support scheme and teased its first burger all those years ago.
Twelve years after unveiling the world’s first cultivated beef burger in London, Mosa Meat has applied for regulatory approval to sell its beef fat ingredient in the UK.
The Dutch startup has filed the dossier with the Food Standards Agency, two months after joining the regulator’s cultivated meat ‘sandbox’ programme, which hosts eight firms looking to speed up the commercialisation of their products.
At the launch of the two-year scheme, the FSA indicated its goal to approve at least two products during this period. This means Mosa Meat’s cultivated beef fat, which can be blended with plant-based ingredients to make hybrid burgers, meatballs, and filling for cottage pie, could be on the market by 2027.
“We are thankful to the FSA for engaging in valuable presubmission consultations with our food safety team,” said Mosa Meat CEO Maarten Bosch. “We included their valuable feedback and have submitted our cultivated beef fat dossier for formal review.”
And in February, it smashed its crowdfunding goal of €1.5M in just 24 minutes, a sign of public confidence in the startup at a time when VCs have become disillusioned with cultivated meat. The firm raised a total of €3.7M ($3.9M at the time) from nearly 1,650 investors, taking its overall funding to date to $139M.
Mosa Meat is preparing public tastings of cultivated beef
Courtesy: Mosa Meat
Mosa Meat is one of a number of startups focusing on cultivated fat as the first ingredient. Fat is the most optimal carrier of flavour and provides the textural attributes that meat is renowned for, which allows the startup to deliver a sensory experience people expect from conventional beef
“By starting with cultivated fat, we’re paving the way to introduce our first burgers to consumers while staying true to our long-term vision. Our initial products will combine cultivated and plant-based ingredients, leveraging our in-house expertise in both areas,” explained Bosch.
“This innovation not only enhances our Mosa burgers, but also has the potential to elevate plant-based products, which often struggle to replicate the full sensory experience of meat.”
There’s another advantage: by blending fat with plant-based ingredients, companies can make the final product a lot more cost-effective, which is a crucial bottleneck for the industry. That first set of burgers in 2013, introduced by co-founder Dr Mark Post, cost $330,000 to make; the firm has since dramatically lowered its production costs, reducing the price of its growth medium by 80-fold in 2020 and its fat medium by 66 times a year later.
Before the UK, the EU and Switzerland, Mosa Meat first applied for approval with the Singapore Food Agency, but the original nine- to 12-month timeline the country has touted has been hard to realise. A new Food Safety and Security Bill, which codifies the assessment framework, can break the deadlock and speed up the process in the city-state.
The startup has previously indicated interest in the US too, though the decision will now partly depend on political developments. Donald Trump’s return to the presidency and Robert F Kennedy’s appointment as health secretary have left things uncertain for food tech in the country, particularly cultivated meat, which has now been banned in five states, with several others poised to join that list.
Last year, Mosa Meat held a public tasting of its burgers for cattle farmers, product developers and other industry representatives at its headquarters in Maastricht. “We are currently creating our next-generation products and are preparing to submit tasting approvals for those this year,” Bosch told Green Queen in February.
Courtesy: Mosa Meat
UK aims to become a cultivated meat leader
The UK’s Cell-Cultivated Products Regulatory Sandbox was set up with a £1.6M infusion by the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, as part of the first round of its Engineering Biology Sandbox Fund. It came as the government sought to modernise its novel food ecosystem, having followed the EU’s framework, described as rigorous yet slow and prohibitive, in its post-Brexit years.
Sandboxes comprise controlled environments for situations where scientific and technological innovation has outpaced existing regulation. They run for a limited period to help startups, researchers and regulators work together to develop new rules, standards and guidance.
It is being jointly run by the FSA and Food Standards Scotland (FSS), which are gathering “rigorous scientific evidence” about the technology behind cell-cultured foods to better regulate these products and apply up-to-date insights during safety assessments. The FSA has previously said it expects at least 15 more applications in the next two years, and predicted the rise of many new startups in the space.
“These are exactly the kind of public-private partnerships we envisioned when we debuted the world’s first cultivated burger right here in London in 2013,” Mosa Meat’s Post said in March.
“The regulatory sandbox is already making an impact on attracting innovative companies like ours to the UK market,” Bosch said after the British dosier submission.
When it comes to regulatory approvals, it has been a fruitful 18 months for cultivated meat startups. Aleph Farms has earned the go-ahead in Israel, Vow in Singapore and (preliminarily) Australia and New Zealand, and Mission Barns in the US. Meanwhile, Thailand is evaluating Aleph Farms’s application, while experts believe South Korea could grant an approval this year.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Massive Attack’s vegan concert, Beleaf’s plant-based meat price freeze, and the FDA’s labelling guidelines.
New products and launches
Lindt has released its oat-milk-based Lindor Vegan Truffles in Canada, with both the milk and dark chocolate versions available in 120g packs for C$12.99.
Courtesy: Ombar
British vegan chocolate brand Ombar has re-released its Blonde Caramelised White Chocolate bar, a Nestlé Caramac copycat, on a permanent basis thanks to popular demand. The 70g bars are available for £2.75 at Tesco.
In more chocolate news, fellow UK dairy-free brand Nomo has introduced Salted Popcorn, Birthday Cake and snackable Cookie Dough bars.
UK plant-based meat brand THIS has rolled out two new SKUs at Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, and Ocado stores. The THIS Isn’t Chicken Deli Pieces contain 28g of protein per serving and are priced at £3.95 per 120g pack, and THIS Isn’t Pork Cocktail Sausages have 20g of protein and cost £2.95 per 140g.
Courtesy: THIS
Vegan food producer Gosh!, meanwhile, has launched Mexican- and Italian-inspired snack packs called Veg Bites, which are high in ‘plant points‘ and available at Morrisons for £1.30 per 50g pack, or as part of a meal deal.
Also in the UK, Compleat Food Group’s Wall’s Pastry has expanded its meat-free range with Vegan Peppered Steak and Vegan Chicken & Mushroom slices, available for £2 per 180g pack at Tesco.
At London Coffee Festival, Califia Farms will introduce hazelnut- and pistachio-flavoured versions of its barista milk, tapping into a global trend for non-dairy milk.
Courtesy: Beleaf Foods
In the US, Beleaf Foods has initiated a price freeze until 2027 for its plant-based meat range to address consumer complaints about the price gap with meat, which will likely be exacerbated amid the tariff war.
Flavour giant T. Hasegawa has introduced PlantReact, a “science-driven” natural flavour technology that leverages Maillard reactions, enzymolysis, and fermentation to make better-tasting vegan chicken, beef, pork, and milk analogues.
Speaking of fermentation, ingredient manufacturer DMC Biotechnologies has launched a fermented myo-inositol for food, beverage, and supplement applications. The compound is naturally present in both plants and animals and used in nutrition products, but suffers from sustainability, traceability and supply issues.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
In the Netherlands, Beyond Meat has rolled out its jalapeño burger at 750 Albert Heijn stores, 75 Plus locations, and online retailer PicNic, and expanded its availability at Jumbo to 150 doors.
Austrian plant protein player Revo Foods, known for its 3D-printed seafood analogues, has kickstarted a crowdfunding campaign and has already raised €1.2M of its €2M goal.
Courtesy: Revo Foods
And Spanish biotech firm MOA Foodtech has unveiled Albatros, an AI-driven microbiology platform to help manufacturers identify agricultural sidestreams to turn into valuable products through fermentation.
Company and finance updates
Popular vegan seafood chain Planta has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing a need to cut costs as consumers cut back on dining out. The move will provide it with a “strategic opportunity to streamline our cost structure and strengthen our balance sheet”.
Shoofly, a vegan wholesale bakery in Portland, Oregon, has shuttered after its staff walked out over alleged late payments and dissatisfaction with its new owner. Now, one supervisor has started a GoFundMe page to help compensate employees for lost wages, and either buy the bakery or start their own.
Courtesy: Shoofly
US startup Sennos (formerly Precision Fermentation) has secured $15M to expand its AI-powered fermentation platform for biofuels, biopharma, and alternative proteins.
Cultivated meat firm Upside Foods has appointed John Mitchell as its new VP of sales. He was previously the chief product officer at alt-seafood startup Konscious Foods.
Finnish food tech firm Foodiq has raised $11.1M to scale up its multi-layer cooker technology for clean-label dairy and alternative proteins, and expand internationally.
Precision fermentation firm Better Dairy has diversified its portfolio with the successful production of osteopontin, a functional bioactive protein found in mammalian milk, bones, and tissue.
British fermented food brand The Cultured Collective has brought in James Robinson as chair and non-executive director. He holds a similar position at The Bold Bean Company.
