Ohio-based Matrix F.T., a leading developer of plant-based scaffolds and microcarriers for the alternative protein industry, says it has developed the first cultivated chicken made in Ohio.
The team at Matrix F.T. says it has created a proof of concept cultivated chicken nugget to showcase its technology — edible microcarriers and scaffolds that function as key ingredients in cultivated meat products that look, cook, and taste like conventional.
Currently, the most common types of microcarriers used to provide a scaffold for cells are inedible and must be removed from cultivated meat before consumption. A number of companies and researchers are working to develop edible microcarriers. Last summer, UCLA researchers announced they had created an edible particle that produces a more natural muscle-like texture for cultivated meat. The researchers say they’re using a process that could be scaled up for mass production.
Ohio’s first cultivated nugget
Matrix F.T.’s headquarters include engineering labs and biological testing facilities where cell culture experiments are conducted to test performance, food safety, and sterility on its scaffolds and microcarriers. The company also conducts contracted research in its wet lab for cultivated meat companies.
GOOD Meat cultivated chicken | courtesy Eat Just
Microcarriers work by growing and proliferating cells in bioreactors. Scaffolding helps to mature and differentiate cells, signal gene and protein expressions, and turn cells into complex tissue structures, which become cultivated meat. It works with 3D extracellular matrices for cell growth and proliferation.
The company says its first chicken myoblasts — muscle cells — came from a University partner. The cells were cultivated by Heidi Coia, PhD., the Director of Product Development and Innovation at Matrix F.T. The harvested cells were combined with a proprietary mixture of plant-based proteins to create the hybrid chicken nugget.
“It had a great flavor, texture, and we were delighted to give a small example of how our customizable products can contribute to each of our customers’ unique cell-based foods that they are going to take to market,” Coia said.
Plant-based scaffolds and microcarriers
Matrix F.T. opened its new wet lab last April, aiming to expand its work in growing cultivated protein made with edible, plant-based nanofiber scaffolds and microcarriers.
The company said the new facility is instrumental in shortening the gap between engineering custom plant-based, nanofiber scaffolds and quickly delivering a final product for cultivated meat companies’ go-to-market timelines.
Upside Foods’ EPIC California factory, Courtesy
“Before opening the wet lab, Matrix F.T. relied heavily on customer feedback to learn if the scaffolds we custom-engineered for their applications were working,” Teryn Wolfe, Matrix F.T.’s VP of Corporate Development, said in a statement. “Now that we can provide partners with a more robust suite of R&D offerings, we’re able to have greater control and deliver results at the speed needed to help our customers scale. This is another important step in our ability to fuel innovation across the board, and we’re proud to continue to lead in the cultivated protein space, right here from Ohio.”
The new nugget launch is the latest in the quickly crowding cultivated chicken category. Late last year, California-based Upside Foods was the first U.S. company to receive the FDA’s GRAS status for its cultivated chicken. The company says it can produce 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat per year at its factory.
When it comes to cultivated meat, these ten governments are the most active in terms of funding, regulatory frameworks and research resources.
Cultivated meat is one of the key food solutions in our climate crisis-fighting arsenal. There are now over 100 startups globally working on this technology and 2022 saw some huge strides in the sector, from the largest funding round ever recorded to key product firsts.
As pundits continue to debate the topic of whether cultivated meat will become a common reality (It can’t scale! It definitely will scale!), one major issue that needs more attention is government support. From policy to subsidies, more needs to be done to boost the industry. Certain forward-thinking governments are making moves in terms of regulation and government funding, both of which are largely seen as the crucial next step to finally getting sustainable protein grown using cellular agriculture to diners’ plates. From regulatory updates in the US to more greenlights from Singapore authorities, we take a look at the ten most active governments across the globe that are helping to make cultivated meat a reality.
Editor’s Note: While this list focuses on countries that have allocated the most funds and/or made the biggest regulatory moves, this list is not exhaustive. There are a handful of other countries that are pushing ahead with regulatory frameworks and economic support- a few to watch include South Korea, India, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.
Source: Emerging Proteins NZ – September 2022 Report
1) Singapore
Singapore famously became the world’s first country to approve the sale of cultivated meat in December 2020 when it gave the go-ahead for Eat Just’s chicken nuggets. It has since approved a slew of the food tech’s products, including chicken breast, as well as a food processing license to Esco to manufacture foods using cell-ag tech. Aussie firm Vow says it is also expecting Singapore regulators to give the go-ahead for its cultivated quail soon. Cultivated meat products are approved by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) on a case-by-case basis, with producers submitting safety assessments to grant pre-market approval.
Aside from setting up its regulatory framework, which has been continually revised (four times and counting) to include new feedback from industry stakeholders, Singapore’s government has also poured money into the sector as part of its ‘30% by 2030’ local food production goal. Now housing an entire batch of homegrown startups like Shiok Meats, and foreign startups like Eat Just and Hong Kong’s Avant who have chosen the city as its Asia base, Singapore is likely to continue its lead in paving the way for global cultivated meat adoption.
Good Meat chicken.
2) Israel
Israel is another global leader in the cultivated industry, with its Innovation Authority demonstrating clear support with its latest $18M injection into a nationwide cultivated meat consortium. The group is made up of 14 companies and 10 universities and research bodies in the country. Aside from research funding, the government has also poured public funds into the sector, contributing over $13M to early-stage startups and infrastructure to the overall alt-protein industry.
Aleph Farms’ thin-cut beef steak.
3) United States
The US is making moves towards approving the sale and consumption of cultivated meat, which will likely come in 2023. Industry watchers are eyeing the milestone after California’s Upside Foods got through the first hurdle. In November, the startup received FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken, becoming the first American company to have its products deemed safe to eat. This is the initial pre-market step of the country’s joint framework to regulate cultivated meat products, with the USDA then in charge of the processing, packaging and labeling steps for certain products which fall under its oversight.
In terms of funding, the US government has backed the sector in several different ways. Most notably, the USDA awarded a $10M grant in 2021 to Tufts University for the creation of a new National Institute for Cellular Agriculture, which was the first-ever government-funded research project. The Biden administration doubled down on its promise to support alt-proteins in September 2022: the biotech program includes funding for “foods made with cultured animal cells”. More assistance came in the way of the administration’s Global Food Security Research Strategy released in October, as part of Biden’s plan to end hunger and foster food resilience.
Upside Foods chicken.
4) European Union
For cultivated meat products to be sold in the EU, regulators at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) will have to test the products as with any other novel foods. In addition to a pre-market safety evaluation, cultivated meat products that may use genetically modified ingredients will need to comply with the region’s GM foods regulations.
While the EU’s food safety rules are among the world’s most stringent, which may mean a slower pace for cultivated products to reach the market, the region is investing in the sector as part of its climate plan. In 2020, the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy included alternative proteins as a “key area of research” for a “fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system”, a sentiment lawmakers doubled down on within its 2021 Strategic Foresight Report. The EU’s core innovation and research funding program Horizon Europe also mentioned cultivated meat and seafood as one out of three of its core pillars, with around €7M set aside specifically for the sector. This means more money going into projects that will help make cultivated meats more cost-efficient, such as the necessary infrastructure and materials or ingredients, and scale-up efforts.
Mosa Meat burger.
5) EU powerhouses: The Netherlands and Norway
Within the EU, some of the leading governments accelerating cultivated meat includes the Netherlands, which has injected €60M into the Cellular Agriculture Netherlands consortium, and Norway, where authorities have set up a five-year research project into cellular agriculture with €2M in annual public funding.
Government funding into the overall alt-protein sector (includes plant-based, precision fermentation). Source: Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Newsletter
6) United Kingdom
Right now, the UK will require any cultivated meat products to go through pre-market authorization from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) as with any other “novel foods” in order to be sold on the market. There have been some signs that a novel regulatory framework “distinct” for cultivated foods could be on the horizon, with one government policy paper suggesting that adopting these changes would be a part of the country’s successful post-Brexit economic plan.
Ivy Farm sausages.
Some public funding has been injected into the industry, with the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) awarding £14M to nearly a dozen projects in May this year, one of which is the Royal Agricultural University’s research into transitioning livestock farmers towards cultivated meat. Previously, the UKRI has backed London-based Multus Biotech, a startup focused on developing cost-effective animal-free growth media to help scale cultivated meat production.
7) Australia and 8) New Zealand
In Australia and New Zealand, regulators say their existing Novel Foods Standard will already be able to accommodate foods made through cell-ag tech. This will include cultivated foods that may have used genetic modification technology, which will have to comply with additional regulations. Companies will have to submit their application to the FSANZ for pre-market approval. The capability of the existing standards and labeling requirements to cope with new cultivated meat products was accepted at the Food Ministers Meeting (FMM) in November 2022.
Japan is poised to see a new regulatory framework for cultivated meat, with its government stating it has already put together an expert team to begin assessing the safety of these products in June 2022. This will be spearheaded by the country’s Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry, whose panel is tasked with deciding the necessary safety precautions for the sector. These moves came after the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries launched a forum in 2020 made up of industry stakeholders, including companies and government agencies, to compile a strategy for building Japan’s alt-protein ecosystem.
In terms of funding, the Japanese government has supported homegrown startup IntegriCulture, awarding it a ¥240M (US$2.2M) grant in 2020 to build its first commercial bioreactor.
IntegriCulture meat.
10) China
China recently hinted that it will ramp up its investment in cultivated meats. Its latest five-year agricultural plan specifically included cultivated meat and “artificial protein” for the first time. Under the plan, the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Affairs outlined the development of “synthetic biology technology” as key to its goal of “upgrading of the food industry, and reduc[ing] the pressure on environmental resources brought about by traditional aquaculture”. According to state media Xinhua News, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated the need to develop new sources of protein. He commented that “developing biological science and technology” to supplement traditional livestock would be key to the country’s food resilience.
A new strategic partnership between investment platform Cult Food Science, the University of Alberta, and New Harvest Canada, aims to provide support for startups in the cellular agriculture industry.
Based at the University of Alberta’s Agri-Food Discovery Place, the Institute of Cellular Agriculture’s goal is to provide space and support for “new startups, researchers, students, entrepreneurs, and product development” in the emergent sector.
“We are at the horizon of an explosion of new ideas and ventures that will accelerate the global cellular agriculture industry,” Lejjy Gafour, CEO of Cult Food Science, said in a statement. “We are excited to be able to accelerate the launch and development of new ventures and ideas from individual founders, to supporting classic enterprises who want to adopt cellular agriculture as part of their strategy with our support.”
Cult Food announced another strategic partnership last year, joining forces with Singapore’s Umami Meats as part of a Seed funding round.
A ‘pivotal stage’
Isha Datar, Executive Director of New Harvest, says cellular agriculture is at “a pivotal stage” and needs the proper infrastructure to allow the co-creation of innovation to deliver on its promises.
The range of cultivated fish from Umami Meats | Courtesy
“Canada, and Edmonton, Alberta in particular, can provide the optimal environment to support cross-disciplinary collaboration, and advance our research in areas like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning,” Datar said. “This new partnership will leverage the University of Alberta’s legacy in bioprocess engineering to bring novel technologies and innovations to the Canadian agri-food sector.”
Positioning the Institute at the University of Alberta allows companies working on cellular agriculture products, such as cultivated meat, access to research and innovation through the university’s broad network. It also helps to accelerate the advancement of experts in the space, providing opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students.
