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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Cultured Meat

TurtleTree Scientific and Dyadic to Develop Affordable Growth Factors for Cell-Based Proteins at Scale

TurtleTree Scientific, the recently launched B2B unit of TurtleTree Labs that develops growth factors for cellular ag, today announced a “fully funded” collaboration with biotech company Dyadic International. Through this partnership, the two will develop recombinant food-grade growth factors for proteins that can be grown in high yields at lower costs in bioreactors. This could allow TurtleTree, which makes cell-cultured products (including human breastmilk) to scale up and get to market faster, paving the way for cultured meat and dairy companies to do the same.

Dyadic is known for its its C1 gene expression based on the Thermothelomyces heterothallica fungus. Via this platform, Dyadic can produce recombinant proteins at an industrial scale of up to 500,000 liters, with lower capital and operating expenditures than what cultured meat companies would normally find. The company’s tech has been used by some of the world’s most well-known biotech companies, including DuPont and BASF.

In a statement, TurtleTree cofounder and Chief Strategist Max Rye said that manufacturing human growth factors both at scale and at an affordable cost has been a major challenge, and that the partnership with Dyadic will help the company “overcome this hurdle” safely and efficiently.

Growth factors account for the bulk of the cost in cell-based protein production — 55 to 95 percent, by some accounts. Part of the reason for this, TurtleTree explained last month, is that cell culture media components have been developed for non-food areas like research and theraputics, which do not have the same scale requirements and cost constraints as food and agriculture production.

Ronen Tchelet, PhD, Dyadic’s Vice President of Research and Business Development, said in today’s press release that the company will engineer “hyper-productive” C1 cel lines to develop high bioactivity and yields suitable for commercial-scale productions. This will not only accelerate the timeline for TurtleTree’s business, it could also, according to Rye, “make cellular agriculture a reality for all” by enabling food-grade growth factors at an affordable price point to the wider cellular ag industry.

Future Meat’s CEO on Price Parity, Cultured Chicken in the U.S. and Raising $26.75M

Future Meat Technologies announced today it has brought the production cost of its cultured chicken breast product to under $10. The company has also raised an additional $26.75 million in capital to scale up production and get its product into market in the next 12 to 18 months.

Reaching cost parity with traditional meat is a vital step in the process of bringing cultured meat to the wider public. Speaking via a video chat today, Future Meat CEO Rom Kshuk said that getting to price parity with traditional meat has been part of his company’s mission statement from the start. Future Meat, he said has been able to “decrease cost by 1,000 times over the last three years.” As of now, a quarter-pound serving of its cultured chicken breast costs just $7.50 to produce.

Future Meat differs from many alt-protein companies in that it uses a blend of cultured and plant-based ingredients for its products, rather than choosing one or the other, as most companies do. This, Kshuk explained, is something of a “low-hanging fruit” approach since companies can typically get to market faster with a blended product as opposed to developing one that is 100 percent cultured. Kshuk said that right now, Future Meat will “use the best of both worlds” where these two approaches are concerned, though that balance will skew more towards exclusively cultured meat products in future.

For plant-based proteins, the company uses a mixture of the leading products on the market (soy, pea, fungi). Plant-based protein tends to provide a better texture and nutritional profile to food items than cultured protein, which is one advantage to using the former. However, the plant-based approach comes up lacking in terms of what Kshuk calls “the sensory experience” of the meat: flavor, aroma, etc. Those are elements cultured meat is better able to provide, for now at least.

At the moment, Future Meat is focused on scaling up its production, planning its approach to market, and trying to get a team on the ground in the U.S. It plans to launch in the U.S. by 2022. Initially, that will likely happen through two channels: restaurants and direct-to-consumer sales. The latter could be an especially lucrative format, given the rise in D2C commerce brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.  

The recent fundraise will bolster all of these efforts. The $26.75 million funding round is a convertible note with participation from new investors that include German dairy producer Müller Group, ADM Capital, and CPG Rich Products Corp. Existing investors Tyson Foods, Archer Daniels Midland, S2G Ventures, Manta Ray Investors, Emerald Technology Ventures, and Bits x Bites participated, too. 