Courtesy: Turion Labs
South Korea’s S&S LAB and Indonesia’s Future Lestari have joined forces to launch Turion Labs, a new biotech platform in Singapore that plans to build a regional network of facilities to support early-stage biotech ventures.
Vegan cheesemaker Violifesays it is now the leading plant-based cheese brand in Canada, capturing a third of all sales in the market.
New Zealand’s Life Health Foods has decided to withdraw its Bean Supreme line of meat-free sausages, burgers and mince from the market, citing “tough market conditions” and changing consumer behaviours.
Research and policy developments
In the US, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has signed HB 1126 into law, a false advertising bill that requires producers to disclose clearly that cultivated and plant-based meat products are not meat. Violators could face misdemeanour charges.
The US Food and Drug Administration has extended the public consultation for its front-of-package labelling update by another 90 days, with the deadline now set for July 15.
Courtesy: FDA
In a study co-funded by New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries, the Cawthron Institute and Nutrition from Water have identified 14 microalgae strains with a naturally high protein concentration of over 40%, which the latter will use to create affordable nutrition prototypes under its Marine Whey series.
Finally, a scientist at the Malaysian Agro-Biotechnology Institute’s Food Biotechnology Department has developed a vegan burger patty from grey oyster mushrooms, a widely cultivated but underused variety of fungi in the country.
University of Edinburgh scientists have developed a pig fat cell line that promises efficient, scalable and consistent cultivated meat production, with the potential of going past the exosphere.
Could astronauts enjoy a cultivated bacon breakfast in space?
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute are working to make that a reality, having developed a technology that could solve some major obstacles for cultivated meat production.
They have created a source of fat cells from pigs with what they claim is a “rare combination of reliable and stable cell growth”, potentially enabling large-scale manufacturing of cultivated pork without the need for genetic modification (a key requirement for regulators in markets like the EU and New Zealand).
Presenting their findings in the NPJ Science of Food journal, the scientists said this novel cell line – dubbed FaTTy – can efficiently produce fat tissue with remarkable consistency, making it a “very attractive, potentially game-changing resource for food manufacturing, and particularly cultivated meat”.
The team looked at growing stem cells derived from five piglets, and discovered that one of them was able to reproduce virtually indefinitely, without the need for any gene editing.
How the new cells can supercharge cultivated fat production
Courtesy: Mission Barns
“Fat is the primary driver of flavour in meat, influencing taste, aroma, and mouthfeel. Of the main components of meat – muscle, fat, and connective tissue – fat has the most significant culinary impact,” Maarten Bosch, CEO of Dutch cultivated beef producer Mosa Meat, told Green Queen earlier this year. The company has filed for approval for its fat ingredient in the EU and Switzerland.
“Consumers won’t eat food that isn’t absolutely delicious, which is why we chose to pursue a fat-first approach,” explained Eitan Fischer, CEO of cultivated pork startup Mission Barns, which is now approved to sell in the US. “Not only is fat the main driver of flavour and juiciness, but it is also less costly and faster to produce than lean meat.”
Cultivated fat is the key to scaling up cultivated meat in a cost-efficient manner, which is perhaps the industry’s biggest bottleneck. In the study, the researchers explain that most animal stem cells lose the ability to reliably produce fat cells quickly. While they can double in population every 20 to 24 hours for the first 30 to 40 days, they gradually slow down.
On the other hand, The FaTTy cells, which are formed from early-stage stem cells, can grow indefinitely. According to the scientists, they are immortalised after reaching 60 doubling cycles (equal to 57 days in culture). These cells have maintained an adipogenic efficiency – how effectively they can differentiate into fat cells – of nearly 100% for over 200 doubling cycles.
They’re able to differentiate at this high efficiency in both 2D and 3D contexts, and produce fat that closely resembles native pig fat in composition, with slightly higher levels of healthier monounsaturated fats and lower saturated fat.
“We didn’t simply develop a tool, we made a very special discovery,” said Tom Thrower, lead researcher at the Roslin Institute. “The fact that these cells not only grow indefinitely but also retain their ability to become fat at such high efficiency is something we have never seen before in livestock stem cells. It opens the door to new possibilities in cultivated meat and beyond.”
Future foods attracting interest for space applications
Courtesy: Mission Barns
Prof F Xavier Donadeu, the principal investigator, said the cells “have the potential to be a game-changer by helping to produce cultivated meat that feels and tastes like traditional meat, whilst being environmentally and ethically sustainable in the longer term”.
“Future applications could include feeding astronauts in space,” he added. Interest in future-friendly food for space is growing rapidly. Last month, scientists at Imperial College London and Cranfield University launched a fully automated miniature microbe lab into space, containing yeast to produce edible proteins via precision fermentation outside Earth.
The project aims to find a way to produce food and other bio-derived products in space for astronauts and involves Frontier Space, Atmos Space Cargo, and the European Space Agency, which has previously supported two projects to grow cultivated meat in space.
In the US, NASA has been conducting experiments on cultivated meat since 2001. And SpaceX has worked with cultivated meat firm Aleph Farms to conduct experiments on microgravity’s effects on muscle tissue growth, using beef cells harvested by the Israeli startup. The Israeli startup has also grown cell-cultured beef on the International Space Station, nearly 400km away from any natural resources.
Back on Earth, Roslin Institute is readying its cell line for commercial applications. “We already have considerable interest from companies looking to work with us on this proprietary technology,” said Susan Bodie, head of business development for the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at Edinburgh Innovation.
“Tools like this may help introduce fat cells to improve taste and realism of meat grown in labs in both an ethical and reliable way.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers the Science Museum’s future food exhibit, Beyond Steak’s UK debut, and a Dutch public-private plant-based partnership.
New products and launches
In London, the Science Museum will host a Future of Food exhibit from July 24, featuring Aleph Farms‘s cultivated beef steak, the oldest sample of Quorn‘s burger from 1981, Clean Food Group‘s yeast-derived palm oil alternative, and more.
Courtesy: Science Museum Group
British YouTubers James Marriott and Will Lenney (aka Willne) have launchedRodd’s, a dairy-free ready-to-drink brand featuring an iced latte, waffle latte, and a vanilla matcha latte, all made with oat milk. They’re available at 300 Sainsbury’s stores for £2.20 per 250ml bottle.
Rude Health has released a “clean deck” iced coffee range, with its Oat Latte Iced Coffee and Mocha Iced Coffee aiming to address ultra-processing fears. They’re available for £3.75 per 750ml pack.
In more oat milk news from the UK, new startup Via Nature has rolled out Oat Shaker, a line described as a “snack in a bottle”. It comes in Banana & Coconut, Matcha & Pineapple and Blueberry & Açaí flavours, and can be found at Sainsbury’s for £4 per 750ml.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond Meat‘s vegan steak pieces have made it into the UK, rolling out at 650 Tesco stores to align with British Sandwich Week (May 19-25), priced at £4.50 per 160g pack.
Vegan chocolate maker NOMO has released Salted Popcorn and Birthday Cake flavours in UK supermarkets, which are available in 32g and 127g bars, respectively.
New Zealand-based Nutrition from Water has released a Ready-To-Bake Sponge Cake Premix from its Marine Whey 50 algae protein.
Courtesy: Maison Linotte/Meawnamcat/Getty Images
French luxury pastry maker Maison Linotte has unveiledPurely, a premium vegan butter for professionals and baking enthusiasts. Described as a clean-label product, it contains no palm oil and can be used as a 1:1 replacement for dairy butter. It has a neutral flavour and colour, and reduces emissions by 82%.
Italian almond-based cheesemaker Dreamfarm has debuted vegan Ciliegine, or mini mozzarella balls, at the TuttoFood fair in Milan. They will roll out at Esselunga stores, with each 120g pack containing 12 balls.
Also in the non-dairy world, Canada’s Daiya has reformulated its cream cheese and Deluxe Mac & Cheese lines with its new fermented oat cream. It has also added a Cinnamon Twist flavour to the former range.
Courtesy: Daiya
And in the US, Dr. Praeger’s is launching two frozen vegan snacks – Taco Stars and Ranch Crunchy Veggie Fries – at Target stores this month.
In the Netherlands, Wageningen University & Research, Jumbo, Intersnack Group, Alpro, HAK, and The Vegetarian Butcher have launched a two-year public-private partnership called Shifting Shelves, which aims to increase the uptake of plant-based meat and dairy, legumes, and nuts via literature reviews, consumer research, and virtual and in-store supermarket tests.
Courtesy: Jumbo
Berlin-based startup Cultimate Foods has received funding from the Investitionsbank Berlin, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, to scale up its cultivated animal fat.
Denmark’s Ferm Food has earned EU authorisation to sell its fermented rapeseed cake as a food ingredient. A byproduct of canola oil production, it contains 28-30% protein and can be used in bread, cakes, and plant-based products.