“This partnership with New Harvest Canada and its innovation partners will be pivotal in how our research and teaching addresses climate change, industry sustainability, and food security issues” said Dr. Heather Bruce, Chair of the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science at the University of Alberta. “New Harvest Canada and Cult Food Science will join a nexus of startup companies at the U of A’s Agri-Food Discovery Place that is launching agriculture and food production into the 21st century.”
Prepping for approval
The move comes as the industry is poised to enter the mainstream. Cultivated meat in the U.S. got its first victory in November when Upside Foods earned GRAS status from the FDA for its cultivated chicken.
Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy
Upside is also one of a growing number of cultivated meat producers with large-scale factories ready to go live once they receive regulatory approval. Upside operates a 53,000 square-foot California factory that it says can produce 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat a year.
The industry is also formalizing efforts around the naming convention for cultivated meat in order to smooth regulatory processes and appeal to consumers. A recent study found some cultivated meat terms including ‘lab-grown’ and ‘artificial’ to be off-putting.
New research takes a look at the terminology surrounding cultivated protein — meat and seafood grown from animal cell samples in bioreactors.
It’s been called a lot of things — from “clean” meat to lab-grown, cell-based, and cultured meat. Its critics have labeled it Frankemeat. The industry has settled on “cultivated meat”. But what do consumers prefer? A new study took a look.
The research, published in the journal Nature Portfolio looked at U.S. consumers and their terminology preferences.
The findings
“We surveyed U.S. consumers to compare nine different labels for cultivated meat and seafood products in terms of appeal, purchase intent, perceived safety, perceived allergenicity, and clarity,” Chris Bryant of the University of Bath, said of the research. “We tested terms that were suggested by stakeholders in recent USDA and FDA calls for comments, as well as some additional terms.”
Cultivated meat comes to its first butcher shop | Courtesy Eat Just
“Some had proposed that these products be labelled ‘artificial’ meat or seafood, but we found that this terminology was not a good representation of the nature of the products, and led to many people mistakenly thinking they would be safe for allergy sufferers. On the other hand, we also tested a completely new term, ‘Novari’, but we found that this had very low levels of consumer understanding,” Bryant said.
The terms earning the most favor were “cell-cultured” and “cell-cultivated.” “Artificial” and “lab-grown” were least favorable.
What the industry says
Ryan Huling, who leadscommunications and programs for the Good Food Institute’s Asia-Pacific region, says the researchers reiterate several important points that GFI has also made. GFI is the leading industry think tank. According to Huling, he’s not surprised that the nomenclature that invokes science and technology tends to have lower measures of appeal and purchase intent. “Put simply, consumers want to eat food, not tech,” he told Green Queen.
“It is also worth noting that this research was conducted in the U.S., where cultivated meat is not yet approved for commercial sale,” Huling said. U.S.-based Good Meat is the only company selling cultivated meat to consumers, currently; its cultivated chicken is available in Singapore. But the FDA recently GRAS status to U.S.-based Upside Foods, which is the first step in its path toward U.S. regulatory approval, bringing the country one step closer to the widespread availability of cultivated meat.
An ABEC bioreactor that produces Good Meat | Courtesy
“GFI conducted a consumer study in 2019 with Mattson which helped determine our initial decision to use ‘cultivated’ terminology, while a more recent 2021 GFI survey of the cultivated meat industry demonstrated that ‘“’cultivated’”’ is also increasingly the preferred industry term,” Huling said.
He says adding “cell” before “cultivated” is redundant because even conventional animal meat is composed of cells.
“Describing animal products as ‘cultivated’ has been broadly shown to be most effective at fostering positive responses from consumers, while also being both scientifically accurate and a clear differentiator from conventional animal products,” Huling said. “That’s why more than 30 industry stakeholders — including nearly every cultivated food startup in Asia Pacific, as well as multinational companies Cargill and Thai Union and regional coalition groups from China, Australia, Japan, and Korea—have unified behind the term.”
Huling says that from a narrative standpoint, “cultivated” also facilitates increased consumer awareness by “drawing clear parallels with the familiar process of plant cultivation.”
“Just as growing plants in a greenhouse involves snipping off a small cutting from a plant and allowing it to grow in a nutrient-rich environment before harvest, we can now make meat by putting a small sample of animal cells into a nutrient-rich environment — known as a cultivator — and then harvesting them. This is a comparison that consumers around the world can easily wrap their heads around,” he said.
Cultivated meat pioneer Mosa Meat is urging governments to support the growth of the category to fight climate change.
A new white paper released by Dutch cultivated meat producer Mosa Meat is urging global leaders to redirect funds from conventional beef production toward cell-based meat cultivation as a viable tool in the fight against climate change.
‘Beef needs a solution’
“Beef needs a solution. Industrial meat production continues to accelerate the climate crisis, while the world’s demand for beef is steadily growing,” Maarten Bosch, CEO of Mosa Meat, said in a statement. Animal agriculture accounts for nearly 60 percent of agriculture’s total global emissions. The sector is the second-largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.
“We are creating an alternative approach to producing real beef. With Mosa Meat’s rapid recent growth, creating the biggest scientific team in the industry and the largest cultivated meat campus in the world, I am very excited for what lies ahead as we help reshape the global food system,” Bosch said.
Mosa Meat wants to see widespread support for cultivated meat | Courtesy
The new review, entitled Cultivating Meat: The Mosa Approach, describes the recent accomplishments made by the cultivated meat sector and how it can play a positive role in not only mitigating global warming but also food security, preservation of natural resources, and public health.
Mosa Meat was founded after its co-founders, Dr. Mark Post and Peter Verstrate, were the first to unveil cultivated meat in 2013, setting the wheels in motion for a sector that experts say could be worth $25 billion by 2030 following widespread regulatory approval.
“We unveiled the first cultivated beef burger to the world in 2013 and a whole new cultivated meat sector has been developed, creating new value chains and collaborations,” said Bosch. “The next step for our field is to develop industrial and commercial-sized production facilities to maximize the potential impact. We call upon a range of financial, societal, governmental, and scientific institutions to collaborate and further invest into the development of cultivated meat.”
Advancing cultivated meat
Mosa Meat’s report says price parity with conventional meat is critical in the success of the category as is nutritional value and culinary experience. When Mosa unveiled the first cultivated burger in 2013, its production cost was about $330,000. Costs have dropped considerably, with companies saying they can reach price parity with more expensive cuts of conventional meat.
Cultivated meatball | Courtesy Mosa Meat
Last January, Mosa Meat announced it had successfully removed the controversial cultivated meat growth medium, fetal bovine serum, without genetically altering cells. It made its science public in the journal Nature Food in an effort to further advance the category.
“For real progress in the protein transition, new solutions are needed to give consumers exactly what they expect from meat,” Mosa Meat says in its review. “The true potential of cultivated meat is that consumers can keep eating the products they love, exactly as they are doing now — and we don’t need to bet on massive global consumer behavioural change to reduce the current negative externalities of meat consumption. This is the primary reason Mosa Meat was founded.”
SciFi Foods has conducted the world’s first Life Cycle Analysis on cultivated beef and the findings show significant benefits for the planet.
Researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) conducted the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) on cultivated beef — the first peer-reviewed research on the climate impacts of lab-grown protein versus its conventional live animal counterparts. The findings were published in the journal Sustainability.
The researchers looked at burgers made from cultivated beef along with plant-based ingredients including soy protein, produced by ScIFi Foods, the Bay Area startup that emerged from stealth mode earlier this year.
The findings
According to the findings, the SciFi Foods’ burgers reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 88.5 percent when compared to conventional beef burgers. Energy use dropped more than 37 percent, land use dropped more than 90 percent, and water used dropped by nearly 97 percent when the beef was grown in bioreactors.
The researchers note that some parts of the process were very similar to conventional beef, such as cold storage, packaging, and distribution, but they note “there was little doubt overall that the SciFi Burger had a significantly smaller environmental impact.”
“There are many ways engineering and bioengineering is being utilized today to create a more sustainable future,” lead study author, Dr. Bhavik Bakshi, Richard M. Morrow Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at OSU, said in a statement, “and this is just the onset when it comes to what science can do for the food system.”
While the study only looked at SciFi’s products, the researchers say the findings validate the entire category — a significant milestone as regulatory approval nears in the U.S., following Upside Foods’ recent FDA GRAS status.
‘Leaving a positive mark on the planet’
[W]e’re proud to prove that yes, what we’re doing is truly making an impact, because as much as this is about delicious burgers, the crux of it is about leaving a positive mark on the planet,” said SciFi Foods’ co-founder and CEO Joshua March.
Photo by Joachim Süß on Unsplash
The researchers say the study does not assume exclusive use of renewable energy, suggesting a shift to renewable resources could prove even more climate-friendly than conventional cattle farming.
Animal agriculture is a leading producer of emissions. According to the OSU researchers, agriculture and the food industry is responsible for 25 percent of all global emissions. The world’s leading climate scientists and public health organizations have called for drastic dietary shifts to reduce animal products in order to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C.
Eat Just’s Good Meat is now available through a Singaporean butcher shop, Huber’s Butchery.
Eat Just’s cultivated Good Meat is coming to the display case and bistro menu of Huber’s Butchery in Singapore, beginning early next year. The launch includes a tasting preview happening this Saturday.
‘Another historic moment’
“Offering this new approach to making meat at a butchery is another historic moment in the long road to making our food system more delicious and sustainable,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, said in a statement. “I’m very proud to partner with the Huber’s team to give people a whole new way to experience our cultivated chicken in the new year.”
The news follows several recent launches across Singapore including a partnership with the delivery platform Food Panda, and a recent partnership with a number of hawker stalls, as well as fine dining restaurants.
Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat | Courtesy
Last month, during the COP27 conference in Egypt, Eat Just served its Good Meat chicken to global climate leaders, media, and consumers for the first time outside of Singapore. Cultivated meat is poised to reduce the protein industry’s carbon footprint by producing fewer emissions than conventional meat production — some estimates put it at 90 percent fewer emissions. It’s also less resource intensive, requiring less land and water than conventional meat.
The Huber’s partnership will see the company’s first placement alongside conventional butcher shop meat, something Huber says aligns with its longstanding commitment to quality.
“When we founded our butcher shop, we made it our mission to provide top quality and exceptional tasting meat products with the highest food safety standards at an affordable price. Partnering with GOOD Meat is in keeping with that vision and the realities of our ever-changing food system,” said Huber’s Butchery Managing Director Ryan Huber.
Executive Director Andre Huber said cultivated meat “could be one of the solutions to over-farming due to increased population size and density and an increase in animal protein consumption in many parts of the world.”
Cultivated protein poised for regulatory approval
The launch into the family-run butcher overlaps with the two-year anniversary of Good Meat’s approval in Singapore; it’s currently the only company with regulatory approval to sell its cultivated meat.
Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy
But that will likely change in 2023 as fellow U.S.-based cultivated meat company, Upside Foods, has completed the first regulatory hurdle with the FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken.
The meat is likely to receive USDA approval within the next year, which would make it legal for sale and consumption across the U.S.
Collaborating with synbio tech solutions provider Solar Biotech, cultivated meat pioneer Orbillion Bio says it can produce upwards of four million pounds of cultivated meat per year.
