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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Cellular Agriculture

We Read the Public Comments on Cell-Cultured Meat Labeling So You Don’t Have To

After receiving about 1,700 comments, including many from private individuals, the USDA has closed its window for public comments on labeling standards for cell-cultured meat and poultry products.

Some of the most comprehensive responses to the USDA’s list of questions came from the Good Food Institute and New Harvest, nonprofit groups that share a mission of advancing the alternative protein industry. Environmental groups, agricultural associations, and cell-cultured meat startups also entered the fray. Here are some of The Spoon’s takeaways on the debate.

Brave new labeling requirements

The Good Food Institute and New Harvest presented different opinions on a key issue: whether or not the USDA should create unique labeling requirements for cell-cultured meat and poultry products.

Pointing to precedent created by regulatory agencies’ responses to other non-traditional production techniques, the Good Food Institute argued against the need for a new set of labeling requirements. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service “has generally promulgated new labeling requirements only when a new process or method materially alters the finished product or where it raises different or increased food safety risks,” the Institute said in its letter. Even the practice of harvesting meat from cloned animals, the Institute pointed out, has not warranted new requirements.

While the Institute argued for maximum flexibility, New Harvest seemed focused on guiding the creation of a framework that would be easy to navigate and empirically informed. The group advocated for a required qualifier term, disclaimer, or visual icon on cell-cultured meat labels, but suggested that the USDA wait to decide on a specific qualifier until we have a better understanding of how consumers will react to different options.


Good words, bad words

Per the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the U.S. government currently defines “meat” as “the part of the muscle of any cattle, sheep, swine, or goats which is skeletal or which is found in the tongue, diaphragm, heart, or esophagus…”

In its letter to the USDA, the Arizona Department of Agriculture argued that this refers only to muscle derived from living animals. Other legacy agriculture groups (including the Alabama Farmers Federation and U.S. Cattlemen’s Association) agreed that cell-cultured products should not be considered meat.

But there are other ways to interpret the government’s definition. The Good Food Institute wrote that it does apply to cell-cultured products, because they’re grown from skeletal muscle and fat cells. New Harvest argued that in order to eliminate any room for ambiguity, “strong consideration should be given to amending the statutes and implementations to expressly clarify that ‘meat’ […] may also be produced outside the animal.”

When it came to identifying appropriate qualifier terms for the new products, most of the groups commenting from inside of the industry expressed a preference for “cell-cultured,” or “cultivated.” Alternative seafood startup BlueNalu pointed to research that the company commissioned on the use of different terms, which found that the term “cell-cultured” maximized consumer appeal while minimizing confusion.

Notably, legacy agriculture corporation Tyson Foods (which has invested in UPSIDE Foods and other cell-cultured meat startups) supported the use of the same terms. Tyson also argued that it could be appropriate for cell-based companies to use product descriptors that consumers may associate with conventional meat, like “pork loin” or “steak.”

The Good Food Institute discouraged the USDA from adopting certain terms that have been put forward by legacy agriculture groups, such as “lab-grown,” “imitation,” and “synthetic.” The Institute argued that these terms do not accurately describe cell-cultured meat.

Keeping cell-cultured consumers safe

The concept of consumer confusion has long been used by legacy agriculture groups pursuing stricter labeling requirements for plant-based meat and dairy products.

In its letter to the USDA, the Good Food Institute invoked a different kind of consumer confusion. Cell-cultured meats contain the same allergens as slaughtered meats — but if cell-cultured products are labeled differently, the Institute argued, consumers could be confused into thinking that they are free of animal allergens, creating a potential health risk.

New Harvest weighed in on some potentially misleading claims that could appear on cell-cultured meat labels. Descriptions of these products as animal-free, safer and more sustainable than slaughtered meats, or acceptable by different religious standards should all be subject to scrutiny, the group argued.

All in all, the dramatic differences between different commenters’ visions indicate the need for a clear and empirically supported framework — one that is built on a realistic understanding of consumers’ needs, and that protects companies’ rights to truthful commercial speech.

As New Harvest stated in its letter to the USDA: “Regulatory frameworks need to be redesigned to keep pace with innovation and technology and future-proof our food system. We cannot expect this technology to positively impact our food system when it is built on an outdated regulatory foundation and minimum public scientific data.”

Eric Jenkusky of Matrix Meats Calls for Transparency in the Cultivated Meat Space

In September, the USDA opened a public comment period to solicit input about the labeling of cultivated meat products. The move was widely seen as an important step forward in the regulatory approval process for the commercial sale of cultivated meat products in the United States, which many anticipate will happen soon.

When cultivated meat finally does make it to market, it’s important that consumers know exactly what’s in the product, at least according to Eric Jenkusky. Jenkusky is the CEO of Matrix Meats, a company that makes plant-based scaffolding for alternative protein and cultivated meat products. I caught up with Jenkusky last week to talk about the cultivated meat market, the regulatory approval process, and the role he saw his company playing in all of it.

In the past year, Matrix has had contact with 50 plus companies in the cultivated meat industry, and is currently engaged with 22. It is also now offering companies a wet lab research contract, where it will assist interested cultivated meat companies with the feeding and scaffold protocols.