Courtesy: Ferm Food
Abhay Rangan, co-founder and former CEO of Indian plant-based dairy startupOne Good (now part of Nourish You), has joined German cultivated milk startup Senara as its chief business officer.
Finally, UK tempeh brandBetter Nature has hired Helen Atkinson as its new head of sales. She has previously worked at Dr Oetker, Noble Foods and Bel Group.
Montana Governor Greg Gianforte has signed a bill that prevents the production or sale of cultivated meat in the state, while Indiana has introduced a two-year prohibition.
From October 1, manufacturing or selling cultivated meat in Montana could put you at risk of imprisonment for up to three months, a fine of up to $250, or both.
The state became the fourth to pass legislation banning cultivated meat after Governor Greg Gianforte signed HB 401 into law on May 1.
Retailers that sell cultivated meat could face fines too, while restaurants could have their licences suspended. Additionally, even though it can’t be sold, the state has put a restriction on how cultivated meat can be marketed, preventing it from being “misbranded”.
And yesterday (May 6), Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed into law HB 1425, which establishes a two-year moratorium on the sale and manufacturing of cultivated meat and its labelling as a “meat product”.
It’s in effect from July 1 this year until June 30, 2027, and violators face fines up to $10,000, the highest of any other such ban in the US.
Montana attacks World Economic Forum after ban
SAVE OUR BEEF
Our very own Braxton Mitchell (@BraxtonMT) passed a law to ban lab grown meat in #Montana. HB401
Well done Braxton and well done @GovGianforte for signing.
Montana’s anti-cultivated-meat bill was brought to the House floor in February by Representative Braxton Mitchell, who said at the time: “This bill will help promote the Montana agricultural industry and keep it strong and thriving in the state of Montana. I think we have a unique opportunity here to put the hammer down clearly and show that we stand with agriculture and that we stand with our cattle ranchers.”
The effort was co-sponsored by over 70 lawmakers, most of whom are Republican. “I have some grave concerns over the use and production of lab-grown meat,” Representative Randyn Gregg said during the first hearing.
“The process is a fusion of dystopia. One could call it Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ meets Keanu Reeves in ‘The Matrix’,” he added, painting a vivid – if highly misleading – portrait of how cultivated meat is made. It’s not the first time someone has described cultivated meat as ‘Franken-food’, or a legislator has supported a ban based on wholly incorrect assumptions about the process.
The bill passed through both chambers without much fuss, with House Republicans unanimously voting in favour, outnumbering the opposition from Democrats for a final count of 64-35. In the Senate, the bill was voted 34-14 in favour, with five of the nays coming from Republicans. It was then transferred to Gianforte, who quietly signed it into law last week.
In announcing the bill’s success, Mitchell claimed the state was “punching back at the World Economic Forum’s plan to force the world to eat fake meat and bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals”.
It’s in reference to the organisation’s assertion that alternative proteins are necessary to help meet the needs of a population that will reach 10 billion in 2050 and combat the changing climate. Again, he isn’t the first lawmaker to attack the WEF as a means to justify a ban on cultivated meat.
Mitchell further added that the WEF “claims that our consumption of naturally grown meat is ‘the source of greenhouse gases and climate change’”. But the organisation is right. Livestock farming accounts for as much as a fifth of global emissions (10 times higher than aviation), while taking up 70% of our freshwater supplies and 80% of farmland.
Within the food system, nearly 60% of emissions come from meat and dairy production. In Montana, where there are twice as many cows as humans, agriculture is responsible for over a fifth of GHG emissions, with methane from cattle a major contributor. Cultivated meat, meanwhile, can have a 92% lower impact on climate change, and requires 95% less land and 78% less water than conventional beef.
Indiana temporarily bans sale and labelling of cultivated meat
Courtesy” Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
In Indiana, HB 1425 was proposed by Representative Beau Baird, who indicated that cultivated meat was too new a product to be viewed as perfectly safe, and should be prohibited for two years as more studies are conducted.
“The US Department of Agriculture just approved this product in 2023, in the fall, so it’s still a relatively new product. I think that taking our time and making sure we know what our constituents are consuming is thoughtful and a wise decision,” he had said.
The bill also contains a provision that mandates manufacturers to label cultivated meat products with the phrase “This is an imitation meat product”, and outlaws labels that don’t “clearly indicate” that it is a cell-cultured product.
But the text actually defines cultivated meat as “animal protein grown in a facility from extracted animal stem cells and arranged in a similar structure as animal tissues to replicate the sensory and nutritional profiles of meat products”, so the labelling clause caused some confusion.
“We actually define ‘cultivated meat product’ in this bill, but then the label is going to say something different,” Senator Shelli Yoder said during one of the hearings.
Nevertheless, the bill passed with a 74-15 majority in the House, and 43-7 in the Senate, with Governor Braun signing it into law yesterday.
It makes Indiana the fifth state to officially ban cultivated meat from being sold within its borders, albeit this is a temporary measure.
Cultivated meat bans popular despite criticism
Courtesy: Good Meat
It’s almost becoming fashionable for states to attempt to ban cultivated meat, empowered by an administration that loves Big Meat and a cultural shift that has brought beef back to the centre of the plate.
Florida and Alabama introduced the first two bans in 2024. And in March, Mississippi’s bill to ban cultivated meat became official, passing both the House and the Senate unanimously (which eschewed the need for the governor’s sign-off).
But these efforts have been criticised by a multitude of stakeholders, including cattle farmers themselves. In a March 2024 letter sent to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the North American Meat Institute called the ban “bad public policy”.
“These bills establish a precedent for adopting policies and regulatory requirements that could one day adversely affect the bills’ supporters,” it said, emphasising the importance of consumer choice.
California’s Upside Foods, one of only three companies that have been approved by the FDA and the USDA to sell cultivated meat, has filed a lawsuit against Florida’s ban. Last week, a judge blocked the state’s attempt to throw out the case, paving its way towards the trial court.
Meanwhile, regulators cleared Mission Barns’s cultivated pork fat for sale earlier this year, the first green light for cultivated meat since Upside Foods and Good Meat’s summer 2023 approvals. It will debut at San Francisco restaurant group Fiorella and Sprouts Farmers Market.
From gas protein and bean-free coffee to cultured quail and upcycled kombucha, Fura is opening up the future of food to Singaporeans.
One of the hottest additions to the Asia’s 50 Best Bars list last year, the cult bar is putting sustainability at the heart of its operations and championing an inventive, future-facing menu.
Both a cocktail bar and dining destination, Singapore’s Fura has made a big splash since opening in October 2023, with its menu labelled as a Journal of Future Food. The first edition, for example, featured dishes like XOXO, Tempe, featuring mushroom XO sauce, pomelo, and a chimichurri made from Solein, the gas protein by Solar Foods.
Meanwhile, one of the cocktails on offer was called Got Milk?, a combination of Empirical Soka, pandan, honeydew, and kombucha made from Very Dairy, the animal-free milk commercialised by precision fermentation startup Perfect Day (which has since been discontinued).
Now, co-owners Christina Rasmussen and Sasha Wijidessa are embarking on the next step in Fura’s journey, with the second volume of its future food menu. Among the highlights are Vow‘s cultured quail (and its residual ‘tallow’), a novel take on the Dirty Banana cocktail with Prefer’s beanless coffee, and a triple-corn cocktail highlighting the benefits of crop diversification.
“We want to change the way we eat and drink by giving a glimpse of what our diet could look like in the future due to climate change,” Rasmussen, previously the head forager at Copenhagen’s world-renowned restaurant Noma, tells Green Queen.
Cultured quail walks into Fura
A Quail Walks Into a Bar, featuring Vow’s Forged Parfait | Courtesy: Kahying
One of several establishments using Australian company Vow’s cultivated meat in the city-state, Fura takes things a step further, using not just the Japanese quail parfait, it is also making use of the startup’s fat byproduct.
A Quail Walks Into a Bar is the eatery’s first dish using the cultured quail, which is sold under the Forged brand and was approved for sale in Singapore last year. “The Japanese quail has a buttery, smooth parfait texture, which is piped and torched on top of a hazelnut biscuit, garnished with dill cream and acidic malt apple gel to cut the richness,” describes Rasmussen.
“We’re then also using a byproduct of making the quail cells from Forged as our ‘butter’ for the Bread & Butter(ish). This is formed into a candle, which is lit just before serving and topped with pink peppercorn, garlic and Maldon salt,” she says. “The melted result serves as a dip for the black garlic bread, sweetened with brown bananas.”