Known for its premium cultivated Wagyu beef, California-based Orbillion Bio says the new partnership with Solar Biotech will see it scale up to 20,000L bioreactors — enough to produce more than four million pounds of cultivated meat per year.
The announcement follows the recent FDA GRAS status for Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken, moving the cultivated meat industry closer to U.S. regulatory approval.
In position for mass production
The partnership is the first of its kind for Solar Biotech, marking its official entry into the cultivated beef industry, following its launch into animal-free chicken and work with Motif Foodworks on a yeast-derived heme protein.
Orbillion’s founders Samet Yildirim, MSc, MBS, Patricia Bubner, PhD, and Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay, PhD
“At Solar Biotech, we develop world-class bioprocessing technology together with leading players in biotech. We now want to bring our knowledge and decades of experience into creating real impact in the sustainable food tech space, and there is no better partner than the Orbillion Bio team. We see our technical synergy with Orbillion as an opportunity to enter a rapidly growing higher value cellular agriculture segment, which will yield long-term significant recurrent revenue for both parties with attractive profit margins” Alex Berlin, CEO and CTO of Solar Biotech, said in a statement. “They bring significant expertise in world-class bioprocessing and food, and we are looking forward to investing in this partnership to bring cost-effective and nutritious foods to market.”
The partnership marries Orbillion’s proprietary cell culture platform with Solar Biotech’s scale-up bioprocess development capabilities and infrastructure, proprietary AI-driven bioprocess controlling software, new biosensing technologies, and vertically integrated engineering, and previous experience commercializing mammalian cell cultures for animal-free meat, the companies said in a statement.
Quality, parity, and sustainability
“Orbillion’s innovative business model will bring to market the highest quality cultivated beef, while being cost competitive,” Patricia Bubner, CEO of Orbillion, said in a statement. “Our unique technology has already allowed us to produce meat that comes from non-GMO cells and that is free of fetal bovine serum (FBS), and by partnering with Solar Biotech we can move more swiftly to reach price parity.”
The new partnership will see Orbillion produce its meat at lower costs — part of its commitment to achieving price parity with conventional meat by 2026, and commodity pricing for beef by 2030.
Orbillion Wagyu beef | Courtesy
It will also help tackle the food industry’s emissions. Orbillion says if produced using renewable energy, cultivated meat could reduce global warming impacts by between 85 and 92 percent versus conventional beef. Lab-grown meat also reduces the amount of land needed to produce protein, and requires fewer resources including fresh water.
As the cultivated protein sector positions itself for widespread regulatory approval, Orbillion hope it is setting itself apart with a focus on premium meats. In addition to its Wagyu beef, it’s also developing elk and lamb meat. A recent partnership with Luiten Foods will bring its range of cultivated meats to Europe by 2025, pending regulatory approval.
As attention turns toward agriculture in the fight against climate change, cellular agriculture emerges as an invaluable solution.
During COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced its plan to develop a roadmap for agri-food systems to better address the 1.5°C Paris Agreement climate targets. Zitouni Ould-Dada, Deputy Director of FAO, set a COP28 deadline for publishing the roadmap.
A map to net-zero
“Investors representing $18 trillion, led by FAIRR, have made their voices heard,” Jeremy Coller, Chair of FAIRR Initiative and Chief Investment Officer at Coller Capital, said of the announcement, which came at the urging of FAIRR, and was announced during the FAIRR-hosted COP27 Blue Zone event.
“We welcome the FAO’s commitment to producing a roadmap for food and agriculture which will provide much-needed clarity to both companies and investors, which will allow companies to plan for the transition and investors to assess investment risk and opportunities. It’s a huge challenge and investors will be looking for the roadmap to include clear guidance on methane emission limits, halting deforestation, scaling up alternative protein production, and support to ensure a just transition for farmers.,” Coller said.
Photo by Zubair Hussain on Unsplash
“Without a map to get to net zero, the food sector will never get there,” Steve Waygood, Chief Responsible Investment Officer at Aviva Investors, said. “That’s why the FAO commitment to set a clear path towards 1.5°C is so important. It will help investors to better determine where capital should flow in order to finance those businesses and sectors best placed to deliver both food security and the low-carbon transition.”
According to FAIRR, only 16 of 54 OECD countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) have agricultural targets, despite the industry’s significant impact on climate change.
“A roadmap for the food system will help investors to identify new, sustainable investment opportunities, and to identify risks for companies that are not aligned to the likely direction of future policies,” Chris Dodwell, Head of Policy & Advocacy at Impax Asset Management, said. “The IEA’s net zero roadmap has provided much-needed guidance for investors in the energy sector, but there is a gap when it comes to the food sector that we hope the FAO’s roadmap will fill. The roadmap will also give countries the confidence needed to include the agriculture sector within their NDCs and develop the policies needed to move us closer to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.”
Cellular agriculture’s role in the future of food
World leaders are also being urged to prioritize cellular agriculture as part of their plans to reduce emissions. The urging comes from a new global alliance formed during COP27 earlier this month. The new alliance is made up of the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA), and Cellular Agriculture Europe (CAE).
“It is great news that the FAO has committed to producing a climate roadmap for food and agriculture next year,” said Robert E. Jones, President of Cellular Agriculture EuropeJones. “We encourage them to include a full suite of solutions to reform the global food system to make it sustainable for people and the planet.
“Cellular agriculture can be a powerful tool in that mix, but we need governments to step up and help create the enabling conditions necessary for it to thrive and scale up quickly,” said Jones. “Considering the role agriculture is playing in the climate crisis, world leaders should be as committed to innovations in food production as they are to the energy transition.”
COP27 attendees from approximately ten countries attended events featuring cell-based meat, presented by California-based Eat Just, which brought its cultured Good Meat to the Singapore Pavilion. Cell-based meat is currently only approved for sale in Singapore, but a major milestone came to the U.S. last week when California’s Upside Foods earned the FDA’s GRAS status for its cultivated chicken.
Courtesy Upside Foods
Some experts put cellular agriculture’s impact on the environment at more than 90 percent lower than conventional agriculture. Recent findings suggest technologies such as cellular agriculture could feed the entire global population on a fraction of the land currently used to raise livestock. The industry is tied to a number of issues beyond just emissions leading to climate change; livestock production is linked to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and overuse of resources, including medically important antibiotics.
Dr. David Tonucci, President of AMPS Innovation, applauded the COP27 events. “It is great that cellular agriculture was part of the conversation,” he said. “Now we need to see concrete efforts to lift up this important innovation into the policy frameworks for emissions reductions around the world.”
Dr. Sandhya Sriram, President of APAC-SCA, said countries must also be “ready and willing to use public resources to level the playing field for innovative and sustainable protein production methods like cellular agriculture.”
Current food production methods are responsible for one-third of the climate crisis, according to Sriram. “Just reforming conventional animal agriculture methods will not be enough alone to sustainably feed ten billion people in 2050, especially with the FAO predicting meat consumption rising over 50 percent in the same time period,” Sriram said.
With full regulatory approval expected in the U.S. and elsewhere soon, cell-based meat is being looked at as a key alternative to emissions-heavy conventional meat production.
California-based cultivated meat producer Upside Foods has received FDA approval for its lab-grown chicken, becoming the first cell-based company allowed to sell its products in the U.S.
The milestone announcement comes after years of anticipation as cultivated meat companies, including Upside, have raised more than $2 billion in the last two years, according to recent Crunchbase data.
“This is a watershed moment in the history of food,” said Dr. Uma Valeti, CEO and Founder of UPSIDE Foods. “We started UPSIDE amid a world full of skeptics, and today, we’ve made history again as the first company to receive a ‘No Questions’ letter from the FDA for cultivated meat. This milestone marks a major step towards a new era in meat production, and I’m thrilled that U.S. consumers will soon have the chance to eat delicious meat that’s grown directly from animal cells.”
Generally Recognized As Safe
The FDA said in its announcement that the chicken, which is made from cells of a live animal that are then grown in bioreactors to produce meat, earned the agency’s GRAS status (Generally Recognized as Safe). The FDA told Upside it had no further questions on the tech or final product.
Chef Dominique Crenn’s Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn restaurant in San Francisco is expected to be among the first to serve Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken.
“Since our earliest days, our top priority has been to ensure the safety and quality of our products,” said Eric Schulze, PhD, VP of Regulatory and Public Policy at UPSIDE Foods. “FDA sets the standard for global acceptance of new food innovations, and we are incredibly grateful for the agency’s rigorous and thoughtful process to ensure the safety of our food supply. We’re also extremely proud to have played a leading role in helping to champion the framework for how cultivated meat, poultry and seafood are regulated in the U.S.”
Cultivated chicken | courtesy Upside Foods
Upside Foods has led the funding for cultivated meat, nabbing $400 million in a Series C earlier this year, bringing its valuation to more than $1 billion before launching a single product.
“Upside has reached an historic inflection point, moving from R&D to commercialization,” said Valeti, CEO and Founder of Upside Foods said earlier this year. “Our team at Upside continues to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges in our mission to make our favorite food a force for good. Working in partnership with our world-class coalition of investors, we’re excited to bring delicious, sustainable and humane meat to the consumers around the world.”
The funding came after the company opened its ‘EPIC’ factory in Emeryville, California. The company says it can produce 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat per year, making it one of the largest production facilities for the tech.
Scaling up conventional meat production
While not a green light for the cultivated meat industry at large, the FDA approval does open the door to more approvals, which the industry has been anxiously anticipating since Singapore gave approval to Bay Area company Eat Just’s cultivated chicken meat nearly two years ago. There are more than 100 companies worldwide working on the tech.
Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy
Earlier this week, Dutch-based cultivated meat producer Meatable announced it was opening a center in partnership with plant-based Asian butcher, Love Handle, to bring hybrid products that marry the cultivated meat tech with plant-based ingredients to market. That tech may help reduce costs, currently one of the biggest barriers to market.
While cultivated meat is expected to be significantly more costly than conventional meat or plant-based offerings at first, a growing number of companies say they’ve been able to scale the tech and bypass costly processes including certain growth media and scaffolding needs that increase prices.
Cultivated meat promises to be more sustainable than conventional meat, reducing carbon footprints by more than 90 percent by some estimates.
The Upside Foods’ announcement also comes as new research calls for increasing the production of brewed protein, such as microbial fermentation and cultivated meat, and returning 75 percent of the world’s farmland to wild lands to fight climate change.
Cultivated meat brand Meatable has announced a ‘Future of Meat’ innovation center in partnership with plant-based meat brand Love Handle in an effort to bring the two sectors together to co-create the future of food.
Would you eat vegan food that contained cell-cultured meat along with plants? That’s the hope of Dutch cultivated meat company, Meatable, and Asia’s first plant-based butcher, Love Handle, as the two companies chart a new course for meat with their hybrid product innovation center coming to Singapore.
The new Future of Meat center was fostered by the Singapore Economic Development Board, a government agency supporting the alternative protein sectors. The center is slated to open next year, with more than $6 million earmarked for development. It will mark the world’s first kitchen and lab dedicated to hybrid product development.
Is hybrid protein the future of meat?
“We’re delighted to announce this partnership with Love Handle to build the world’s first innovation center for hybrid cultivated meat products,” Krijn de Nood, co-founder and CEO of Meatable, said in a statement.