After a busy 2021, next year will be even busier for Matrix; according to Jenkusky, “We are looking at assisting a few companies in achieving a product, a cultivated food product with at least 50 percent cultivated cells in the paid product by quarter two of 2022.”

When cultivated meat products are unveiled by various companies, Jenkusky said an important question is never asked, “How much of this product is cultivated cells, and what type of cultivated cells are those?” For the sake of the industry’s reputation and the consumers who care about what they’re eating, transparency will be crucial. We are often shown photos are videos of different whole cuts of cultivated meat products, but the composition of these products is rarely disclosed.

As Matrix Meats works with companies to achieve a cultivated meat product, Jenkusky said, “One of the things that we plan on doing is when our product comes, is we’re going to be completely transparent to the world as to what and who we’re working with.” Although the USDA and FDA will be regulating the labeling and overseeing the production of cultivated meat products, it is currently unclear what level of transparency they will demand of these products.

About 40 percent of surveyed consumers expressed that they were afraid of lab-produced products such as cultivated meat. Fear like this often stems from not knowing or understanding what a product is made of and how it was produced. In the plant-based space, alternative meat sales may be dropping to the lack of ingredient transparency. For consumers to adopt cultivated meat, it will be critical to disclose ingredients, cell composition, and the production process.

Eat Just’s GOOD Meat Granted Regulatory Approval to Sell New Cultivated Chicken Products in Singapore

Today Eat Just announced its GOOD Meat division has received the regulatory go-ahead to sell new types of cultivated chicken products in Singapore. The company will debut one of the new formats, a chicken breast, at the JW Marriott Singapore South Beach next week.

The green light comes just over a year after the company received the world’s first approval to sell cultivated meat from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), Singapore’s regulatory authority for food safety. Soon after, GOOD Meat set a milestone by making the first commercial sale of cultivated chicken at 1880, a private restaurant/club and social impact organization in Singapore.

As part of the announcement, GOOD Meat also committed to increased investment in its cultivated meat production capacity in Singapore over the next two years. The company said the design and manufacturing of vessels and systems that will increase its cultivated meat production capacity are already underway, and they hope to have the new infrastructure operational within the next two years. Eat Just’s cultivated meat division also committed to growing its team in Singapore across manufacturing, science, and engineering as the company moves towards scaling up its production.

The latest regulatory approval is another example of Singapore’s aggressive push into alternative proteins and cultivated meat. The effort is part of the island nation’s “30 By 30” food sovereignty initiative to scale up its capability and capacity to produce 30 percent of its food supply by 2030. And it’s not just Eat Just; other future food companies such as Perfect Day and Avant Meats are investing in building out innovation centers in the country.

Compared to Singapore, the US government has been comparatively slow to foster the next generation of alternative proteins, but that looks to be changing. In October, the USDA announced a $10 million grant award to Tufts to create an Institute for Cellular Agriculture, a flagship American cultivated protein research center of excellence, which followed a $3.5 million grant to UC Davis to establish a training and research program by the National Science Foundation. At the same time, in September, the USDA began to solicit input about what it should call cultivated meat products, a signal that it is progressing towards regulatory approval of the products.

Starbucks is Trialing Animal-Free Milk. I Decided to Try it Out to See If It Tastes & Foams Like Regular Milk

In case you haven’t heard, Starbucks is trialing animal-free milk in the Seattle market. No, we’re not talking Oatly or another plant-based milk, but a milk with cow milk-identical proteins made in a lab.

The alt-milk is from Perfect Day, a company that uses precision fermentation to create its proprietary β-lactoglobulin animal-identical milk protein. The company’s protein, which received GRAS approval from the FDA last year, has primarily been sold to consumers in the form of ice cream (and soon cream cheese), but not in the form of a milk product. However, this move could signify that one could be on the way.

The company created a special 2% “barista-blend” version of its alt-milk especially for the Starbucks trial. Starbucks is currently trialing the milk at two locations in the Seattle market, Bellevue (a city east of Seattle) and Renton (south of Seattle).

Since I live in Seattle, I decided to head on over to Bellevue and see how precision-fermented milk tasted in a cup of Starbucks coffee.

When I walked into the coffee shop, one of the first things I saw at the counter was a sign that said: “Try Your Favorite Beverage With Animal-Free Milk.” The sign said this animal-free milk is lactose-free (but does contain milk allergens). The sign also had a QR code which, when scanned, brought up a survey page on my phone titled “Perfect Day Milk Customer Questionnaire.” The page gave a brief description of this new milk and asked questions like “What questions do you have about “animal-free” milk? and “Should Starbucks offer animal-free milk at all of our stores?”.

Interestingly, the questionnaire didn’t ask how the milk tasted compared to cow or plant-based milk. To figure that out, I ordered two drinks: a tall caramel macchiato with animal-free milk and a tall caramel macchiato with regular 2% milk.

When the drinks arrived, they were essentially identical, except that the Perfect Day milk drink had a “DF” on the label (which, the barista explained, stood for “Dairy-Free”).