This innovation doesn’t stop at the food – the cultured quail has also made onto Fura’s cocktail menu. “A Quail Walks Into a Martini showcases the use of cell-cultured meat by rooting it in a familiar drink, a dry martini,” she says. “The quail is infused into gin and dry vermouth; a caramelised fennel puree is then sous vide and fat-washed with gin to complete the rich and dry drink.”
Fura uses this technique often to integrate less familiar ingredients into the menu “By connecting them to something familiar, our guests will recognise and feel comfortable ordering [them],” says Rasmussen.
In addition, Singaporean startup Prefer’s bean-free coffee – made by fermenting waste bread, soy milk pulp and spent brewer’s grain – appears in two menu items. It’s part of the New Age Sando, which combines the coffee alternative with an apricot kernel ice cream, raspberry crisps, and marigold.
Plus, in Fura’s take on a Dirty Banana, the coffee is replaced with Prefer’s version, which is mixed with Empirical Ayuuk, dates, cardamom, and lacto banana cream.
Fura’s New Age Sando, featuring Prefer’s bean-free coffee | Courtesy: Kahying
Turning future food from ‘intimidating’ to something ‘approachable’
Apart from future food startups, Fura works with a range of local businesses to source its ingredients, including GreenLoop Farms, Mother Dough and Bewilder.
These make it onto the menu in innovative ways too. Take the 3 Crop Corn cocktail, for instance, which is aimed at promoting crop diversification as a strategy for lowering emissions and supporting regenerative landscapes.
“The name refers to a three-crop system with a small grain (represented by the sorghum grain from the Empirical Soka), summer legume (showcased in corn silk vermouth), and cover crop (a garnish of mustard frills from GreenLoopFarms),” explains Rasmussen.
Another aspect of Fura’s sustainability is waste reduction. Its menu has an Ugly Delicious section to include ‘wonky’ fruits and vegetables that don’t make it in retail stores and would otherwise be thrown away. The eatery ferments these to make fruit wines and kombucha.
“We make all of our kombuchas in-house. We have three different flavours: #01 is a blackberry, fennel and black tea kombucha, #02 is a raspberry, pineapple and milk kombucha, and #03 is a grapefruit, coconut and green tea kombucha,” says Rasmussen.
“The milk kombucha is the byproduct from one of our old cocktails, where the ‘whey’ was in excess and we used it to help soften the sharpness of acidity in our kombucha.”
Fura’s Journal of Future Food, Volume Two | Courtesy: Kahying
Aside from food, Fura avoids using cling film and works with reusable piping bags, and makes paper mâché with used receipts, which are then repurposed as product cards for their retail section. These types of measures are what helped the establishment achieve the Sustainable Bar Award by Asia’s 50 Best last year.
“Everything on our food and drinks menus highlights ingredients that are prevalent, invasive or in abundance due to the imbalance of our ecosystem. Our guiding principle is to look for ingredients that have low carbon emissions,” says Rasmussen.
“We understand it can be intimidating for people to live in a way that helps work towards a more sustainable future, so we want to make that more approachable by showing people small steps they can take through food and drink.”
Dutch startup Meatable has partnered with Singapore-based TruMeat to build a large-scale facility to produce cultivated meat at cost-competitive levels.
As it awaits regulatory approval in the island nation, Meatable is planning to build a commercial-scale factory in Singapore to produce cultivated pork at a faster and cheaper rate.
The Dutch startup has partnered with TruMeat, a firm focused on the industrialisation of cultivated meat tech, to construct what it says would be Singapore’s first cultivated meat factory capable of cost-competitive production.
While details of the bioreactor’s size and capacity are yet to be revealed, the companies plan to start construction this year.
“This is the next step in our journey to make cultivated meat accessible and affordable,” said Jeff Tripician, CEO of Meatable. “We have full trust in TruMeat’s expertise, and together, we are confident in our ability to optimise processes and scale efficiently.”
Scaling up ahead of market entry
The strategic partnership will focus on optimising processes and media development and building the state-of-the-art facility, which would be operated by TruMeat using Meatable’s technology.
According to the company, the factory would be able to deliver cultivated meat at the cost levels and volumes required to support Meatable’s commercial partners in formulating, testing, and launching products made with its cultivated pork.
“We recognise that Meatable is a clear leader in the cultivated meat space, and we have been waiting for a technology with this potential,” said TruMeat chairman James Chui.
“We are very confident that by combining our strengths, we can achieve the necessary cost reductions and the commercial scale to make cultivated meat a viable option for global markets.”
Meatable currently operates out of a facility in Leiden, which houses 200-litre bioreactors (with the potential of expanding to 500 litres). It has previously partnered with Singapore’s ESCO Aster, the world’s first approved contract manufacturing facility for cultivated meat, and plant protein manufacturer Love Handle.
Its process involves the use of pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), which – unlike immortalised cell lines that need to be altered to multiply indefinitely – have the natural ability to continue multiplying, and do so rapidly.
This is coupled with a perfusion process that enables a continuous cycle to generate very high cell densities and produce fully differentiated muscle and fat cells in just four days, the fastest of any startup in the industry.
“This collaboration brings us closer to providing the meat industry with the solutions it needs to deliver great-tasting, sustainable meat to customers and consumers worldwide,” said Tripician.
Meatable prepares for fundraising and regulatory approvals
In a wide-ranging interview with Green Queen in October, Tripician laid out Meatable’s “big change” in approach since he took over from co-founder Krijn de Nood five months earlier.
“The role of Meatable is to help meat companies gain access to more meat. We’re a supplier to them. We show them the technology. We transfer the technology so they can do what they do. They take raw material – meat – they turn it into food, and they sell it. We now provide them with some of the meat. Very simple.”
Meatable’s focus on production in the city-state comes amid its wait for the regulatory green light from the Singapore Food Agency. “We’ve got meat companies there that know there’s regulatory approval, or there will be, within 12 to 18 months,” says Tripician. “That’s where it’s going to gain traction, and then we’ll follow.”
At the time, he said the firm was expecting approval by Q1 2025. While this is delayed, the company said it will use the approval as a proxy to get clearance in other countries too, as a form of international cooperation for novel food authorisation.
Meatable is filing dossiers in at least six countries. “I see us moving with pretty good speed through 2025,” Tripician said in October. “At the end, I would be very disappointed in our team if we don’t have approval in five, six countries by this time or the end of next year.”
The company has already hosted two tasting events in Singapore, and one at its Leiden headquarters in the Netherlands (a first for the EU). Having raised $95M to date, it is looking to secure around $35M in a Series C raise, Tripician revealed at the time.
While funding has been hard to come by for cultivated meat (plummeting by 75% and 40% in 2023 and 2024, respectively), some leading startups have been successful, as can be evidenced by Aleph Farms’s $29M raise.
“If you believe we’re on the right path and the science and the IP and all that’s there, and our business model is going to be successful, can you invest an amount that will get us through this time?” Tripician had said when asked what his pitch to investors would be. “I know the meat companies will be buying licenses from us, building plants, and entering the marketplace over the next five years.”
US cultivated seafood startup BlueNalu is targeting an initial launch of its bluefin tuna in California and has cemented partnerships to take the product global.
A highly prized sushi delicacy made from cultured tuna cells could soon be coming to diners’ plates in California.
San Diego-based BlueNalu is targeting the state as the first port of entry for its cultivated bluefin tuna toro, having filed for regulatory approval with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Department of Agriculture (USDA).
“Our initial launch will focus on California, starting in our home base of San Diego – a region known for its vibrant food culture and consumers who prioritise healthy and responsibly produced products,” founder and CEO Lou Cooperhouse tells Green Queen.
At the same time, the company is laying the groundwork for international operations in “markets where demand, regulatory clarity, and strategic partnerships align”. That includes Singapore (where it has submitted a regulatory dossier), the UK (where it’s part of the government’s new regulatory sandbox scheme), and several nations in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.
The UK is the only European country to have approved cultivated meat for sale, which has prompted BlueNalu to amp up its focus on this market and expand its ongoing partnership with frozen food distributor Nomad Foods.
“We began collaborating in 2021 to explore the market potential for cultivated seafood and following compelling consumer insights, we are now working together on market entry and commercialisation strategies,” says Cooperhouse, noting that the link-up will help bring its cultivated tuna to both the UK and the wider European market.
“This includes evaluating premium foodservice offerings that align with consumer demand for high-quality, sustainable seafood, and also exploring other channels of distribution that align with Nomad’s current and future capabilities,” he adds.
Brits respond positively to cultivated seafood
Courtesy: BlueNalu
As part of its global push, BlueNalu commissioned a survey of 2,000 frequent sushi consumers in the UK last summer. “The results showed strong enthusiasm for BlueNalu’s first product, cell-cultivated bluefin tuna toro: 92% of respondents expressed some level of interest in trying it, including 55% who were very or extremely interested,” reveals Cooperhouse.