“Together we’re going to spearhead the development of hybrid products for the Singapore and global markets and help foster innovation among other alternative protein producers. Our vision is to satisfy the world’s growing appetite for meat without harming the environment, animals or people.”
Meatable co-founders Daan Luining and Krijn de Nood
“The new innovation center we’re setting up with Meatable will help us develop new hybrid and plant-based meat products as well as provide a space for existing plant-based players to further drive innovation in the food industry,” Ken Kuguru, co-founder and CEO of Love Handle, said. “We’re looking forward to working closely with Meatable and for consumers to be able to try these new and exciting products as early as next year.”
The new center announcement follows Meatable’s recent partnership with ESCO Aster, the only production facility that has regulatory approval for producing cultivated meat. The two are working together to bring Meatable’s cultivated pork to Singapore, which is currently the only country that has approved the sale of cell-based meat.
The new center will include bespoke equipment, the companies say; they will help to develop the protein made from the two different technologies. It will also include a space for consumer tastings and events as well as a retail space to purchase the hybrid meat products.
Moving the needle on consumer perceptions
Caroline Wilschut, Chief Commercial Officer at Meatable, told Green Queen via email that the center is going to be “an incredible environment for innovation and creativity to solve some of the meat industry’s most pressing challenges.”
Wilschut says the partnership is part of a broader expansion strategy in Singapore. Meatable is expected to invest up to €60 million over the next five years and employ more than 50 people in the country.
Meatable’s cultivated pork is coming to Asia soon
“By localizing the value chain, we can increase the positive impact we can have as a business and contribute to the development of the cultivated meat industry as a whole,” she said.
“If we want to move the needle on how people think about meat in their diets, then we need to have a space to come together, innovate and develop the delicious products of the future,” Kuguru told Green Queen.
“By combining our knowledge and experience, we’re going to create amazing products for people to enjoy at home and in restaurants,” he said, “while simultaneously creating an open-innovation ecosystem to collaborate with next-gen businesses intent on creating alternative protein innovations.”
Lead image: Caroline Wilschut, Chief Commercial Officer of Meatable and Ken Kuguru, co-founder and CEO of Love Handle; courtesy Love Handle.
Vow says its Series A funding round comes as it expects approval from Singapore to begin selling its cultivated meat in restaurants later this year.
Australian cultivated meat producer Vow has closed a record-setting $49.2 million Series A funding round to help bring its cultivated quail meat to Singapore. Funding was led by Blackbird and Prosperity7 Ventures, an Aramco Ventures growth fund, with backing from Toyota Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Grok Ventures, Cavallo Ventures, Peakbridge, Tenacious Ventures, HostPlus Super, NGS Super, and Pavilion Capital. The new funding comes nearly two years after Vow raised $6 million in seed funding.
Vow says its first product, dubbed Morsel—a cell-based quail meat—will hit Singapore restaurants before the year’s end, joining California-based Eat Just’s Good Meat as the only other cultivated meat approved for commercial sale and distribution in the world.
Changing the way billions eat
“When Vow was founded, we knew to change the way billions eat we had to do more than recreate what we know,” says Vow CEO and co-founder George Peppou.
“We’re thrilled to be toe to toe with the best companies in this space, moving at speed to reach huge milestones with a fraction of the capital of other companies,” he said.
Vow’s kangaroo dumplings
“Our food diet is standardized, and neither healthy nor sustainable,” says Nadav Berger, general partner and co-founder of PeakBridge. “Much of our proteins come from limited animal-based sources which are harmful for both biodiversity and our health. Solutions and technologies that explore alternatives to conventional animal-based protein without compromising on taste, texture, nutrition and climate impact are here to stay.”
Vow is taking a unique approach to cultivated meat, replicating exotic meat including kangaroo and alpaca, along with quail, rabbit, and goat meat. The quail-based Morsel quail is expected to take meat in a new direction, Peppou said, with chefs using it in novel ways. The company says Morsel has a roasted umami flavor with seafood notes.
“By inventing new meats that are tastier, more nutritious, and serve functions traditional meats can’t, we can have an enormous impact,” Peppou said.
Fueling the cultivated meat category growth
The market approval and funding follow Vow bringing its first factory online in New South Wales last month. Dubbed Factory 1, the facility can produce approximately 30 tons of cultivated meat per year. The company says it’s also already working on Factory 2, which will be capable of producing meat at 100-fold the output of Factory 1.
Vow’s Factory 1
“With Factory 1 Vow has quietly become a world leader in cultured meat, we are now operating at world leading scales and have achieved all of this in just three and a half years, with a fraction of the capital,” Peppou said.
Morsel is expected to hit restaurants in Singapore later this year.
A new survey from Israel-based food tech company SuperMeat, finds the vast majority of chefs, 86 percent, are interested in serving cultivated meat—an indicator of the potential for the category once countries grant regulatory approval.
The new SuperMeat survey interviewed 251 chefs and food service professionals earlier this year. The research was conducted in partnership with Censuswide, an independent market research consultancy.
Results of the survey were overwhelmingly in favor of cultivated meat—protein that’s grown from animal cell samples in bioreactors instead of on farms. The tech has thus far only received approval in Singapore, with the Bay Area company Eat Just the first, and currently, the only, company approved for sale and consumption.
The lack of regulatory approval has not slowed progress for the sector, though. Recent reports show record funding raises and a number of start-ups entering the category.
Cultivated meat demand and acceptance
But despite the interest from investors, consumer opinion on the tech has been mixed, with some critics lumping it in with genetic modification—a technology typically used to make plants more resistant to heavy applications of herbicides.
Still, consumers do want more ethical and sustainable choices. Sixty-five percent of chefs said they’ve seen increased demand in the last five years; 87 percent of Midwest restaurants and 82 percent of fast-food restaurants said they’ve seen increasing demand for meat alternatives.
Courtesy SuperMeat
Widespread acceptance of cultivated meat from the culinary world could help sway consumers on the fence about the tech. Eighty-four percent of the chefs surveyed said they would consider replacing conventional meat altogether on their menus with cultivated meat if cost-effective. Seventy-seven percent though said they would pay a premium, particularly for poultry; more than 66 percent of the chefs said they would pay as much as 11 to 15 percent more for cultivated meat.
The Midwest chefs were most willing to pay a premium for cultivated meat—87 percent said they’d opt for the higher ticket price in order to put the options on their menu. Western chefs said they’d be willing to pay higher premiums, with 16 percent saying they would pay as much as 16 to 20 percent more for cultivated meat. Chefs cooking Mediterranean were right behind, with 83 percent saying they’d be willing to pay 11 to 15 percent more for cultivated meat. Italian and Mexican chefs were willing to pay five to ten percent more.
Poultry was the top choice, with 51 percent of chefs saying they’d be interested in trying cultivated chicken and other poultry products; 38 percent said they’d be interested in beef, and 35 percent indicated seafood and pork. Tastes ranged regionally, the survey found. Chefs from the South favored beef and exotic meats; fine-dining chefs favored pork. Chicken was the top choice for fast-food and American cuisine. Italian cuisine favored seafood, and chefs across France, Japan, and Indian cuisines all favored exotic meats.
Regulatory approval
The chefs surveyed were overwhelmingly in favor of adding cultivated meat shortly after approved; more than half said they would add the products to their menus within two months of approval. Chefs in the Northeast and West said they would add it even sooner and chefs in the South were the most hesitant, wanting to wait as long as six months.
GOOD Meat cultivated chicken | courtesy Eat Just
“It is great to see the interest and positivity from the professional culinary community for cultivated meat. This demonstrates that chefs are more than intrigued by cultivated meat, understand the benefits, and are ready to see it served in mainstream dining,” Ido Savir, CEO of SuperMeat, said in a statement. “SuperMeat is thrilled to continue our work to commercialize cultivated meat products and be among the first to bring these options to menus across the U.S..”
U.S. regulatory approval is expected in the near future, but no date has been confirmed. Experts suggest it could be within the next year or as long as 18 to 24 months.
Cell-cultured chicken meat will make its debut at the COP27 climate conference being held in Egypt this month.
Good Meat, the cultivated meat division of the Bay Area food tech company Eat Just, is bringing its lab-grown chicken to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the site city for the U.N. climate event.
Eat Just is currently the only company to have received regulatory approval for the sale and distribution of cultured meat; its chicken received approval from the Singapore government nearly two years ago. The chicken will be showcased as part of COP27’s Singapore Pavillion for the first time outside of the city-state.
An ABEC bioreactor that produces Good Meat | Courtesy
“We hope our guests at COP27 find their cultivated chicken meals both delicious and thought-provoking and they leave the summit with a new appreciation for the role food innovation can play in combatting the global climate crisis,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, said in a statement. “There is no better place to launch our next version than right here at the world’s most consequential climate change gathering.”
The chicken will be served this coming weekend, from Saturday, Nov. 12 through Monday, Nov. 14 at invitation-only events, Eat Just said.
COP26 food criticism
Last year’s COP26 came under fire for serving animal products throughout the two-week conference. Critics compared it to serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference. Agriculture is a leading cause of climate change, producing more than 14 percent of all global emissions; animal products are responsible for at least 60 percent of the sector’s emissions, according to a study published last year in the journal Nature Food.
“To produce more meat you need to feed the animals more, which then generates more emissions,” Xiaoming Xu, University of Illinois researcher and the lead author of the paper said in a statement last year. “You need more biomass to feed animals in order to get the same amount of calories. It isn’t very efficient.”
Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat | Courtesy
The United Nations’ own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also recently called for drastic reductions to agricultural emissions including methane, which is produced by ruminants including cattle and sheep. Methane doesn’t linger in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but while present it traps more heat, accelerating the impacts of climate change. A recent IPCC report called for at least a 30-percent drop in methane emissions before the end of the decade.
Cultivated meat in the fight against climate change
Cultivated meat is expected to play a key role in reducing the industry’s emissions footprint once more countries approve it for sale and consumption.
Cultivated meat, which is grown with real animal cells in bioreactors instead of requiring raising and culling livestock, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 96 percent compared to conventional meat, according to recent findings from Oxford.
Good Meat’s chicken | Courtesy
Good Meat is partnering with the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific (GFI APAC) and others in the Singapore Pavillion to showcase efforts underway across the region.
“Singapore was the first country to allow the sale of meat made without tearing down a single forest or displacing an animal’s habitat, and we look forward to other countries following in their footsteps,” Tetrick said.
COP27 runs from November 6 through November 18, 2022. More information can be found on the event website.
Wild Earth, the Bay Area pet food company focused on alternative protein sources, has developed a cultivated chicken broth topper aimed at making the category more sustainable.
Cultivated meat isn’t just novel tech designed to revolutionize the global food system for humans—it holds equal, if not more potential, for our furry friends.
Wild Earth has been working to revolutionize the pet food industry since its $550,000 Shark Tank deal with Mark Cuban in 2019. Since then, the company, which produces vegan pet food made from cultured koji—a type of protein-rich fungus—has also been working to develop cell-based cultured meat.
Reducing pet food’s paw print
“Our pets’ environmental paw print accounts for 30 percent of meat consumed in the United States and it doesn’t have to,” Ryan Bethencourt, co-founder and chief executive officer of Wild Earth, said in a statement. “By replacing factory-farmed products with clean, sustainable, cruelty-free cell-based meat we can tackle the issues of low quality and often contaminated meat used for our pets’ food and transform the sustainability of the entire pet food industry.”