The reason I ordered a macchiato was, outside of it being a pretty tasty beverage, I wanted to see how precision fermented milk foamed when steamed compared to cow milk. When I took the lid off the drinks, it was clear it foamed up just fine, as you can see from the picture below (DF milk drink is on the left, cow milk drink on the right):

The real test, however, would be how it tasted. And after tasting both drinks side by side, I can say that this version of precision fermented milk tasted exactly like cow’s milk. The foam was just as, well, foamy, and the actual milk taste in the dairy-free version was not discernably different than that of cow’s milk. In fact, from a taste and experience perspective, the two drinks were identical.

Which, of course, is the goal.

If Starbucks and Perfect Day are using this trial to determine if they should make this milk more widely available, I expect a wider rollout may soon be on its way. Outside of the environmental benefits of precision fermented milk, it’s easy to see how offering a milk without lactose and absent potential other health concerns of factory-farmed dairy could be a big winner.

That said, I imagine the biggest challenge for Perfect Day and Starbucks will be figuring out a way to message it to customers. When I asked the cashier what “animal-free milk” is, she did a decent job describing it: “It’s supposed to mimic 2%, but it’s made in a lab, so it’s like very eco-friendly,” she told me. “But it still has milk protein in it, which makes it not dairy-free, but lactose-free.”

Again, decent, but my feeling is that some consumers might bristle at the term “made in a lab.” I know Perfect Day has been working on messaging their product, and while they’ve made progress, I would suggest dropping “lab-grown” as a descriptor. Maybe something like “brewed” or other terms borrowed from beer or other fermentation-driven beverages since, after all, companies like AB InBev are already putting their brewing skills to work in making animal-identical proteins.

If you live in the Seattle market, I would suggest you head on over to Bellevue or Renton and order an animal-free coffee drink yourself and let us know what you think.

Alt Protein Round-up: Funding for Cell-Based Milk, A Glimpse Inside UPSIDE’s Factory

According to Forbes, 4.5 million plant-based turkeys will be consumed this year on Thanksgiving in the U.S. That sounds like a lot of alternative roasts and Tofurkey’s gracing holiday gatherings, but compared to the number of regular turkeys that will be consumed (46 million) it’s not much. Maybe next year, we’ll have the option to serve cell-based turkey to our guests?

In this edition of the alternative protein round-up, we’ve gathered together the most interesting stories from the past week in the plant-based, cell-cultured and even bug protein worlds, including TurtleTree’s funding, locusts in the EU, Beyond Meat’s sales, an inside look at UPSIDE’s fancy new facility, the animal-free egg ClearEgg, and cell-based pet food.

Turtle Tree raises $30 million in Series A round

TurtleTree, a Singapore-based biotech company, announced recently that it has raised $30 million in a Series A round of funding, with VERSO Capital as the lead investor in this round. This brings TurtleTree’s total funding to $40 million. In September of this year, TurtleTree opened a 24,000 square foot R&D facility in Sacramento, California, where it is expanding upon its precision fermentation technologies. The start-up is developing cell-based milk as an alternative to infant formulas, as well as a compound found in human milk called lactoferrin. The funding will be used to continue this R&D as well as bring on new hires.

Photo by Rick van Houten on Unsplash

Locusts are approved as a sustainable food by European Union

Insects have long been recognized as a sustainable protein source due to their low carbon footprint, and very minimal water and land use. Although many cultures around the world already frequently include insects within their diets, this is not often the case in developed first-world countries. However, this week, the European Union approved the migratory locust as food for humans. This action is a push for bringing awareness to more sustainable foods, especially alternative protein sources. The EU said that locusts, which are high in fat, protein, vitamins, and minerals, would be considered snacks foods or food ingredients,

Are Beyond Meat’s Flagging Sales a Sign Big Cattle’s Negative Messaging is Working?

This week, Beyond Meat had some lousy news for Wall Street: US sales were down 13.9% year over year. According to the company, the culprit for the sales drop was a softening in their grocery and foodservice markets. For some, a sales drop for a high-flying alt-meat pioneer like Beyond might come as a shock. Like Impossible Meat and others in the fast-growing plant-based meat industry, the company has had mostly good news over the past few years, watching as revenue heads up and to the right on the back of new sales channels, geography expansion, and growing consumer demand. So what’s going on here? Why is an alt-meat bellwether like Beyond suddenly seeing its sales drop? Read the full article here.

What Does a Cultivated Meat Plant Look Like? Take a Video Tour of UPSIDE Foods’ New Production Facility to Find Out

At this time, Singapore has been the only country to offer regulatory approval for the commercial sale of cultivated meat, and Qatar is expected to be next to do so. Despite this, several companies in the cultured meat space have opened up state-of-the-art facilities to develop their alternative meat products in anticipation of receiving regulatory approval sooner than later. One of these companies is UPSIDE Foods (formerly Memphis Meats). Last week, UPSIDE Foods hosted a ceremony to celebrate the unveiling of its 53,000 square foot Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center (EPIC for short). The center will be used for the production of cultivated meat and the development of new types of meat and product formats. Read the full article and watch the video here.