“Consumers identified the absence of parasites, pesticides, microplastics, mercury, and antibiotics as top benefits, followed by high omega-3 content and sustainable production,” he adds. “The study also affirmed that the terms ‘cell-cultivated’ and ‘cell-cultured’ effectively communicate the product’s origin and align with consumer expectations.”
BlueNalu is one of eight startups participating in the UK Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) two-year regulatory sandbox programme, which aims to help firms bring cultivated meat to market faster. It is the only US company in the scheme, and the only one focused on seafood.
BlueNalu CTO Lauran Madden calls it a “first-of-its-kind initiative” designed to support the development of safe and innovative cultivated food products. “The sandbox offers a unique opportunity for early, collaborative engagement with regulators to ensure we are aligned with the FSA’s expectations and data requirements for novel food applications, and structured dialogue and feedback,” she tells Green Queen.
“We commend the FSA for its forward-thinking approach and leadership in enabling a science-based, transparent regulatory pathway for emerging food technologies,” Madden adds.
In the aforementioned survey, 73% of Brits said they’d likely visit a sushi restaurant that offers the product. So it stands to reason that BlueNalu is planning to introduce its tuna in the UK and Europe through premium sushi and fine-dining restaurants.
“This approach reflects both consumer interest and our product’s unique value proposition. Nomad Foods has a long history of launching innovative seafood products, and together we are identifying the best entry points that meet today’s expectations for taste, safety, consistency, and sustainability,” says Cooperhouse.
“As we progress towards commercialisation, this partnership enables us to pair scientific and regulatory progress with real market insights and commercial expertise.”
The cost economics of bluefin tuna
Courtesy: BlueNalu
Bluefin tuna is a highly sought-after seafood delicacy, thanks to its velvety texture, buttery flavour and nutritional attributes. However, this species represents the ocean’s fastest and longest-distance swimmers, which makes it difficult to raise the fish in captivity, thus commanding a higher price. Toro is the fatty part of bluefin tuna belly, and is used in high-grade sushi and sashimi.
However, its supply is limited and extremely variable in quality, and its stocks face declines due to overfishing and illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing. Continued demand is driving the species towards endangerment and has prompted governments to place strict quotas to limit its fishing. Plus, tuna is one of the most polluted fish in the oceans, often contaminated with plastic debris and extremely high levels of heavy metals like mercury.
Israel’s Wanda Fish, too, is working on cultivated bluefin tuna toro to address this issue, though BlueNalu appears to be ahead in the race to bring it to consumer plates. It already operates a 38,000 sq ft pilot plant in San Diego (which can produce enough tuna for small-scale sales), and has unveiled plans for a larger 140,000 sq ft facility that can manufacture six million lbs of product annually once operational.
This will help bring down costs for the cultivated tuna, a crucial aspect for most consumers. That said, the company is already staring at an advantage here, since bluefin tuna toro already carries a premium price tag, so a cell-cultured version wouldn’t have the same cost difference as that with commodity beef or chicken. According to the poll, 74% of UK consumers are willing to pay the same or more than for conventional bluefin tuna.
“BlueNalu’s business strategy centres on high-demand species that address challenges in supply, consistency, sustainability, and food security – particularly those that displace imports… and command premium pricing,” says Cooperhouse.
“Seafood is already a premium category, and toro is one of the most expensive cuts, and has been described as the ‘Wagyu beef of the sea’. That gives us a unique opportunity to compete in a segment where consumers already expect to pay for quality, and where BlueNalu’s product’s health benefits, consistency, and safety attributes add real value.
“BlueNalu’s consumer research has already demonstrated that many consumers will see great value in our products, due to the health and safety advantages associated with our process. As a result, we believe we will be able to sell our products at or near price parity from our early stages of commercialisation.”
BlueNalu attracting global interest
Courtesy: BlueNalu
The results of the UK research are “highly consistent” with other consumer studies BlueNalue has conducted in the US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, covering nearly 10,000 people who “showed broad demand” for its seafood.
“Across these markets, we’ve seen strong interest in cell-cultivated seafood, especially among health-conscious consumers who value safety, quality, and transparency,” says Cooperhouse.
BlueNalu has previously announced partnerships and agreements with Asian food giants Pulmuone (South Korea), Mitsubishi, Sumitomo (both Japan), and Thai Union (Thailand), as well as industry leaders like Rich Foods and Griffith Foods. In addition, it has teamed up with Neom, Saudi Arabia’s upcoming future-facing city.
It is one of the most well-funded startups in the cultivated meat industry, having attracted $118M over several rounds, including a $33.5M Series B raise in 2023. However, the firm was an outlier that year, when overall funding for cultivated meat dropped by 75%.
That fall has since continued, as legislative challenges in the US and overseas have attempted to ban cultivated meat (with several states being successful), with investment in this space dropping by a further 40% in 2024.
“As a pre-revenue startup, we’re continually exploring strategic investment opportunities to support our growth,” Cooperhouse says when asked if BlueNalu is seeking new capital.
He adds: “We remain focused on scaling production, advancing regulatory clearances, and building a strong foundation for commercialisation and global market penetration.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Gordon Ramsay’s partnership with Becel, a new vegan egg in Italy, and Spain’s plant-based school meal decree.
New products and launches
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has taken his partnership with plant-based dairy giant Flora Food Group global, appearing in a replica Skip the Cow ad (minus the expletives) for its Canadian dairy-free butter brand Becel.
In the UK, Quorn has added two new flavours to its mycoprotein-based deli slices range. The tomato-basil flavour can be found at Sainsbury’s and Asda, and the garlic-herb variant at Tesco, both for £2.60.
As whole-food plant-based food surges in the UK, The Tofoo Co introduced a Thai Burger and Southern Fried Pieces, which will retail at Waitrose and Tesco, respectively, for £3.
Speaking of whole foods, vegan seafood player Happiee! has launched what it claims is the UK’s first ready-to-cook lion’s mane mushroom chunks. They’re available in original and teriyaki flavours, retailing for £4 per 180g pack at 240 Sainsbury’s stores.
Courtesy: Happiee!
Confectionery giant Mars has rolled out a new Honeycomb for its dairy-free Galaxy range in the UK. Combining cocoa and hazelnut paste with honeycomb pieces, the bar is available at Sainsbury’s for £1.50.
Ice cream maker Oppo Brothers has launched a better-for-you vegan sorbet range called Oppo Refresh, available in Sicilian Lemon & Strawberry, Alphonso Mango & Passionfruit, and Raspberry Coulis Swirl flavours for £3.75 per three-pack.
Also in the UK, oat milk brand Minor Figures has launched the Hyper Oat line it had unveiled at Expo West. Available in berry, turmeric, matcha, and mango variants, the milks contain adaptogens and nootropics. The berry and mango flavours are available at Waitrose for £3 per 750ml bottle, followed by a wider launch in the coming months.
Courtesy: Minor Figures
In Spain, plant-based meat leader Heura has rolled out a Fine Herbs chicken burger to cater to the country’s affinity for white meat, one of several products planned for this year.
Italian plant-based producer The Bridge has launched a vegan liquid egg called Veg Egg, which is made from soy milk and soy protein.
Across the Atlantic, South Korea’s Unlimeat has brought its flagship Korean BBQ Bulgogi and Pulled Pork Original products to 300 Kroger-affiliated stores in the US, including Ralphs, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, and Smith’s.
Courtesy: Unlimeat
Californian biotech firm Checkerspot has developed what it says is the world’s first high-oleic palm oil alternative made entirely via microalgae fermentation.
Company and finance updates
US animal-free dairy startup DeNovo Foodlabs has formed a 50:50 joint venture with Earth First Food Ventures called PFerrinX26 to scale up the production of precision-fermented lactoferrin protein. They will announce a manufacturing partner soon, and plan to build facilities to produce 300 tonnes of the protein within the next decade.
LoveRaw, the cult-favourite British vegan chocolate brand known for its Ferrero Rocher and Kinder Bueno copycats, has been rescued from administration by Bulgarian plant-based producer Smart Organic, after investment and supplier challenges disrupted the former’s operations and revenue.
Courtesy: LoveRaw
Mycelium Technologies, the French parent company of mycelium protein brand Mycfoods, has kickstarted its first fundraising round, with a €750,000 target. It plans a subsequent €4.5M round next year.
French plant-based companies Hari&Co, Accro, HappyVore, La Vie and Swap Food have formed InterVeg, a coalition aimed at accelerating the transition to a plant-based diet via constructive dialogue with policymakers and promotional campaigns.