Courtesy
The company is driven by the environmental and ethical implications of the current pet food industry. Dog and cat food produce around 64 million tons of CO2 per year—the equivalent of more than 13 million cars. The industry is also rife with health risks—much of conventional pet food comes from animals not fit for human consumption, which can mean a higher risk for contaminants and poor-quality food.
“Wild Earth has always been on the cutting edge of plant-based pet food and I look forward to seeing their continued growth as they step into the cell-based meat space,” said investor Mark Cuban.
The broth topper will be available to consumers next year; it’s made from cultivated chicken cells, which eliminates the need for raising livestock. It also reduces the environmental footprint by 96 percent and reduces water consumption by between 82 and 96 percent, according to recent Oxford data.
Cell-based pet food
“Cell-based meat is the future of food for us and our pets, and this development marks an important milestone in our mission to disrupt the pet food industry for the better,” Bethencourt said. “We walk the walk when it comes to taking steps to reduce the destructive impact the industry has on our pets’ health and on our environment.”
Because, Animals cultivated mouse meat
Last year, Colorado-based pet food company Because, Animals debuted the first pet food made from cultured mouse meat. “The public launch of Harmless Hunt is a milestone for us, for the cultured and alt-protein industry, for pet food, and for animals raised and slaughtered to feed cats and dogs,” co-founder and CEO Dr. Shannon Falconer said in a statement.
“We are finally able to provide pets with a healthier, safer, greener choice at a price that will be on par with other premium retail products.”
Cellular agriculture producers across the APAC region have come to a consensus: the preferred English-language term for the category is “cultivated.”
The cultivated meat sector has gone through a number of naming conventions including “clean meat” and “lab-grown” meat. But “cultivated” may be what sticks. That’s according an historic memo of understanding signed by the leading companies and organizations in the sector across Asia-Pacific countries.
APAC aligns on ‘cultivated’
Signatories of the memo include Good Food Institute APAC, APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture, and more than 30 other key industry stakeholders including multinational companies Cargill and Thai Union as well as regional coalition groups China’s Cellular Agriculture Alliance, Cellular Agriculture Australia, the Japan Association for Cellular Agriculture, and Korean Society for Cellular Agriculture. The agreement was signed during Singapore International Agri-Food Week.
Cellmeat’s Cultivated Dokdo Shrimp
“Nomenclature and regulatory harmonisation are vital for the long-term success of the cultivated foods industry and this MOU establishes a regional precedent that can be replicated in other markets around the globe,” said APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture President Dr. Sandhya Sriram and Program Manager Peter Yu.
“The location of this historic announcement was no coincidence,” Good Food Institute APAC Managing Director Mirte Gosker said. “In recent years, Singapore has invested the necessary resources to make the city-state a welcoming ecosystem for food innovation and multilateral collaboration. This MOU is the latest proof that the Lion City is trading its traditional reliance on food imports for a new role as the place where the alternative protein sector’s biggest decisions are forged, announced, and exported to the world.”
Regulatory approval can’t come soon enough
While the naming of cultivated meat may be sorted out, the sale and distribution are still a waiting game for the growing industry. Currently, only Singapore has approved the sale of cultivated meat—Eat Just received approval for its Good Meat cultivated chicken in 2020.
Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat
But with more than $2 billion in funding and more than 120 startups innovating in the space, approval can’t come soon enough for the industry.
Earlier this week, three of the leading cultivated food industry associations announced plans to formalize the launch of a global alliance to advance cultivated foods. The members include the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture, and Cellular Agriculture Europe.
“[G]lobal challenges require global solutions,” Gosker told Green Queen. “By bringing together regional industry coalitions from Europe, the US, and Asia Pacific, this timely, new worldwide alliance has the potential to be a game-changer.”
The cellular agriculture industry receives a big boost with The Netherlands’ €60 million investment and additional €25 million in financing.
The Dutch government’s investment is now the largest government grant in the world into the novel cultivated and cell-cultured animal tech. The funding is in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality.
Sector growth, emissions reductions
By 2050, the investment should yield big returns; the Dutch government says it expects €1.25 – €2.0 billion in growth in Dutch earning capacity by the middle of the century. It also calculated the emissions savings, anticipating cultivated meat and similar tech will reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 1.8 million tons and reduce ammonia by 15 to 20 kilotons per year.
Cultivated beef meatballs. Photo by SpaceF.
“We are very pleased that we can now start with the first activities to stimulate and consolidate cellular agriculture in the Netherlands.” Ira van Eelen, said in a statement on behalf of the Cellular Agriculture Netherlands Foundation. “With this we can guarantee that the Netherlands remains the ideal place for cellular agriculture to thrive. We have a rich history in cellular agriculture and are a global leader in biotechnology, alternative proteins and food innovation. Supported by this visionary leadership that the Dutch government is showing again today, we will expand our team in the coming months and roll out the first activities around public research, scaling up and education.”
The Cellular Agriculture Netherlands Foundation now includes nearly three dozen organizations ranging from NGOs and educational institutions to startups. With the new funding, the foundation will set up a new office to engage with potential partners and implement programs.
Cultivated meat approval and support
Currently, only Singapore has approved cultivated meat for sale, but the Netherlands could be next—and soon. Earlier this year it legalized sampling of cultivated meat. The Netherlands put cultivated meat on the map in 2013 when Dutch-based Mosa Meat debuted its first meat grown from cells.
Mosa Meat steak tartar. Photo by Mosa Meat.
“Cellular agriculture is a Dutch invention and we do not want to lose our competitive advantage,” Robert Jones, head of public affairs for Mosa Meat said in an interview with Dutch publication Innovation Origins.
Dutch consumers are ripe for alternatives to conventional meat as well. A survey conducted in February found that more than 25 percent of Dutch residents want more meat-free options to help decrease the country’s carbon footprint.
The new funding will give the sector a boost and aims to attract startups in the space to the Netherlands. The government funding will support private equity startups and and bring more expertise and investment to the cellular agriculture sector.
Dutch cultivated meat producer Meatable says it’s poised to bring cultivated pork to Singapore through an exclusive partnership with the only approved contract cultivated meat manufacturer, ESCO Aster.
Cultivated pork could be the next lab-grown meat to hit Singapore, which is currently the only country in the world that’s approved cultivated meat. It greenlit Eat Just’s Good Meat chicken in 2020—made in partnership with ESCO Aster, the only cultivated meat manufacturer approved to produce in Singapore. Now, Dutch cultivated meat company Meatable says it’s expanding its reach to the city-state in hopes of bringing cultivated pork dumplings, sausages, and other products to Southeast Asia with help from ESCO Aster.
Cultivated meat is the future
“At Meatable we strongly believe that cultivated meat is the future of food, in order to produce meat sustainably and as local as possible,” Krijn de Nood, co-founder and CEO of Meatable, said in a statement. “To do that it’s imperative that we provide a wide variety of products to cater for all cuisines, worldwide.”
De Nood says that given Singapore’s status as “a pioneer of cultivated meat,” it’s focus is aimed at bringing its pork products to market by 2024. It says it expects to have supermarket-ready products by 2025.
“Our team has been working closely with the country’s butchers and chefs to develop the perfect cultivated pork dumplings and it was incredible to recently taste the dumplings and know that we have created something indistinguishable from traditional meat – because it is real meat,” de Nood said. “Along with our sausages, we have made great strides in recent months to create products that will satisfy the world’s appetites without harming the planet or animals in the process.”
Krijn de Nood en Daan Luining, Meatable founders with pigs | Courtesy
Pork is a protein staple across Asia. According to Meatable, in 2020 alone, more than 123,000 metric tons of pork were consumed in Singapore; each Singaporean consumes an annual average of about 62 kilograms (136 pounds) of meat. The global demand for dumplings is also expected to rise to more than $4 billion by 2025. Meatable says it’s already working closely with Singaporean chefs to customize its pork products to Asian palates.
“Meatable has emerged as one of the world’s leading companies in developing cultivated meat,” Xiangliang Lin, CEO at ESCO Aster, said. “We’re delighted to be partnering with them to facilitate their launch in Singapore and to enable the business to start producing cultivated pork for customers. With our scientific expertise, operational know-how and enabling technologies, we believe that we can help companies reach their milestones and advance to the next step of cultivated meat production with market approval at scale. We’re excited about the potential for cultivated meat to transform how we feed the world and we’re looking to expand our facilities within and outside of Singapore to enable more companies like Meatable across this space.”
“We’re excited to work closely with ESCO Aster and the Singaporean regulators as we gear up to launch our first products for restaurant launch in 2024,” said Hans Huistra, COO of Meatable. “Over the past four years, we’ve been constantly innovating and developing our technology to get it to the stage where we can perfectly recreate some of the meat products we all know and love. ESCO Aster will enable us in developing, upscaling and realizing our first consumer products, together we will make a positive impact on the Singaporean meat industry.”
Single-cell tech
Meatable says its proprietary opti-ox technology will revolutionize the cultivated meat industry. It says it’s working with a single-cell sample technology that is the fastest in the field. Earlier this month Umami Meats said it had patented a single-cell technology for its cultivated seafood.
Meatable has also achieved its cultivated pork mince without the need for fetal bovine serum, a controversial media being phased out of the industry.
Photo by Julia Koblitz via Unsplash
A growing number of cultivated meat facilities have popped up across the planet in the last 18 months—and most promise production capacity capable of delivering tens of thousands of pounds of cultivated meat per year. But thus far, only ESCO Aster’s facility has obtained regulatory approval to produce cultivated meat in Singapore, which is also the only government in the world to approve cultivated meat for sale and consumption. While that’s expected to change soon, there are no confirmed timelines for other countries to approve cultivated meat nor are there any approval timelines for factory approvals.
Singapore has been leading the race to a more sustainable food system with its 30 by 30 strategy—producing 30 percent of its food needs by 2030. Singapore currently imports 90 percent of its food.
Singapore-based Umami Meats has filed a patent for a novel single-stem cell technology that it says can build both muscle and fat in cultivated seafood.
The new patent for mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) lines from fish is aimed at helping Umami meats make its cultivated seafood more accessible by lowering costs and scaling production. Current standards for cultivated meat and seafood require multiple cell lines and types to produce muscle and fat. Umami says its new MSC technology reduces that to one cell line and one production line for a variety of tissues. The company has also created plant-based and algae-based growth media that it says are cheaper and easier to scale. The cost of growth factors has historically been a roadblock to price parity with conventional meat.
‘Faster and more efficient cell growth’
“So far, we have established MSC lines from three species, including our flagship species, Japanese eel. This innovative approach to cell lines builds the foundation for faster and more efficient cell growth. Our technology advances are a critical driver of lowering costs, increasing scalability, and making cultivated seafood affordable for mainstream consumers,” Mihir Pershad, Founder and CEO of Umami Meats, said in a statement.
According to the organization WorldFish, global seafood demand is expected to double by 2050 despite the pressures already being felt by the world’s oceans and fisheries. Umami Meats says its cultivated fish and seafood play a critical role in addressing rising global demand.
Photo by Caroline Attwood at Unsplash.