Animal-Free ClearEgg Debuts in Protein Smoothie

Last month, The Every Company rebranded from Clara Foods and announced the launch of its animal-free egg protein product. Now, the company’s egg protein, called ClearEgg is being used as an ingredient in a limited-time Pressed smoothie.The smoothie is called “Pineapple Green Protein”, and the added ClearEgg boosts the protein content up to 10 grams. Other ingredients include apple, pineapple, banana, spinach, and avocado. Read the full article here.

Bond Pet Food Teams Up With Hill’s To Make Meat Protein for Pets Using Precision Fermentation

Bond Pet Food, an alternative protein company for pet food, and Hill’s Pet Nutrition, a biology-based pet food company, announced this week that they have partnered to develop an alternative meat protein for pet food using precision fermentation. Precision fermentation makes animal-identical proteins without slaughtering/harming animals. Bond sourced a small blood sample from a heritage hen, and this sample was used to extract the genetic code of chicken protein. Read the full article here.

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What Does a Cultivated Meat Plant Look Like? Take a Video Tour of UPSIDE Foods’ New Production Facility to Find Out

According to the Good Food Institute, there are approximately 70+ companies working on cultivated meat services, inputs, and end products. At this time, Singapore has been the only country to offer regulatory approval for the commercial sale of cultivated meat, and Qatar is expected to be next to do so. Despite this, several companies in the cultured meat space have opened up state-of-the-art facilities to develop their alternative meat products in anticipation of receiving regulatory approval sooner than later.

One of these companies is UPSIDE Foods (formerly Memphis Meats). Last week, UPSIDE Foods hosted a ceremony to celebrate the unveiling of its 53,000 square foot Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center (EPIC for short). The center will be used for the production of cultivated meat and the development of new types of meat and product formats.

It’s easy enough to find Youtube videos about how plant-based meat or real hamburger is made, but because the cultivated meat industry is so nascent, behind-the-scenes looks at this industry have been harder to come by. Until now. UPSIDE Foods shared a video tour of the inside of its EPIC facility. Take a look:

UPSIDE Foods Grand Opening

The front of the facility hosts a kitchen for hosting tastings of cultivated meat. There are areas dedicated to the milling and mixing of cell feed, as well as areas for packaging and testing products. Products will be tested for safety and quality in EPIC’s quality assurance facilities. UPSIDE has also provided an office for federal inspectors to oversee every process, which is required in all meat and poultry processing facilities in the U.S

UPSIDE’s innovation center will employ about 50 people throughout different departments, including maintenance, production, quality & food safety, engineering, and plant management.

Less than half, or only about 40 percent, of Americans are willing to try cultivated meat. Hopefully, allowing consumers to get a glance into cultivated meat facilities might help them warm up to the idea of this alternative protein.

Want to see a cultivated meat facility in action for yourself? UPSIDE will begin offering in-person tours at its Emeryville, California facilities in January 2022.

Alt. Protein Round-up: Upside’s New Cultivated Meat Plant, Plant-Based Hard-boiled Egg

It was another action-packed week in alt-protein, including the launch of one of the industry’s largest production facilities to date for cultivated meat and the unveiling of a new plant-based hard-boiled egg.

If you missed them earlier, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered. Here are some of the week’s biggest stories from the world of alternative protein:

Upside Foods unveils cultured meat innovation center

Cultivated meat company Upside Foods (previously Memphis Meats) announced this week that it had completed its Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center. Located in Emeryville, California, the 53,000 square foot facility can produce up to 50,000 lbs of cultivated meat product per year. The facility is also flexible: Any species of meat or seafood in both whole-cut and ground form can be produced. Upside expects the facility to be fully operational by the end of the year.

Future Farm raises $58 million

Brazilian-based Future Farm (also called Fazenda Futuro), an alternative meat startup, closed a $58 million Series C round this week. The round was led by BTG and Rage Capital, with participation from XP Inc., Monashees, Go4It Capital, Turim MFO, and Enfini Ventures. The company will use the funding to expand its product availability to retailers throughout the U.S. and Europe. Additionally, Future Farm will begin developing dairy alternatives like milk and butter.

Yali Bio comes out of stealth mode to discuss future synthetic fat products

San Francisco-based startup Yali Bio aims to address the environmental concerns of both animal products and tropical oils by producing a synthetic, plant-based fat product. Apart of the Illumina Accelerator program (which runs from September 2021-March 2022), Yali Bio combines synthetic biology and genomics to develop its products. Read the full article here.

Migros launches plant-based hard-boiled egg. Watch this video to see how it’s made

The new egg, called The Boiled, is the latest from the company’s plant-based product line, V-Love. According to the announcement, The Boiled is made with fourteen different ingredients but gets its protein punch from soy. The alt-egg will be on sale this month in stores across Switzerland in four-packs and will retail for 4.40 Swiss Francs (~$4.84). Read the full article and watch the video here.

Ingredient optimized raises Series A funding to expand protein enhancement tech

Ingredient Optimized is a different kind of protein startup. While others in the space are focused on perfecting plant-based burgers and growing more protein-rich peas, the biotech company uses a novel process to alter the physical structures of proteins, making them easier for the body to absorb. Read the full article here.