Policy and research developments
In a big win for the protein transition, Spain’s Council of Ministers has approved the Royal Decree on Healthy and Sustainable School Cafeterias, which contains a provision to protect children’s right to a 100% plant-based menu in schools, as well as increase legume consumption.
Courtesy: New Wave Biotech
What makes a lean startup? Singaporean sustainable food production platform Nurasa and AI-based precision fermentation facilitator New Wave Biotech have released a whitepaper to help ingredient manufacturers “reimagine the five core lean startup principles” for the food tech world.
Researchers from the US have devised a new 3D printing process to make vegan calamari, using mung bean protein isolate, powdered light-yellow microalgae, gellan gum, and canola oil.
At the University of Florida, researchers are testing a new kind of cattle feed that could help dairy cows release less methane and use nutrients more efficiently.
Finally, in Norway, scientists are proposing kelp and other seaweed species, as well as plant residues, as an alternative to blood and other animal-derived inputs to use as culture media for cultivated meat.
The Good Food Institute, an alternative protein think tank, has released its latest State of the Industry series of reports for 2024. Here’s how plant-based, fermentation-derived and cultivated proteins fared in 2024.
While investment in alternative protein continued to fall in 2024, global sales of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives are up, as is interest in whole foods, according to the 2024 State of the Industry reports by industry think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI).
The annual series of reports explores the challenges and opportunities for plant-based food, fermentation-derived proteins, and cultivated meat. This year’s editions reveal a complex landscape for alternative proteins, with sales in markets like the US still declining and public investment in the industry on the rise.
Alternative proteins are part of a polarising debate in many parts of the world, punctuated by high prices and taste concerns, and enveloped by the backlash against ultra-processed foods (UPFs). However, the global performance shows promise in the market at a time when it has been portrayed as anything but.
Global plant-based sales on the rise
Courtesy: GFI
You’d be forgiven for thinking that sales of plant-based foods took a giant plunge, given all the coverage and discourse around them. In actuality, global sales reached $28.6B, a 5% increase from 2023.
Non-dairy alternatives dominated the market, with sales up by 5% to reach $22.4B, while meat analogues hit $6.1B (a 4% increase). After milk, meat and seafood, vegan yoghurt is the most popular category.
Europe was the leader in 2024, recording $9.7B in sales of plant-based meat, seafood and dairy, followed by Asia-Pacific ($8.9B), and North America ($7.3B), where conventional beef sales reached a record high last year.
Meat and dairy alternatives decline in the US, while whole foods shine
Courtesy: GFI
In the US, overall plant-based sales reached $8.1B in 2024, a 4% decline from 2023. More than a third of the market (34%) was occupied by non-dairy milk alone, whose sales dropped by 5% to $2.8B. Likewise, meat and seafood alternatives saw dollar sales fall by 7% to $1.2B, though the rate of decline was slower than in 2023.
At the same time, the demand for protein led to an increase in sales of protein powders (11%), and growing interest in whole foods resulted in a 7% hike in sales for tofu, tempeh and seitan. The biggest windfall, however, came for vegan desserts and baked goods (13%).
Plant-based eggs, meanwhile, saw a 2% increase in retail sales as avian flu wrecked chicken egg supplies in the US. This was true for foodservice too, where vegan egg sales were up by 28%. The report authors note that the data on unit sales and price changes is somewhat skewed due to the leading product in the category shifting to a larger pack size and thus a comparably higher price point.
Still in foodservice, plant-based proteins suffered a 5% decline in sales, though non-dairy milk continued its climb with a 9% growth.
Price parity and consumer reach still hindrance for the plant-based sector
Courtesy: GFI
Plant-based meat and seafood were 4% more expensive in 2024, versus just a 1% price hike for their conventional counterparts, widening the former’s premium to 82%.
The price gap for chicken and milk remained the same, while widening for pork and turkey. On the flip side, rising beef rates mean plant-based versions are just 14% more expensive now. And chicken-free eggs, which had a 317% price premium in 2023, narrowed this to 110%.
Bringing down prices of plant-based food is critical for them to compete with animal-derived products, as is improving consumer reach and acceptance. In the US, 59% of households bought a vegan product in 2024, similar to the year before, though down from 63% in 2022.
Penetration of plant-based meat and seafood remains low at 13%, though encouragingly, 63% go back to the store for more. Further, almost all Americans who buy these alternatives are not vegan or vegetarian – 96% of buyers also put conventional meat in their shopping baskets in 2024.
Milk alternatives reached 40% of households, with a repeat rate of 76%. Almond milk continues to remain the most popular dairy alternative (capturing 54% of sales), but oat milk is on the rise (25%).
VC investment slides, public funding a bright spot
Graphic by Green Queen
Alternative proteins did not escape the bleak landscape for climate tech venture capital in 2024, with total funding for the sector only amounting to $1.1B, a 27% decline from the year before.
Plant-based companies took the biggest hit, as venture capitalists backed away from foods linked to ultra-processing. These startups only raised $309M in 2024, a sharp 64% fall from the year before.
Cultivated meat, meanwhile, witnessed a 40% decline, securing only $139M, its lowest annual total since 2019. In fact, in the last three years, this sector has cumulatively raised less money than it did in 2021 alone.
The only bright spot for the category here is fermentation, where VC investment experienced a 43% increase last year, overturning a decline in 2023. This was led by Meati‘s $100M Series C round. Further, this category surpassed plant proteins in terms of the amount of public capital invested.
Speaking of which, while private investors remained cautious, governments continued to pour money into alternative protein, amid a push to meet their net-zero goals and mounting pressure from climate experts to diversify protein sources. Public investment in alternative proteins reached $510M in 2024, in line with the year before.
This was driven by the US, Denmark and the EU overall, while Asia-Pacific played a major role in the doubling of public funding for cultivated meat in 2024.
Courtesy: GFI
Legislative headwinds make for uneven regulatory progress
Meanwhile, cultivated meat continues to face threats of bans in the US and elsewhere. According to GFI’s calculations, 12 states attempted to restrict cultivated meat last year, with Florida and Alabama being successful – the former is now facing a lawsuit from California’s Upside Foods. Already this year, a host of other states have proposed similar bills, with Mississippi becoming the third to enact a ban.
Courtesy: Vow
Even so, cultivated meat regulation progressed in several other markets in 2024. Australia’s Vow was cleared to sell its cultivated quail and foie gras in Singapore (and later in Australia and New Zealand), and UK’s Meatly earned UK approval to commercialise cultivated chicken for pets, following Aleph Farms‘s greenlight in Israel in December 2023. Plus, regulators in the EU, South Korea, and Thailand received their first applications.
“Although some uncertainty exists due to shifting political winds around the globe, more approvals are likely in 2025,” said GFI. “These approvals will increase the number of cultivated meat products on the market while also generating new and more robust data on their safety and nutritional profile”
Upside Foods has been handed an initial legal victory after a judge denied Florida’s request to dismiss the lawsuit against its cultivated meat ban.
The lawsuit against Florida’s ban on cultivated meat is going ahead, after a judge rejected the state’s motion to dismiss the case.
In a 29-page ruling, Mark Walker, chief judge of the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida, granted cultivated meat producer Upside Foods a “first-round victory” in its challenge against Florida’s decision last Friday.
The judge’s decision to deny Florida’s attempt to dismiss the case means it will continue to move forward in the trial court. It comes months after Walker rejected Upside Foods’s request to grant a preliminary injunction to exhibit its cultivated chicken at December’s Art Basel festival in Miami.
Why Florida banned cultivated meat – and why it’s being sued
Courtesy: Ron DeSantis/Twitter
Upside Foods was among the first two startups to be allowed to sell cultivated meat in the US back in 2021, receiving approval from both the US Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration. It rolled out the chicken at Michelin-starred eatery Bar Crenn in San Francisco, and has since been hosting pop-up events at various restaurants across the US.
But in 2024, amid a growing wave of politically charged discontent against cultivated meat, Florida passed a bill that made it a crime to produce or sell cultivated meat, in what was the first such ban on these products in the US.
“Some people think Florida is theme parks, South Beach and maybe some oranges, but they don’t understand that we have one of the top cattle industries in the country,” Governor Ron DeSantis said when signing the legislation in May.
“What we’re protecting here is the industry against acts of man, against an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem, that views things like raising cattle as destroying our climate,” he added. “Take your fake lab-grown meat elsewhere. We’re not doing that in the state of Florida.”
Weeks after the law took effect in July, Upside Foods filed its legal complaint, labelling the ban “unconstitutional”. The lawsuit alleges that the move violates the federal Commerce Clause, which gives the national government exclusive power to regulate interstate commerce. The plaintiff argues that Florida’s law was enacted to protect in-state producers of conventional meat from out-of-state cultivated meat manufacturers.