“What makes Umami Meats different in the cultivated food industry is our method for cultivating premium seafood with the vision of reducing overfishing of endangered and difficult-to-farm species,” Pershad said. “Our single-stem cell method will be a game changer in enabling us to reduce the price of cultivated premium seafood to match that of traditionally-sourced fish.”
Umami Meats says cultivated seafood can also address contamination risks widespread in wild-caught and farm-raised fish. “Advancements in cultivated seafood technologies could help address health risks like mercury and microplastic contamination in seafood or the growing risk of extinction for dozens of the most consumed seafood species,” the company said.
Alternative seafood demand
A recent survey by Good Food Institute APAC found a growing number of Asian consumers are shifting away from conventional seafood in favor of alternatives because of contaminants including heavy metals and microplastic. Plant-based seafood options are already making waves in the category, and while cultivated meat offers a solution, the category has yet to receive widespread regulatory approval outside of Singapore. By 2030, cultivated meat and seafood have the potential of becoming a $25 billion market, a recent McKinsey report noted.
Cultivated seafood also addresses the increasing depletion of key species. Some species of eel and tuna, for example, are facing the threat of extinction if current fishing practices and ocean threats continue.
Courtesy Martin Widenka via Unsplash
“We know it will take multiple scientific and production process breakthroughs to make cultivated seafood affordable. But we are committed for the long term because we want premium cultivated seafood to be an everyday option for consumers,” Pershad said.
‘’The team is working diligently to shift the cost paradigm and will be increasingly leveraging advanced machine learning tools to accelerate the process of optimizing and scaling up production,’’ Pershad said. “The promise of cultivated seafood is compelling; our priority is bringing the tremendous potential of our scientific breakthroughs to commercial viability. We want to realize that promise and bring it to sufficient scale to create real impact for the world.”
The announcement comes just days after California-based BlueNalu announced it developed technology to help it achieve scalability and reduce production costs by 75 percent for its cultivated seafood.
Australian cultivated meat company Vow has unveiled Factory 1, its NSW-based factory capable of producing 30 tons of cultured meat per year.
Coinciding with the opening of Factory 1 in Alexandria in Sydney, Vow says it has started developing Factory 2, which can produce 100 times the amount of cultured meat as its sister site. Factory 2 is expected to be online in 2024.
Factory 1
“With Factory 1 Vow has quietly become a world leader in cultured meat, we are now operating at world leading scales and have achieved all of this in just three and a half years, with a fraction of the capital,” Vow’s CEO George Peppou said in a statement.
Vow claims the factory, which is now up and running, is the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere and is a sign of things to come out of Australia. Vow says Factory 1 and forthcoming Factory 2 are demonstrative of the country’s strong position as a leader in new technologies aimed at feeding the global population.
(left to right) George Peppou, CEO, Matt Kean, NSW Treasurer, Tim Noakesmith, Cofounder | Courtesy
“The team has developed an extremely delicious first product, and now we have the capability to produce it at scale. We couldn’t be more excited to announce it to the world in a month from now,” said Vow Cofounder, Tim Noakesmith.
Since launching in 2019, Vow has been focused on cultivated chicken, beef, and pork. It recently submitted its first product for regulatory approval. Vow expects its cultivated meat to launch in Singapore before the end of the year. Currently, Singapore is the only nation that has approved cultivated meat for sale. Vow says with its existing research and development facility, the new factory will allow it to bring development and production under one roof.
Cultivated meat scaling up
Vow joins other leading cultivated meat companies including the Good Meat factory coming to Singapore. Eat Just’s cultivated meat offshoot broke ground on the factory in June. Once up and running next year, Good Meat says it can produce “tens of thousands” of tons of its cultured meat annually.
In the U.S., Upside Foods opened its “EPIC” factory in California last year. It’s capable of producing 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat annually.
French onion dish with Morsel, Vow’s first product | courtesy
Efforts to scale up cultivated meat production and bring down costs are happening around the world. Just last month, Prolific Machines emerged from stealth mode with backing from Mark Cuban and Emily Ratajkowski. The cultivated meat company says it can bring the cost of cultivated meat down to price parity with conventional animal products, comparing its tech to doing for the category what Henry Ford did for automobiles.
“Back then, nobody really owned cars apart from super-rich people. What really changed things was Ford,” Prolific Machines co-founder and CEO Deniz Kent told TechCrunch.
“They built the assembly line for cars and found a way to manufacture cars at a price that normal people could afford. That transformed the industry because then you went from hundreds of car companies to only three companies having over 70% of the market.”
Singapore-based cultivated meat startup Meatiply, has launched three structured meat prototypes as proof of concept, including the first smoked duck breast meat in Asia.
The three new cultivated meat offerings include kampong chicken yakitori, chicken katsu bites, and Asia’s first smoked duck breast meat. The company says the meat is a combination of cells and plant-based ingredients.
‘Just the beginning’
“We developed a versatile platform that allows us to isolate and cultivate a variety of cells from different species. To date, we have developed prototypes with 3 different species, with at least 2 more in the pipeline. These 3 prototypes are just the beginning,” Dr. Jason Chua, Chief Scientific Officer & Co-founder of Meatiply, said in a statement.
Meatiply Management Team | Courtesy
According to the company, the prototypes are structured, not minced, which Meatiply says will allow it to offer a wider range of products. The cell-based meat is made from multiple cell types including muscle and fat, which it says allows it to better resemble the taste and texture of conventional meat.
“Given the depth of our experience in cultivating stem cells and optimizing for their growth and maturation, we felt we had a lot to offer in the realm of cultivated meat,” said Dr. Elwin Tan, CEO and Co-founder of Meatiply.
Tan and Chua co-founded Meatiply in 2021 alongside Dr. Benjamin Chua and Prof. Teh Bin Tean—all were studying stem cell biology at the National University of Singapore.
“From the very first meeting, we have been impressed with the strong scientific background and entrepreneurial spirit of the co-founders. Their prototypes are one of the most advanced we have seen to be developed in such a short time. They also have a clear roadmap for tackling challenges around scalability and cost,” said Michal Klar, founding partner at Better Bite Ventures, an early backer of the startup.
Meatiply announced a pre-seed funding round in early 2022 that also included participation from Wavemaker Partners and Genedant.
Chicken Yakitori | Courtesy
“By 2050,the global population is estimated to hit almost 10 billion people and 56 percent more food will need to be produced to sustain this increase. Moreover, the meat industry is also plagued with systemic problems that needed to be addressed. By shifting our focus from biomedical research to developing advanced food technologies, we felt that we could deliver significant impact on these pressing issues.” said Dr. Benjamin Chua, Chief Product Officer & Co-founder of Meatiply.
Cultivated meat in Singapore
The company says establishing Meatiply in Singapore was “an easy decision” due in large part to the Singapore government’s 30-by-30 goal, as well as the team’s well-established networks within the scientific community, the presence of international non-profit think tanks like the Good Food Institute AsiaPacific (GFIAPAC), and a healthy start-up and biotech ecosystem in Singapore, “we felt that we would be well supported on multiple fronts,” Tan said.
Singapore is also the only nation in the world that has approved the sale of cultivated meat. Meatiply says this will help it grow the alternative protein category.
Chicken Katsu | Courtesy
“As a living laboratory and launch pad for global climate and food security solutions, Singapore’s innovation ecosystem is central to scaling up cultivated meat production and driving down costs. Consumer demand for sustainable protein continues to soar across Asia, and the need for additional technological optimisation is immense, so every promising new entrant into the Lion City’s fast-growing food tech sector has the potential to be a game-changer,” says Mirte Gosker, Managing Director of the Good Food Institute APAC.
“Consumer demand for sustainable protein continues to soar across Asia, and the need for additional technological optimisation is immense, so every promising new entrant into the Lion City’s fast-growing food tech sector has the potential to be a game-changer,” she says.
Meatiply is currently raising a seed round to further develop and scale its production, cost optimization, and explore regulatory approval.
A collaboration between U.S.-based cultivated meat company Orbillion Bio and Luiten Food, a European leader in premium meat, will bring cell-based wagyu beef to Europe, pending regulatory approval.
Aiming to bring sustainable premium cultivated meat to the European market, the Orbillion and Luiten partnership will see opportunities across Luiten’s 1,200 distribution channels in food service, specialty retailers, and butchers, the companies said in a joint statement.
Market-ready
The goal of the collaboration is to co-manage regulatory approval processes—currently, Singapore is the only country that has approved cultivated meat for sale. The collaboration will also see the development of manufacturing facilities in Europe. With Luiten Food’s global network, the partnership is angling the companies toward global distribution.
Courtesy Orbillion Bio
Orbillion is currently the only company to develop cell-cultured Wagyu beef. It has also developed elk and lamb meat through unique partnerships with farmers to help develop a modern spin on farm-to-table cuisine.
Luiten managed director Lennert Luiten said there was “no better partner” than Orbillion to develop a Wagyu beef that meets its strict quality standards. “We’re excited to bring our strengths in brokering the highest quality meats to a category that will be a big part of how we feed the future,” Luiten said.
“At Orbillion, we have always inspired to produce and bring to market the highest quality cell-cultured meats,” Orbillion CEO Patricia Bubner said in a statement.
Heritage breeds, legacy brand
“We take great pride in being the only cell-cultured meat company focused on quality throughout the full-development process—from the heritage breeds where our cells originate to the final product that diners will enjoy, and with Luiten Food, we’ll be able to bring this new farm-to-table experience to Europe,” she said.
Orbillion’s Wagyu beef made from cultured cells | Courtesy
“Together, we’ll go beyond a scientific concept, to a tangible, delicious, and enjoyable meat that is more humane to animals, kinder to the planet, and has a more desirable and consistent nutrition profile.”
Luiten Food says the new partnership deepens its sustainability commitment and reinforces its 80-year track record of innovation. Luiten is a leader in developing top-quality cell lines, which it says has helped make it a leader in the legacy meat category.
“We’ve been successful for more than 84 years because we’ve focused on what’s ahead,” Luiten said. “And now, that’s sustainable meat. That’s high-quality meat. That’s cell-cultured meat.”
Norway’s Research Council says it will fund the development of cellular agriculture and precision fermentation to bring sustainable meat, egg, and milk products to market.
A new five-year research project, dubbed Arrival of Cellular Agriculture-Enabling Biotechnology for Future Food Production (ARRIVAL), set to launch next year will help Norway develop the “food of the future.”
Funded by the Research Council of Norway, the project has an annual €2 million budget. The Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Research (Nofima) will spearhead the project with support from the contract research organization SINTEF Industry, Oslo Metropolitan University, the Norwegian Institute for Rural Research, the Norwegian Board of Technology, agriculture cooperative Nortura AS, and the Norwegian dairy enterprise, TINE AS.
Cultivated meat
Even while it’s lower than in other Northern European countries, meat production in Norway increased by nearly four percent between 2020 and 2021. The majority of consumers in Norway say they’re not overly concerned about environmental or animal welfare factors.
But ARRIVAL’s team says this presents an opportunity to further explore alternatives.
Cultivated meatball | Courtesy Mosa Meat
“We can increase self-sufficiency in food in Norway, and we do not have to kill animals to produce the necessary protein in the form of meat. In Norway, we have both the expertise and the money needed to develop new technical solutions for food production, says Sissel Rønning, the ARRIVAL lead.
“We will continue our research on how to scale up cell-based meat production and find out more about which materials are suitable to use as a framework for the muscle cells,” says Rønning.