Alt. Protein Round-Up: Hybrid Chorizo Sausages and Impossible’s Burger Stand

Government programs around the globe are increasingly getting more involved in the alternative protein space. This month, the Danish government allocated 1.25 billion kroner (~$194 million USD) for research into plant-based proteins. A few weeks ago, the USDA awarded Tufts University $10 million to establish “a cultivated protein center of excellence”. Most recently, a European agency called REACT-EU set aside $2 million in funding to help decrease the costs of producing cultivated meat (see below).

In this Alt. Protein Round-up, we also have news pieces on Mission Barns’ product unveil, Black Sheep Foods plant-based lamb, Impossible Meat’s burger stand, and ADM’s investment into precision fermentation.

Mission Barns and Silva Sausages unveil first product

Cultivated fat producer Mission Barns and sausage manufacturer Silva Sausages unveiled their first product produced in partnership: chorizo sausages. The sausages are a hybrid product, made with undisclosed plant proteins and Mission Barn’s proprietary cultivated fat. This is the first production run of the product, and this trial exemplified that the companies have the capabilities to produce the sausages on a large scale. In the multi-year partnership, Mission Barns will use Silva’s facilities (which can produce up to 50,000 lbs of sausage per day) and distribution network. There is no date set for an official launch of the hybrid chorizo sausages

European REACT-EU grants $2 million for “Feed for Meat” project

The “Feed for Meat” project was started by Nutreco and Mosa Meat, and it aims to lower the cost of producing cultivated meat. The European REACT-EU recovery assistance program just awarded the project $2 million to support efforts in commercializing cultivated eat throughout Europe. This funding will specifically be used for R&D efforts for reducing the costs of cultured cell media. This component is typically the most expensive part of cultured meat; however, Mosa Meat has shared that it has successfully reduced the cost of one of the growth nutrients by 98 percent.

Black Sheep Foods Launches Plant-Based Lamb in San Francisco Restaurants

This week, alternative protein startup Black Sheep Foods’ plant-based lamb made its debut in San Francisco restaurants. The launch is a big step for the Black Sheep team, which wants to offer more variety to plant-based meat eaters. “Our first product is lamb because it’s both alien and familiar in America,” company co-founder Sunny Kumar told The Spoon this week over Zoom. “Everyone knows about lamb, but no one really eats it at a high cadence.” Read the full article here.

ADM Invests in Acies Bio to expand precision fermentation capabilities

Global nutrition and agriculture company, ADM, invested in the Slovenian biotechnology company, Acies Bio through its venture capital arm ADM Ventures. One of Acies Bio’s specialties is precision fermentation technology for food and agricultural applications, and this technology will be used to assist ADM accelerate its own precision fermentation projects. Making use of Acies Bio’s microbial capabilities and contract manufacturing services, ADM aims to meet the growing demand for products developed through microbial fermentation.

Impossible Foods Opens a Burger Stand in Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena

This week Impossible and Climate Pledge Arena, the world’s first net zero-carbon sports arena, announced that the Impossible patty had been named the venue’s official burger. They also announced Impossible is opening two branded food stands in the home of the NHL’s newest franchise, the Seattle Kraken. Read the full article here.

BIOMILQ Raises $21M in Series A Funding With Focus on Mission-Aligned Partners

In June, The Spoon reported on North Carolina-based startup BIOMILQ’s success in recreating human milk outside of the breast. The company is working toward manufacturing cell-cultured milk at commercial scale, hoping to provide parents who cannot breastfeed regularly with a nutritionally equivalent option.

BIOMILQ announced today that they’ve closed their Series A financing round with $21 million. This week, The Spoon got on Zoom with company co-founder and CEO Michelle Egger to discuss the funding round and BIOMILQ’s next steps toward commercialization.

“In the grand scheme of fundraising rounds in cellular agriculture, $21 million is par for the course,” says Egger. “But we’re particularly proud because we’re an all-female leadership team. It’s less about celebrating the dollar value and more about celebrating the fact that we were able to raise it with specific partnership criteria that helped us find mission-aligned partners.”

During the round, BIOMILQ focused on identifying funds that employed female partners; that had company portfolios in which at least 10% of founders came from diverse or non-traditional backgrounds; and that had mandates on nutrition, health, or sustainability in their investment criteria.

Egger says that those criteria narrowed the field of potential investors, but ultimately helped the team to connect with partners “that are furthering new ideas and new innovation from areas where we otherwise wouldn’t see it.” Those partners include Novo Holdings, Gaingels, Spero, and Digitalis.

This round of funding will help BIOMILQ to bring its production processes to scale. Currently, the company produces small sample quantities of cell-cultured milk—just enough for compositional and optimization testing, according to Egger. They’re currently building a pilot plant in North Carolina, where they hope to begin producing milk in the quantities required for safety testing before launching the product.

In grappling with the challenge of building up scale, BIOMILQ is in the same boat as cell-cultured meat startups. But Egger says that the process for, and challenges of, producing cell-cultured milk are unique.