Upside Foods, reprinted by the Institute for Justice, additionally suggests that the decision by two federal departments to allow the sale of its cultivated chicken in the interstate market supersedes any contrary state laws, as outlined in the Supremacy Clause.
The lawsuit and the subsequent rejection of the preliminary injunction cancelled the company’s scheduled appearances at Art Basel and the South Beach Wine and Food Festival, and postponed its planned debut at a restaurant in the state in early 2025.
Upside Foods ‘not looking to replace meat’
Courtesy: Kevin Martin Galante/Upside Foods
“One of the primary reasons for the enactment of the Constitution was to secure a national common market,” said Paul Sherman, a senior attorney at ICJ. “Today’s ruling is an important vindication of the principle that states cannot close their borders to innovative out-of-state competition, and a warning to other states that are considering banning cultivated meat.”
The ruling comes at a time when attempts to ban cultivated meat have become fashionable in the US, just as conventional meat sales reached a record high in 2024. Alabama and Mississippi have joined Florida in making this a law.
These efforts are fuelled by a cultural shift in the US, as beef becomes a favourite amid a renewed wave of Americana and right-wing influence, the rise of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again movement, and his crusade against ultra-processed foods.
But historically, over 20 states have attempted to ban cultivated meat – from Kentucky, New York, and Tennessee to Pennsylvania, Texas and Arizona – but most of these efforts have fallen by the wayside.
Even members of the meat industry have criticised these attempts. In a letter sent to DeSantis in March 2024, the North American Meat Institute called the ban “bad public policy”. “These bills establish a precedent for adopting policies and regulatory requirements that could one day adversely affect the bills’ supporters,” it said, emphasising the importance of consumer choice.
“Upside is not looking to replace conventional meat, which will always have a place at the table,” said Uma Valeti, co-founder and CEO of Upside Foods, which is pursuing approval to sell a new shredded chicken product by the end of this year.
“All we are asking for is the right to compete, so that Floridians can try our product and see that it is possible to have delicious meat without the need for slaughtering animals,” he added. “Today’s ruling is an important step towards securing that right.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Purple Carrot’s partnership with Fable Foods, Gosh!’s new points-based packaging, and SimpliiGood’s spirulina-based salmon.
New products and launches
Plant-based meal company Purple Carrot has addedFable Foods‘s Pulled Shiitake mushrooms to its lineup, including the Bluff Bourguignon Stew and BBQ Burnt Ends kits.
Courtesy: Purple Carrot
US non-dairy creamer brand Laird Superfood has released a larger 750ml pack of its functional-mushroom-infused coffee creamers, which come in Unsweetened, Sweet & Creamy, Cinnamon and Vanilla flavours.
In the UK, ready-to-eat vegan food brand Gosh! has revamped its packaging with a new ‘Plant Points’ system aimed at supporting the goal of eating 30 plants a week. Each point denotes the inclusion of a fruit, vegetable, whole grain, legume, or seed, and each of the brand’s products has a minimum of six points.
Courtesy: Gosh!
To mark Earth Day (April 22), Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable has joined forces with Food Tank, the United Nations Global Compact, and The Hunger Project to tackle climate change and global hunger through the food system.
Also in honour of Earth Day, Indian plant-based brand Blue Tribe – backed by actress Anushka Sharma and cricketer Virat Kohli – has launched an Eat Green Initiative to promote sustainable eating. The weeklong campaign (April 22-28) sees employees and influencers share recipes made with the company’s products.
At the ongoing Expo 2025 Osaka, members of Japan’s Cultivated Meat Future Creation Consortium are showcasing 3D-printed cultured meat and an at-home marbled meat maker, aiming to commercialise the products by 2031.
Company and finance updates
Indian plant protein manufacturer Proeon Foods has secured a €1M grant from the Province of South Holland, as part of the European Regional Development Fund, for its EGGcellent project. The startup is working with precision fermentation firmVivici, Applikon Biotechnology, and Planet B.io to develop an egg alternative for industrial baking applications.
Relsus, a Singaporean producer of functional plant-based ingredients, has opened a commercial-scale manufacturing facility in Ujjain, India.
Courtesy: Quevana
In Europe, cashew cheese maker Quevana has opened a 2,400 sq m facility in Segovia, Spain, which will double its capacity to over 400,000 units of fermented dairy-free cheese each month.
Swiss vegan seafood startup Catchfree has raised $1.45M in seed funding to scale up production and commercialise its plant-based shrimp, fish burgers, and fish bites this summer.
Elin Roberts and Christopher Kong, the co-founders and co-CEOs of British tempeh startup Better Nature, have been named in the Art & Culture of Forbes‘s 30 Under 30 list.
Courtesy: SimpliiGood
Armed with a $4M grant from the Israel Innovation Authority, AlgaeCore Technologies‘s SimpliiGood has secured European approval to commercialise its spirulina-based smoked salmon alternative. It is now pursuing clearance in the US too, has pilots with several companies, and will launch its first products as part of private-label brands within the next six months.
Alternative protein think tank The Good Food Institute is experiencing a change at the top, with CEO Ilya Sheyman departing in June. Jessica Almy, senior VP of policy and government relations, will take over as interim chief as the organisation hunts its next CEO.
Californian vegan frozen foods maker Sunday Supper has expanded its executive team, adding Spencer Oberg as CEO, Matt Williams as head of sales, and Chris Hays as CMO, as it kickstarts a $2.5M seed funding round.
Meanwhile, the Canadian province of Nova Scotia has invested $5M in the newly opened Neptune Bioinnovation Centre in Dartmouth. The 4,738 sq m facility will offer precision fermentation and spray drying capacity, and is set to create over 2,400 jobs and contribute $334M to the region’s annual GDP.
Courtesy: Government of Nova Scotia
Event organiser Emerald Expositions has acquired the Plant Based World Expo and its media platform, Plant Based World Pulse, from JD Events for an undisclosed sum. The deal includes both the North American and European editions of the show.
Research and policy developments
Amid the hike in dairy sales in the UK, plant-based milk is also on the rise for the first time since 2022, with sales volumes up by 2.1% between February 2024 and 2025. Oat milk is the leader, with a 7.2% growth in that period – it’s set to take 40% of the non-dairy market this year, according to Kantar.
In related news, British bakery chain Gail’s has dropped the surcharge on soy milk after a Peta campaign, offering the alternative for free from May 21. However, it will still ask customers to pay 40-60p extra if they want oat milk.
Courtesy: Gail’s
The US Department of Agriculture has cancelled the $3B Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities programme that aimed to promote environmentally friendly farming practices. The revocation of the Biden-era initiative is part of the Trump administration’s sweeping climate rollbacks.
In Canada, meanwhile, candidates from all four major political parties will participate in an election debate about animal protection today (April 23), organised by a group of animal welfare organisations, including Animal Justice and World Animal Protection.
Courtesy: Kai Kitschenberg/Funke Foto Services
In its TrendTracker 2024 report, food giant Cargillfound that 73% of consumers want their governments to set stricter environmental standards for the chocolate supply, just as European plant-based chocolates and desserts grew by 25% annually between 2019 and 2023.
Swapping out red meat for plant-based alternatives and choosing non-dairy milks can help cut the average Australian household’s emissions by six tonnes a year, research by the George Institute for Global Health has found.
Courtesy: Technical University of Denmark
Finally, researchers from Novonesis and the Technical University of Denmarksuggest that the bacteria in lactic acid could help reduce off-flavours and degrade anti-nutrients in plant-based dairy products, enhancing their taste profile and nutrient bioavailability.
Finland is well-placed to become a cellular agriculture leader, with its export potential set to reach €1B in the next decade – but funding and regulation challenges must be addressed.
In a decade’s time, cultivated meat, cell-based cocoa, and carbon-derived proteins could amount to €1B in export value in Finland, according to a government-commissioned report.
The country’s natural resources and biotech expertise leave it on the cusp of becoming a global leader in the cellular agriculture field, which involves the use of microbial, plant and animal cell cultures to produce proteins, fats, coffee and cocoa (among other products) in bioreactors.
While a majority of young adults in Finland (83%) have a positive or neutral attitude towards new technologies in food production, there are several challenges that the ecosystem needs to address before it can reach its market potential, according to researchers at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, the Natural Resources Institute Finland, and University of Helsinki.
Commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and Business Finland, the experts lay out a policy roadmap to help Finland become a leader in this sector.
Finland’s future food system will blend cellular and traditional agriculture
Courtesy: VTT
The country is already home to food tech leaders like Solar Foods (maker of Solein gas protein), Onego Bio (which makes egg proteins via precision fermentation), and Enifer (producer of Pekilo mycoprotein).