“Muscle cells are picky, and it is usual to use a growth medium made from parts of calf blood in current production.”
While cultivated meat is currently only approved for sale in Singapore, Norway sees a viable future for cell-based meat. Nofima began exploring the category in 2018 with the goal of developing new technology for cultivating muscle meat with residual biomass as the growth medium. That project was the first openly accessible research in this category.
Now, Nofima says its technology has increased “significantly.”
“We will continue our research on how to scale up cell-based meat production and find out more about which materials are suitable to use as a framework for the muscle cells,” says Rønning.
Courtesy iStock
“Muscle cells are picky, and it is usual to use a growth medium made from parts of calf blood in current production.
“This production is not very sustainable, and many people are therefore critical of this type of protein cultivation. To successfully scale these types of technologies, new, sustainable growth media must therefore be developed.”
Precision fermentation
The announcement comes as dairy and egg production has also increased in the Nordic country in recent years. According to recent data, the number of dairy cows has increased every year over the last decade. Egg-laying hen operations are also on the increase.
But according to the University of Helsinki and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, using alternative proteins such as precision fermentation could reduce land use by nearly 90 percent compared with conventional egg production. It can also decrease greenhouse gas emissions by up to 55 percent.
Courtesy Perfect Day
Dairy alternatives also show the potential to significantly reduce the industry’s impact. The category leader, U.S.-based Perfect Day, cites a 97 percent reduction in emissions compared to conventional dairy.
“Cell-based agriculture is a revolution in food production that can change agricultural production and ownership, land use, policy design, eating habits, and ethical issues,” says Rønning. “In the ARRIVAL project, we will take the research on cell-based agriculture several steps further.”
Shiok Meats’ subsidiary Gaia Foods and Swiss-based deep food tech Mirai Foods, have entered into a strategic partnership to develop cultivated beef.
Singapore is leading the world in cultivated meat approval, as the first and only country to have approved the sale and distribution of cell-based meat. In 2020, it gave California’s Eat Just the green light for its cultivated chicken meat.
Cultivated beef
Now, Singapore’s Shiok Foods is working to speed cultivated beef to market with one-of-a-kind bovine muscle and fat stem cells from Mirai Foods. According to the companies, these essential building blocks for cultivated beef are natural, pure, and non-genetically modified cells from premium cattle breeds. Shiok says these are hard to come by in Singapore.
Courtesy Shiok
Sandhya Sriram, Group CEO at Shiok Meats and Gaia Foods, says the new partnership is the result of a strong relationship developing with Mirai. “Whilst we will leverage our regulatory status and expertise to help Mirai accelerate its market entry in Singapore, we are also eyeing on potential production and distribution of our seafood products in Switzerland, a high purchasing power market with a strong first adoption mindset,” Sriram said.
“We are excited to partner with one of the world’s leading cultivated seafood producers and their subsidiary cultivated meat company to extend the culinary choice for Singaporean consumers to premium, Swiss quality cultivated beef”, Christoph Mayr, CEO at Mirai Foods, said in a statement.
“Partnering with a Singaporean company is particularly interesting for us given the country’s strong distribution and partnership network across the Asia Pacific region, which has been showing a growing appetite for safe, high-quality beef”, he adds.
Cultivated seafood in Singapore
While Mirai is providing tools to enable Shiok to speed to market, Shiok is bringing regulatory information and know-how to the Swiss food tech company.
Late last month, Shiok partnered with Vietnam’s Minh Phu Seafood to develop a combined R&D facility to help bring cultivated seafood to Asia.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
“Setting up a joint R&D facility with Minh Phu Seafood is a major milestone for us,” Dr. Sandhya Sriram, Group CEO, Chairman and Co-Founder of Shiok Meats, said in a statement. “Our vision has always been collaborating with established seafood companies and hatcheries to add variety to the portfolio and food security narrative through aquaculture innovation, research, and tech transfer. Our satellite R&D facility in Vietnam will focus on high-quality cultivated shrimp research and technology.”
Novel Farms says it has created the world’s first cultivated whole-cut pork loin that shows marbling and texture.
“We aim to bring culinary delicacies into the future of food by crafting cultivated meats that will be hard to resist,” the Berkeley-based company says on its website. It says it’s starting with conventional pork followed by Iberian pork, which comes from pigs native to Spain and Portugal. According to Novel Farms, the Black Iberian pig “is unique in its genetic ability to produce oleic acid-rich, exceptionally marbled meat.”
Novel Farms
Nieves Martinez Marshall co-founded Novel Farms in 2020 alongside Michelle Lu after they met as postdoctoral scientists in the molecular and cell biology department at the University of California at Berkeley.
Novel Farms says it has developed a proprietary microbial fermentation approach that builds the cultivated meat scaffolding to successfully, and affordably, produce whole cuts of meat.
“There’s no other company right now doing pork loin,” Martinez Marshall told TechCrunch. Only CellX in China and Higher Steaks in London are currently working on pork belly.
Novel Farms founders | Courtesy
Whole cuts are the holy grail for both the plant-based and the cultivated meat sector. Efforts are proving successful for a number of companies in recent years. But for cultivated meat, in particular, they’re typically not being done cost-effectively, though. Novel Farms says it’s found the secret, using common and inexpensive microorganisms.
“We just have a very good, efficient scaffold, and the cells attach very well,” Martinez Marshall said. “That’s something that nobody else has. Once we confirm and scale with a bioreactor, then we will be the most affordable of all the companies.”
The company says it has reduced scaffolding production costs by 99.27 percent. This means it can scale production faster and hasten price parity with conventional meat—a key hurdle for the sector.
The pork loin debut comes as Novel Farms secured $1.4 million SAFE notes including a majority stake by Big Idea Ventures, and financing from Joyance/Social Starts, Sustainable Food Ventures, Good Startup, CULT foods and strategic angel investors.
Pork-free pork demand
The plant-based sector is also angling toward pork products, namely bacon.
Beyond Meat, which recently announced it’s working on a whole cut steak, says it’s also working to develop vegan bacon.
The Natalie Portman-backed La Vie brought its vegan bacon to Burger King earlier this year. In June, it launched a virtual restaurant collaboration with OFC, the Original Food Court in France.
Courtesy La Vie
MyForest Foods, the vegan food spinoff of Ecovative, which is developing mycelium-based materials including leather and foam, opened what it calls the “world’s largest” vertical mycelium farm for its mycelium bacon last month.
“The incredible progress we’ve made on Swersey Silos in just one year since breaking ground is a testament to the engineering and technological expertise on our team,” Peter Mueller, Chief Technology Officer at Ecovative, said in a statement. “MyForest Foods is now in a position to reach full market scale. It’s a tremendous milestone for one of our closest partners, and for AirMycelium technology.”
Across Asia, OmniPork is leading the charge for traditional pork products including mince. The Hong Kong-based venture has established retail partnerships with McDonald’s and Starbucks, among others across Asia. It recently brought its vegan pork products to the U.S. and Europe.
Dutch food tech company Meatable says it is using a groundbreaking technology to produce cultivated pork for the first time.
With a target go-to-market date before 2025, Meatable has revealed its newest cultivated meat product: pork sausages.
“This is a truly exciting moment for the entire Meatable team,” Krijn de Nood, co-founder and CEO of Meatable, said in a statement. “To be able to see and cook our sausages for the first time was an incredible experience especially as my co-founder Daan and I were able to finally have our first taste.”
According to de Nood, the launch was particularly exhilarating for the team. The company launched in 2018 with a belief that cultivated meat is the future of food, de Nood said. “We can’t wait to enable more people to taste Meatable meat on the next step of our journey to create the new natural meat.”
FBS alternatives
Meatable joins a growing number of cultivated protein producers opting out of using fetal bovine serum as the growth medium. The controversial ingredient brings up animal welfare concerns. It’s also cost prohibitive. Meatable says all it needs to produce its meat is “one single cell sample, taken harmlessly from an animal,” in order to replicate its protein potential.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.
“In the last few months, huge steps have been taken by the team to create the cultivated sausages which have the same structure, texture, glossiness and pronounced pork flavour that customers know and love,” the company said. “The product even produces the signature sizzle in the pan, just like traditional sausages—this is because it isn’t like meat, it is real meat.”
The cultivated pork can be grown in just a few weeks’ time—an achievement Meatable says demonstrates the technology’s sustainability. Meatable points to research that found cultivated meat could reduce the meat industry’s environmental impact by as much as 92 percent. Animal agriculture accounts for more than 14 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions.
Market opportunity
While a lack of regulatory approval prevents a market launch, Meatable is eyeing Germany, which is about 27 percent of the sausage market. The company says it hopes that its sausage will be the first step to making cultivated meat more accessible to the wider public. And its recent funding rounds may help it do that. It raised $47 million in its Series A financing round last year.
Meatable co-founders Daan Luining and Krijn de Nood
“Over the past four years, we’ve been constantly innovating and developing our technology to get it to this stage today where we can hear the sausages sizzle in a pan, see and, for Krijn and I, even taste this incredible product that we’ve created,” Daan Luining, co-founder and CTO of Meatable, said.
“I hope more people can taste it soon following the Dutch government’s motion to enable controlled tastings. This will ensure that people can experience that this isn’t just like meat, it is meat—100 percent delicious meat, identical on every level, but without any of the drawbacks,” Luining said. “This is one step on our journey to creating the new natural meat and I’m looking forward to seeing how the product develops before we can bring it to consumers in the next few years.”
Bay-Area food-tech startup SCiFi Foods has emerged from stealth mode with a game-changing announcement for the cultivated meat sector. The company says it has achieved price parity with beef using a proprietary tech combination involving its own high-throughput cell line engineering and CRISPR technology.
“We’ve known from day one that by opting to work on cultivated beef, we were choosing a much bigger challenge in terms of the science and technology required,” SCiFi Foods CEO and co-founder Joshua March said in a statement. “However, beef is the ultimate prize—with both the biggest market demand and the biggest climate impact. This breakthrough illustrates the power of our bioengineering strategy, and is a huge testament to our team and the platform they’ve built.”
Price parity
According to SCiFi, its first R&D announcement is also a world’s first achievement—the company, which has raised more than $29 million to date, is the first to produce edible cultivated beef cell lines that grow in a single-cell suspension. “This not only validates SCiFi Foods’ cell line engineering strategy and platform, but also allows the company to reduce the cost of growing its beef cells at scale by at least one thousand times—the biggest zero to one in cultivated meat,” the company said.
Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash
The milestone cements cultivated meat as a viable alternative to conventional meat production and its environmental and ethical issues. SCiFi says the tech has allowed it to reduce the cost of cultivated meat by more than 1,000 times current production costs—this development achieves price parity for cultivated beef grown at scale. The result is a “blended burger” that’s part plant-based and part cultivated meat, for less than $10 per burger.
The achievement comes less than a decade after the first cultivated beef burger was introduced in The Netherlands. That burger, developed by Mark Post and Peter Verstrate, cost $330,000 to produce.
SCiFi says most companies working to produce cultivated meat are attaching cells to a surface or using microcarriers. This poses some barriers, the company says, including limits on cell density, is more expensive, and has not been demonstrated at large scale. The new single-cell breakthrough allows the use of standard large-scale bioreactors, which is more economical to produce, the company says.