“Our product isn’t cells; our product is what the cells produce,” she says. “In cellular agriculture, they’re growing meat to replace the way cattle farmers have traditionally raised bovine cattle to slaughter. We’re more like milkmaids, raising cells to act more like dairy cows, where they’re able to produce milk—in this case, human milk.”

In contrast to cellular agriculture, BIOMILQ’s process is more similar to pharmaceutical production than fermentation production in terms of scale and price.

There are some advantages that come with playing the role of cellular milkmaid. For instance, BIOMILQ doesn’t need its cells to grow explosively, but to secrete milk—so the company’s process requires relatively small quantities of expensive growth factors.

BIOMILQ also stands out from the crowd of cell cultivation startups because the company uses human epithelial cells to produce its milk. The use of human cells comes with its own challenges, as the company has had to prove to the FDA’s Institutional Review Boards that donors consented fully to the use of their cells. “In the past, human research hasn’t always been upfront about how cells were being utilized,” says Egger. “So it’s top-of-mind for us, as the first food product created from human cells.”

The regulatory pathway for BIOMILQ remains unclear, although the company is actively working with regulators.

Egger says that the company “might be a bit quieter” over the next year or two, as the team works on building up scale and undergoing safety testing. Still, she’s excited about these next steps.

“We get to pioneer a new future of nutrition and push forward technologies that have never been applied in this way,” says Egger, “which is very exciting. And it’s also a huge challenge that we take very seriously, because at the end of the day, the product we’re making isn’t a novel hamburger or a novel chicken nugget—it’s nutrition that supports the life of human beings on our planet.”

Image credit: BIOMILQ

The Week in Food Tech Funding: Culture Biosciences & Tufts Nab Funding as Interest in Scaling Cell Ag Grows

Over the past 12 months, money has poured into cultivated meat startups as venture investors, celebrities, and governments look to get in on what many believe is the next big thing in alternative protein.

However, as the excitement grows, some are taking a harder look at how to scale the production of lab-grown meat to make a dent in the larger animal-based meat market. According to one estimate, the industry will need up to $30 billion invested in cell-based/fermentation production capacity if the alternative protein market hits just 11% of total meat consumption by 2035 and significantly more if consumer adoption exceeds expectations.

Much of that $30 billion will be directed to capital investment in building out long-term production capacity. However, before we get there, the industry first needs to invest in organizations building the necessary technology and production platforms to enable scale-up. This week saw two significant investments intended for just that: Culture Biosciences ($80 million) and Tufts University & partners ($10 million).

Culture Biosciences helps companies developing future food products with its bioreactor-as-a-service platform. The company introduced its first product a couple of years ago, a cloud-connected benchtop bioreactor service for cell-culture and bioprocess development. With their new round of funding, Culture looks to move beyond the bench with cloud-connected 5L and 250L bioreactors-as-a-service that will help firms optimize for pilot scale bio-manufacturing.

The second investment isn’t a traditional venture investment, but the $10 million USDA funding award to Tufts University for a cultured protein center of excellence is a vital investment nonetheless. In partnership with others, Tufts will lead an Institute for Cellular Agriculture to develop foundational technologies and processes to enable the cultivated meat industry to progress towards scaled production. The foundational work done by this organization will include everything from research on next-generation cell-culture medium to the development of education and leadership programs for the cultivated meat industry.

As companies try to take cultivated meat from the lab to the manufacturing plant, some question if cellular agriculture will ever be able to scale upwards cost-effectively and safely enough to justify all the investment. While we won’t know the answer to this question for a few years, it’s an encouraging sign that investments are being made to address the next big challenge in cellular agriculture.

And now, the rest of this week’s funding news:

Food Supply Chain

TrusTrace – $6 Million: TrusTrace, a Sweden-based startup building food supply chain traceability software solutions, has raised a $6 million Series A funding round. TrusTrace uses blockchain, AI, and bots to track products as they navigate their way through the supply chain. The company claims to have 8 thousand suppliers and 250 thousand products on the platform. My guess is TrusTrace and other traceability platform players are getting lots of inbound inquiries as everyone from ingredient and component suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers are trying to figure out how to work through the great 2021 supply chain disequilibrium.

Plant-Based Food

Grounded Foods – $2.5 Million: Plant-based cheese maker Grounded Foods has announced a $2.5 million raise. The company, founded by the husband and wife team of Shaun Quade and Veronica Fil, makes cheese products with hemp seeds and cauliflower. Grounded is already in 160 different retail locations today and plans to use the funds to expand further in the US and to set up for expansion into Europe.

Ag Tech

Kuva Space – €4.2M ($4.9M): Kuva Space, a provider of realtime agricultural data using space-borne hyperspectral camera technology, has raised $4.9 million. The company plans on using the funding to launch a constellation of six-unit nano-satellites to gather imagery in the 400 to 1,100 nanometer band. The company provides data that helps farmers optimize fertilizer and irrigation needs, optimal harvesting times, and early-stage pest or plant disease detection. With its second generation satellites, the company plans to expand its carbon monitoring capabilities.