“One of Finland’s biggest challenges currently is the lack of capital, which limits the growth opportunities of cellular agriculture,” said VTT’s Emilia Nordlund, who led the study. “Building production facilities requires large investments, and success will not come without government support to accelerate investments and realise venture capital investments.”
The nation is home to a variety of carbohydrate-rich side streams like straw, sawdust, wood chips, and grass biomass, which could be utilised as feedstocks for cellular agriculture. For instance, if more than half of the straw were used as a sugar source for microbes, the amount of food produced would be enough to meet the annual protein needs of the population.
“The future food system will be based on the interplay between modern agriculture and cellular agriculture, utilising circular economy solutions,” said Päivi Nerg, state secretary from the agriculture ministry. “We must identify the necessary change paths and ensure that measures consider the entire chain, from farmers to consumers and other stakeholders.”
Teija Lahti-Nuuttila, executive director of Business Finland, added: “Finnish companies should recognise their strengths as part of emerging new value networks and build their competitiveness in the long term together with research organisations. Business Finland is already currently funding ambitious cellular agriculture RDI projects, so there is no need to wait for a separate programme.”
The researchers have come up with an eight-point plan to tackle the bottlenecks of Finland’s cellular agriculture industry and fulfil the estimated annual export value of €500M to €1B by 2035.
1) Ramp up major infrastructure investments
The report states that the country needs an action plan to increase venture capital funding and attract international investor interest, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises. The public sector can “provide support that signals the realisation of private financing”.
Infrastructure investments are critical to enabling new value chains, and the government is being urged to create risk financing and loan instruments to enable factory financing.
Courtesy: Timo Kauppila/Onego Bio
2) Ease EU novel food regulation
One of the biggets bottlenecks for the cellular agriculture industry concerns regulation – the EU’s novel food stringent framework has “significantly” slowed progress and left it playing catch-up with other markets. The report suggests setting up an office in Finland to support startups with the novel food process through advice and financial backing.
This office would actively influence the EU to expedite and ease the adoption of novel technologies, something that Finnish policymakers must support. Reviewing agricultural subsidies is also key, since these novel food technologies aren’t covered by any EU subsidies yet.
3) Build a €100M R&D programme
Finland should introduce a five-year, €100M R&D programme that would produce future food innovations, making use of the nation’s technological expertise and abundant natural resources.
The multidisciplinary initiative would ensure the development of value chains at the regional level too, while facilitating long-term development and economic growth. In addition, it will help the country achieve its target of increasing R&D spending to 4% of the GDP.
Courtesy: Solar Foods
4) Establish a future food ministry
The researchers propose creating a joint working group or organisation of ministries to develop the future food system, support the R&D programme, and promote cross-sector collaboration. This Ministry of Future Food would enable a broad perspective for a common goal to develop both conventional and cellular agriculture, boost the value chain, and enable competitiveness.
Another solution would be to establish a food innovation centre that would take overall responsibility for the implementation of R&D activities, including political decisions.
5) Expand education to secure future experts
While Finland has a sufficient knowledge base, the critical mass is not enough – there should be closer cooperation between education and training organisations to produce experts for the food sector. The report says it is “critical” that the number of industrial biotech experts increases in Finland.
The government’s Growth Programme goal to increase food experts also requires training people about exports. Education programmes focused on future solutions can enable the internationalisation of an expert corps in the country. The talent environment should embrace even those with limited proficiency in Finnish.
Courtesy: Vesa Kippola
6) Conduct public tastings to educate consumers
The report calls for the spread of “strong and inspiring stories” about the future food system to enhance consumer knowledge and acceptance. One way to do this would be to create a ‘showroom’ to present novel foods and provide examples of how cellular agriculture can work in tandem with conventional farming.
Moreover, Finland should follow the lead of European states like the Netherlands to allow public tastings of these foods before they go through the lengthy approval process – the government needs to create a national model to enable these events, which would increase the industry’s chances of success and dispel any prejudices from consumers.
7) Incorporate primary production in the novel food industry
Finland’s rich feedstock supply can help the cellular agriculture industry, though there are challenges with production, processing, storage, and logistics. This is why cooperating with primary producers is crucial – for them, this industry can open up new business opportunities. According to the report, business models and practical trials need to be developed to create this value for primary producers.
Further, the opportunities for cooperation can strengthen the role of agricultural entrepreneurs and the financial profitability of farms when underutilised feedstocks are converted into a business.
Courtesy: VTT
8) Target export support functions for cell-based food
While local production and related product exports are key to the growth and export potential of cellular agriculture in Finland, the equipment and technology exports, IP licensing, and value chains and factories built by Finnish companies overseas can play a crucial role too.
Given that this is a young, startup-driven market with a wide range of opportunities, export support functions should be built specifically to meet the needs of the sector to ensure that growth is effectively enabled.
Researchers in Japan say they’ve reached a “breakthrough” in tissue engineering that could open up “transformative opportunities” for cultivated meat production.
To solve one of cultivated meat’s biggest challenges, scientists have resorted to the circulatory system.
The same way blood vessels carry nutrients and oxygen to cells to help animals grow, scientists from the University of Tokyo have devised a “breakthrough” method to deliver these nutrients to artificial tissue, making it possible to grow whole cuts of cultivated meat, the holy grail for the future food industry.
Currently, most production methods can only render tiny pieces of cultivated meat (akin to mince), which are then assembled into a larger product via edible scaffolds, or combined with plant-based binders and ingredients to form a whole piece.
The problem lies in the random distribution of hollow fibres, which prevents uniform nutrient delivery and hinders tissue quality. Shoji Takeuchi and his colleagues have come up with what they say is a “scalable, top-down strategy” for producing whole cuts of cultivated meat using a perfusable hollow fibre bioreactor.
Could this be the future of cultivated meat?
Courtesy: Shoji Takeuchi
The study, published in the Trends in Biotechnology journal, explained that getting enough oxygen and nutrients to the cells in the centre of thick tissues is a major hurdle. Diffusion alone can’t sustain cells across considerable distances.
To overcome that, the researchers developed a bioreactor equipped with an array of semi-permeable hollow fibres that function as artificial circulation systems, which ensured uniform nutrient distribution throughout the tissue.
“We’re using semipermeable hollow fibres, which mimic blood vessels in their ability to deliver nutrients to the tissues,” said Takeuchi.
“These fibres are already commonly used in household water filters and dialysis machines for patients with kidney disease. It’s exciting to discover that these tiny fibres can also effectively help create artificial tissues and, possibly, whole organs in the future,” he added.
“We overcame the challenge of achieving perfusion across thick tissues by arranging hollow fibres with microscale precision,” Takeuchi says.
Tissues without an integrated circular system have generally been limited to a thickness of less than 1mm, but this new method allowed the scientists to produce a 2cm thick piece of chicken muscle that was several centimetres long and wide. Made using chicken fibroblast cells, which make up connective tisuse, the meat weighed 11g, and was about the size of a chicken nugget.
Further, the hollow fibre bioreactor had microfabricated anchors to promote cell alignment. And when using active perfusion, the chicken muscle tissue showcased higher protein expression and improved taste and texture.
Many obstacles to overcome
Courtesy: Shoji Takeuchi
“Cultured meat offers a sustainable, ethical alternative to conventional meat,” said Takeuchi. “However, replicating the texture and taste of whole-cut meat remains difficult. Our technology enables the production of structured meat with improved texture and flavour, potentially accelerating its commercial viability.”
Speaking of which, there’s still a lot to do and a long way to go before this production method can scale up and make cultivated meat fit for our plates.
There are several reasons why. The hollow fibres are not edible and must be pulled from the meat by hand, so the team is working on automating their removal or replacing them with edible cellulose fibres that can be left in and fine-tune the texture of the meat.
In terms of scaling up, as the tissue size increases, ensuring a sufficient oxygen supply becomes more challenging. So future versions of the bioreactor may need artificial blood to help carry more oxygen to cells and grow larger pieces of cultivated meat.
The researchers used cells cultured in a medium containing animal serum too, which is expensive and raises ethical concerns. To commercialise the product, the team would likely need to use plant-derived collagen and serum-free culture media, something many companies are already doing.
“Alongside solving these technological issues, regulatory challenges must also be addressed, including the approval of materials and processes for food production by relevant authorities, such as the FDA or European Food Safety Authority,” the study noted. “In addition, fostering a culture that embraces new foods is essential for the acceptance of cultured meat products by the public.”
Speaking to the Guardian, Takeuchi said with enough funding, products made using this approach could be available in five to 10 years. “At first, it will likely be more expensive than conventional chicken, mainly due to material and production costs,” he said. “However, we are actively developing food-grade, scalable systems, and if successful, we expect the cost to decrease substantially over time.”
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