The single-cell tech has been used in producing cultivated chicken and fish cell lines, but this is the first time a company has successfully produced beef.
CRISPR
Part of the development comes by way of the controversial CRISPR technology. That tech, developed by American biochemist Jennifer Anne Doudna, a Fellow of the Royal Society, was adapted from a genome editing system that bacteria use for immunity. By capturing and inserting small pieces of DNA from the attacking virus into their own DNA, bacteria create what’s called CRISPR arrays.
The technology has been eyed as a potential embryonic treatment for a number of hereditary diseases including hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, among others.
But for all of its potential, the tech has also brought controversy as studies have found that altering the DNA of embryos or eggs and sperm could cause mutations that create other health threats. The risks don’t just impact the embryo at hand, either; genetic changes would alter the health and health risks of future generations, too, research has found.
Photo by Talha Hassan on Unsplash.
The tech is unlikely to pose risks to humans who consume CRISPR-edited cultivated beef, however. Just in the same way that eating meat from an animal with brown eyes doesn’t change the consumer’s eye color, the tech would be unlikely to alter human DNA.
SCiFi isn’t the first to explore CRISPR in developing cultivated meat. Fellow California-based company Upside Foods patented a CRISPR tech in 2017 which it said could modify cells into perpetual replicative states.
SCiFi says the new achievement will see cultivated beef prices drop even further; it says with a large-scale production plant coming, it can reduce the cost to just $1 per burger.
“Cultivated meat has the potential to disrupt the trillion-dollar meat market and help build a more sustainable future, but cost has always been its biggest challenge. With this milestone, we’ve proven that potential is realistic with our ability to engineer beef cells that grow at low cost and large volumes,” said SCiFi Foods CTO and co-founder, Kasia Gora, PhD.
“A decade ago, when the first lab-grown burger debuted in the press, it seemed like a pipedream,” she said. “So we are proud to be taking a major leap towards making cultivated meat a reality for everybody.”
The Japanese government has announced that it is pulling together a team of experts to analyse the safety of cultivated meat. The move is seen as a precursor to implementing a regulatory framework for future commercial product approvals.
The team will be curated by the Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry. Its endeavours will be focused around establishing if there are any risks to human health from consuming cultivated meat products. The entire cultivation process will be analysed ahead of the anticipated industrialisation of cell-based meat production.
Photo by Afif Kusuma at Unsplash.
Japan setting future foods in motion
Japan currently has a food sanitation law in place. It prescribes specific conditions for the production, processing, and sale of conventional meat items. Due to cultivated meat still being unapproved for sale, these guidelines do not apply to the cultivated sector, which now needs its own framework.
The team of experts, when in position, will be charged with understanding the entire cultivation process, collecting data about each stage of the process to write a report as to the potential risks involved. Toxic substance contamination and potential consequences to human health are considered priority focal points. Once the report has been submitted, the Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry will conduct a panel to decide on necessary safety precautions.
Frameworks from other countries, where cultivated meat is making meaningful progress, will be taken into consideration. This will necessarily include Singapore, which remains the only country to approve cultivated meat products for commercial sale. The U.S. and Israel are expected to be used as reference points alongside, as both have burgeoning cultivated sectors and multiple players within the niche vying for regulatory approval.
Photo by IntegriCulture.
Japan’s cultivated innovators
In April, IntegriCulture announced that it had successfully cultivated chicken and duck liver cells. The breakthrough allowed the company to move from research to prototyping stage, using its proprietary CulNet system. The startup revealed that it had made progress without the use of animal serums and for 1/60 of conventional costs. Having scooped $16 million in funding to date, the company is now looking to produce cultivated foie gras as its first commercial product.
Nissin Food Holdings and the University of Tokyo are working together to make cultivated beef. The two have apparently succeeded in creating Japan’s first edible cell-based meat earlier this year. The research team is now engaged in trying to produce a two-centimetre-thick, 100-gram piece of beef by 2025. If the project is successful, mass production will be attempted.
In 2021, it was announced that Israeli cultivated pioneer Aleph Farms signed a working agreement with Mitsubishi’s food industry arm. The ultimate aim of the partnership is to bring cultivated meat to Japan, with Aleph’s manufacturing platform being seconded out. Mitsubishi is bringing in biotech experts and working with relevant officials to secure distribution channels.
Another key partnership is a collaboration between Israel’s SuperMeat and Japanese food giant Ajinomoto. The two have agreed to work together to expedite the development of cultivated products. Ajinomoto brings scaling capabilities, extensive R&D expertise and streamlining prowess to the partnership. SuperMeat offers its proprietary technology. The two hope to reach commercialisation within two years.
Photo by IntegriCulture./
Getting consumers on board
Japan has the shortest history of eating meat out of all Asian countries. Traditionally, consumers favour domestically produced meat and look for marbling as an indicator of quality. An underlying preoccupation with meat safety remains and as such, could provide a stumbling block to cultivated meat acceptance. However, as a nation, a lot of faith is placed in relevant governing bodies. If the ministry can formulate a stringent framework for the safe production of cell-based meats, consumers might be willing to try locally manufactured products.
South Korea’s Simple Planet has announced a breakthrough by developing cultivated meat with a higher content of unsaturated fatty acids. The move has been claimed as a first for the country. Unsaturated fatty acids are hailed as effective in preventing vascular diseases, making meats with more of them preferred over varieties containing large doses of saturated fats.
The breakthrough has led Simple Planet to announce that it sees a path to creating cultivated meat products with higher levels of unsaturated fatty acids than are possible with conventional meat. It states that this shows promise for both cell and plant-based meat markets and will propel Korea to the forefront of the alt-protein sector.
Photo by Misael Moreno at Unsplash.
How are the good fats isolated?
Simple Planet has been transparent in its approach. It was revealed that by isolating adipose stem cells, taken from bovine adipose tissue, it was able to cultivate them to create a fat product. It contains the same composition as regular bovine fat, with oleic acid, a healthy unsaturated fatty acid observed. Using this, in place of unhealthy fats allows for future cultivated meat developments to be further tweaked to enhance nutritional profiles, alongside taste and aesthetics.
“Based on the results of this study, we will continue additional research and development for sustainable future food, share core technologies and values through active collaboration with companies, and secure market competitiveness with a differentiated system,” a spokesperson for Simple Planet said.
The startup will now use recently acquired technology to undertake follow-up R&D, to better understand how controlling the content of unsaturated fatty acids can positively impact cultivated meat. It has stated that it hopes this breakthrough will lead to the growth of the domestic Korean food industry and help to claim a prominent position within the cultivated sector.
Photo by Daniel Bernard at Unsplash.
Korea’s cultivated meat sector gathering pace
South Korea has already been identified as a country to watch for alternative protein developments. Alongside continued plant-based innovation, numerous advances in cultivated meat and seafood have happened over the past twelve months.
In December last year, CellMEAT announced two significant steps forward. The first was the unveiling of a fetal bovine serum-free cell culture media. It came just one day ahead of major U.S. cultivated brand Upside Foods announcing a similar breakthrough. CellMEAT revealed its development and claimed it would drive down costs associated with cell-based meta production and circumnavigate lingering ethical concerns. Little more than a week later, the startup debuted the world’s first cultivated Dokdo shrimp. The prototype paved the way for CellMEAT to continue prioritising expensive seafood varieties that cannot be sustainably farmed. Future products are expected to include king crab and lobster.
Cultivated beef meatballs. Photo by SpaceF.
In February, SpaceF announced that as well as improving on its original pork prototype, it had also successfully cultivated Korea’s first chicken and beef products. The new developments came almost a year after the first pork debut, with all products presented as finished food items. Meatballs, patties, fillets and nuggets were created, alongside a German white sausage. The startup revealed that its pork 2.0 was a far more realistic representation of conventional animal meat, due to improved fibrosity.
CJ CheilJedang announced its plans to enter the cultivated sector by revealing its burgeoning partnership with KCell Biosciences. The two are constructing a cell culture media plant in Busan, later this year. When complete, the facility will be the largest of its kind in Korea and the second largest in the whole APAC region. The two hope to meet at a cost-efficient intersection that will allow cultivated progress to continue, without having to remove price parity hurdles later.
The New Technology Conference in Nanjing National Agricultural High-Tech Industry Demonstration Zone recently played host to a tasting of China’s first cultivated pork belly. The development, presented by domestic startup Joes Future Food, was unveiled during the conference’s Second Cultured Meat New Product Tasting Ceremony.
Alongside pork belly, co-culture of muscle and fat cells, cost-effective serum-free growth mediums and other new technologies were introduced. Guests of the conference were invited to taste Joes’ cultivated pork belly and pigskin noodles, prepared in a variety of dishes.
Professor Zhou Guanghong.
Is China saying yes to cultivated meat?
Joes’ claims that conference attendees noted that the startup’s pork belly was “very chewy”. Alongside, the cell-based fat was described as “delicious when fried” and the pork kebabs were heralded as “authentic”.
China is the world’s largest consumer of conventional pork, and garnering a positive reception from Chinese consumers bodes well for Joes. The startup is in the midst of building a pilot production line, which it hopes to use to promote the commercial potential of cell-based meats.
China has been making tentative steps toward the acceptance of alternative proteins, including cultivated meat. In March, it was reported that President Xi referenced China’s burgeoning alt-protein sector in a speech given to key industry figureheads. President Xi specifically noted that the country needs to develop its own unique proteins. Alongside plant and fermentation methodologies, he specifically paid lip service to biotechnology and bio-industry developments. This led observers to speculate that he is, potentially, open to cultivated meats. If President Xi is on board with the idea of cell-based meat development, it could lead to startups such as Joes being subject to simpler legislation and faster routes to commercialisation.
Cultured Pigskin Noodles by Joes Future Food.
Sustainable solutions for meat consumption
Prior to President Xi’s speech, China’s five-year agricultural plan made reference to cultivated meat for the first time. The blueprint for China’s future developments and national economic strength, the plan is considered a sign of things to come in the food sector. The inclusion of cultivated meat, alongside talk of increasing sustainability credentials, offered optimism to cell-based startups.
At the end of the New Technology Conference, Professor Zhou Guanghong of the Nanjing Agricultural University concluded that people will be able to eat pork without raising pigs. He stated that cultivated meat, such as that presented by Joes, is the “answer to national strategies of sustainable development and low-carbon agriculture”.
President Xi photo courtesy of Canva.
The road to cultivated pork for China
Back in October last year, Joes raised $10.9 million in a Series A funding round. The money was earmarked for continued R&D into cultivated pork, alongside technology scaling. It followed a $3 million raise in January of the same year. The startup spoke of wanting to be the first company to be able to offer sustainably-made pork to Chinese consumers. It won the prototype race, debuting a cultivated meat item in 2019 but now faces competition to get to market first.
Shanghai-based CellX announced it had scooped $10.6 million in a Series A raise, last month. The cellular agriculture startup has raised in excess of $15 million in total to accelerate its cultivated developments. It is looking to produce pork, beef and chicken with whole cuts being given priority. The startup notes that it considers this as the best route to consumer acceptance, as the end products will look familiar. Taking a four-pronged approach, CellX is aiming to produce cultivated meat, while slashing the costs of the sector as it progresses. It claims to have produced a low-cost media formula already and secured an immortalised cell line for its work.
Lead image: cultured pork belly by Joes Future Food.