Food Waste

Orbisk – €2.4M: Orbisk, which provides professional kitchens with automated analysis of food usage and associated waste flow using machine vision and AI, has received a €2.4 million grant from the European Commission’s European Innovation Council (EIC). The data from Orbisk’s analysis allows customers to adapt processes and purchasing to better manage and reduce food waste. Orbisk won the EIC funding with a pitch for its ‘Binspector’ project, under which the company will invest in dynamic AI models to increase accuracy and rapid adaptation in international menus, as well as further development of its food management algorithms.

Fish Tech

OptoScale – $4.1m (£3m): Optoscale, which makes machine vision and sensor technologies real-time monitoring of fish farm stock, has raised £3 million led by SWEN Capital Partners. The Norway-based company says it can analyze up to 200,000 fish per day using its technology, which compares with 50 to 100 fish using traditional analysis methods. Optoscale, which currently operates in Norway, Canada, and Scotland, plans to use the money to expand operations to Australia, Chile, and Iceland.

Restaurant Tech

ResQ – $39 Million: Well that was fast. After raising $7.5 million in a June seed funding round, ResQ, which provides a software platform for managing restaurant repair and maintenance tasks, has raised a $39 million Series A. Through their platform, restaurants can request, manage, and pay for a service, as well as manage the documents for these things. ResQ also connects restaurants with a network of contractors able to perform those services. The company’s list of available services includes HVAC, refrigeration, electrical, janitorial, plumbing, pest control, grease trap cleaning, preventative maintenance, and most anything else needed to keep a restaurant kitchen up and running. Since its seed round, the company has said its customer base has grown from seven states to 36 in the US. They plan to use the funding to grow their team by 400%.

C3 – $10 Million: Virtual restaurant/host kitchen platform company C3 has raised another $10 million in strategic funding from Swiss private capital firm, Lurra Capital, just a few months after it had raised a $80 million Series B. C3 (short for Creating Culinary Communities), works with kitchen operators (host kitchens) to fulfill orders for virtual restaurant brands. As of mid-year, the company operated about 40 virtual restaurant brands. The company plans to open 1,000 virtual brand locations by year’s end and has plans to open 12,000 globally by 2023.

Food Robots

Future Acres – $1.7 Million: Farm robotics startup Future Acres has raised $1.7 million via equity crowdfunding on Seedinvest. The company makes a self-driving robot called Carry that utilizes GPS and computer vision to navigate around the field and haul up to 500 pounds of produce. The company, which has raised a little over $400 thousand in pre-seed funding, plans to use the funds for product development, payroll, marketing and operations.

How New Culture and Moolec Science Are Growing Cow-Free Dairy Proteins

Most of today’s vegan cheese startups face the challenge of reproducing cheese using ingredients like plant-based oils and nut milks. That’s no easy feat, as unique dairy proteins are responsible for some of the taste, stretch, and melt properties of cheese.

But alternative cheese may soon be getting a tech upgrade. A handful of startups have developed cow-free processes for replicating those key dairy proteins. Last week, The Spoon got on Zoom with the CEOs of two of those companies—New Culture and Moolec Science—to ask about the state of alternative cheese technology.

New Culture & precision fermentation

When California-based startup New Culture set out to develop a better alternative cheese, the company’s founders surveyed a range of processes that could be used to grow dairy proteins. Company CEO and co-founder Matt Gibson says that precision fermentation stood out because the technology had already been used by the conventional dairy industry at commercial scale.

“It’s a process that has been done time and time again,” says Gibson. Precision fermentation is used today to produce chymosin, a cheesemaking enzyme. “And that means that all those risk factors that come with anything that you scale up have really been eliminated. It’s a tried-and-true method of going from a small fermentation shake flask of say 50 milliliters to a large fermentation tank of 200,000 liters.”

In New Culture’s fermentation process, microbes are genetically edited to convert sugar into a dairy protein called casein, which makes up about 80% of the protein content in cow’s milk. To grow the protein at high volumes, the microbes need to be kept at a certain temperature and pH, and fed sugars at a specific rate.

According to Gibson, another advantage of using precision fermentation is that the regulatory process is relatively simple. This is partly because the dairy industry has set a precedent for using precision fermentation, and partly because New Culture is using the process to create an existing protein rather than a new ingredient.

“So there’s no concern from a regulatory point of view about the fact that you’re using genetic engineering,” he says. “You go through the regulatory process to show that the process you’re using—like what you’re feeding your microbe—is safe and stable. So the regulatory process is expected to be very smooth sailing.”

New Culture expects to complete the regulatory approval process next year. The company’s flagship cheese will be mozzarella, which they plan to launch as a branded product in restaurants in late 2022. In particular, Gibson says the team has its eyes on the pizza industry, which is a huge consumer of mozzarella, but has been held back from using alternative cheeses because today’s plant-based options don’t stretch well or tolerate the high temperatures in pizza ovens.

Casein is the foundation for all kinds of cheeses. Someday, the company could add other bacterial cultures and age their casein curd base to create blue cheese, brie, and other varieties. For now, they’re focused on building scale and getting their mozzarella onto menus.

“To quickly transition away from animal-derived cheeses, you need a technology that can scale quickly and get costs down quickly,” says Gibson. “And that’s what precision fermentation ultimately allows you to do.”

Moolec Science & molecular farming

Moolec Science, headquartered in the U.K., is taking a different approach: The company grows animal proteins using molecular farming. Last year, The Spoon reported on Moolec’s success in producing the cheesemaking enzyme chymosin (mentioned above) in plants.

Molecular farming solves the problem of scaling up in a different way from precision fermentation. Through molecular farming, says company CEO and co-founder Gastón Paladini, Moolec can take advantage of existing agricultural infrastructure for production purposes. “There’s nothing better than low-tech farming to produce at an enhanced scale and low cost.”

In molecular farming, crops are genetically modified to produce a target molecule. The Moolec team matches the target molecule with a host plant, creating different plant-molecule combinations for different applications. The company’s proof-of-concept chymosin is grown in safflower plants; its next products, meat proteins, will be grown in soy and yellow pea plants.

Moolec is a spinoff of Bioceres Crop Solutions, an agtech company. The team at Bioceres spent over a decade building the tech platform that Moolec now uses for molecular farming, says Paladini—“from the laboratories and construction design to the new genes, new seeds, field trials, farming, and harvesting.”

While precision fermentation companies can scale up using models created by the conventional dairy industry, Paladini says that the scale for molecular farming already exists. “There aren’t many precision fermentation tanks out there to produce alternative protein right now, so the industry needs to build new fermenters,” he says. “With molecular farming, we could use the same lands that are currently used to grow animal feed right now. You only need to switch the seeds.”

Bioceres has an existing network of growers in Latin America and the U.S., which is helping Moolec to expand its operations.

The regulatory process for molecular farming is relatively complicated, requiring both USDA and FDA approval (while the precision fermentation process requires only FDA approval). Moolec is currently working its way through the regulatory process.

Moolec’s process involves farming genetically modified crops on a large scale, a controversial practice in some regions. Paladini says that the team plans to take an active and transparent approach when it comes to communicating with the public about GMOs.

“We believe that we need to inform, educate, and promote the benefits of GM techniques, when they’re used for a good reason,” he says. Toward that end, the company is working on building an NGO in collaboration with scientists and industry representatives. The organization, GM4GOOD, will “promote the benefits of using science and GM techniques.”

Moolec is currently working with R&D departments at CPG companies to develop end products using its proteins. The team plans to re-launch its plant-derived chymosin later this year, and to introduce its alternative meat proteins in late 2022 or early 2023.

Both New Culture and Moolec can leverage knowledge from previous applications of their technologies, and both companies will face challenges as they build up scale and work toward regulatory approval. And there are questions to ask about both companies’ processes: about the energy intensivity of protein extraction, for instance, and the land use implications of growing animal proteins in plants at scale.

But both companies’ uses of technology to produce native dairy proteins mark big steps forward for alternative cheese. The next wave of cow-free cheeses will likely be more versatile and convincing, and more attractive to restaurants and CPG companies.

USDA Awards $10 Million to Tufts University to Establish a Cultivated Protein Center of Excellence

Today the USDA and Tufts University announced a $10 million award to be distributed over a 5 year period to develop an Institute for Cellular Agriculture, a flagship American cultivated protein research center of excellence. The award is part of a $146 million investment announced by the USDA on October 6th by its National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (NIFA) Sustainable Agricultural Systems program.

The new Institute will be run by David Kaplan, who currently heads the Cellular Agriculture program at Tufts University.

From the release:

Tufts University Professor David Kaplan, a renowned cultivated meat expert, will lead the initiative and will be joined by investigators from Virginia Tech, Virginia State, University of California-Davis, MIT, and University of Massachusetts-Boston. The new institute will “develop outreach, extension, and education for the next generation of professionals” in cellular agriculture and lead research that will help to expand the menu of climate-friendly protein options and improve food system resilience.

The new program is the first federally funded Institute at a major university with the explicit goal of developing new approaches and technologies for cultivated meat. The project includes the development of new sustainable and cruelty-free growth medium, scaffolding, and fermentation technologies that can contribute to the advancement of the cultivated meat field.

The program also aims to develop a curriculum to educate students to be future leaders in the cultivated meat space. One of the goals of the Institute will be to develop “outreach, extension, and education for the next generation of professionals for workforce development and as technology leaders.”

It’s encouraging to see the Biden administration investing in research centers of excellence for cellular agriculture, particularly cultivated meat. The US has fallen woefully behind other countries in its support for developing next-generation food technology, which is why I suggested early this year that the Biden administration create a US taxpayer-funded food innovation hub. This, in essence, does that for cultivated meat.

It’s also a sign that the US education system is racing to develop a curriculum for a field that – at least up to this point – has lacked the kind of well-established curriculum as other strategically essential fields such as computer science or biotechnology. That’s a shame because while the cultivated meat industry leverages many of the advances in other areas like biotech and CS, it’s a unique field unto itself which requires an educated and qualified workforce to power if it is to reach its full potential.

Hopefully, the new National Institute for Cellular Agriculture at Tufts is another building block that will help create the foundation for the cultivated meat workforce of the future.