Future meat expects its pilot facility to start production in the first half of 2021 and is also seeking regulatory approval in multiple territories. 

Russia Gets Its First Alt-Protein Food Tech Accelerator

A newly formed nonprofit called the Association of Alternative Food Producers (AAFP) has joined forces with food awareness organization ProVeg to launch Russia’s first-ever incubator program dedicated to animal-free protein. The program will support a range of startups in the alt-meat arena, from those working on cultured and plant-based products to those developing related technologies, such as scaffolds and 3D bioprinting.

AAFP was founded by Tim Ponomarev and Julia Marsel, two graduates of Berlin-based ProVeg’s incubator and the founders of plant-based meat company Greenwise (not to be confused with the Publix-owned organic brand of the same name). Their goal is to contribute to the growth of alternative proteins in Russia and Russian-speaking countries through supporting food companies and entrepreneurs. 

Those accepted to AAFP’s program, which is based in Moscow and the Kaluga region, will participate in four different modules. Modules will provide guidance in marketing, fundraising, legal and regulatory matters, technological areas, and business development, among others. Participants receive mentorship and other consultations, the chance to take part in special events and conferences, access to buyers, materials suppliers, and other professionals, and the chance to pitch to potential investors.

Applicants should either be based in the Russian and CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) market or have plans to concentrate their activities to that region. Excepting companies developing cell-based meat, applicants should already have a product or products being sold in the market.

A food tech accelerator in Russia that’s devoted to animal-free meat is a major milestone for alt-protein’s growth in the country. Currently, only about 1 percent of all Russians say they are vegetarian, and that not eating meat is still considered by many to be dangerous. Attitudes, however, are changing, and while the market for alt-protein is still very young, it is growing.

The AAFP incubator will open in 2021 (an exact date has not yet been provided). Those interested in joining can apply here. 

Here’s Why Future Cattle Farmers and Fishermen May Work at an Office Park or Abandoned Mall

As more and more companies in the cell-based meat space migrate from prototype to full pilot production phase, one of the questions that we need to start thinking about is how exactly all this meat will be made at scale.

Sure, scaled production is likely 10 years out for many of these companies, but the reality is re-configuring an industry as big and significant as meat, poultry or fish production will be a herculean task, so it’s worth starting the conversation now.

One of the futuristic visions I keep hearing about is the idea of “meat breweries“, where buildings host giant bioreactors that grow cultured meat.

It’s a weird concept now, but in fifteen years time there’s a good chance we’ll need meat breweries sprinkled throughout the country (and globe) if we plan to get anywhere near the volume of production where cell-based meat can account for 35% of all meat consumed predicted by consulting firm AT Kearney by 2045.

If we’re going to use the brewery concept as a model to frame the conversation, it’s worth comparing the idea of meat “brewing” to that of traditional beer brewing market and ask: will meat breweries be something akin to big high-production beer breweries like those of Anheuser-Busch, producing a bunch of meat centrally and shipping around the country?

Or, alternatively, will meat brewing be something closer to the microbrewery model where meat is made city-by-city for consumption within a hundred mile radius?

My best guess based on conversations with early entrepreneurs in this space is the meat-brewing production model will be much closer to how one makes my favorite local IPA to than, say, Budweiser. In other words: There will be lots of meat breweries around the country and around the world, producing cell-based meat to be consumed locally.

So where will these meat breweries be built? The reality is that while cell-based meat production can certainly be done in a building built on farmland (and I definitely think livestock farmers should consider such a thing), the reality is that meat brewing can and will be done just about anywhere where there is space. Space like in old factories, warehouses, empty office parks and even restaurants. Just as with today’s brewpubs, you can even envision some restaurants that make their meat on site in the future.

And then there’s empty shopping malls and abandoned retail spaces. Retail real estate demand is shrinking quickly and likely won’t come back as more people buy online and work remotely. We’ve already seen some empty retail locations turned into vertical farms, so why not think about turning these spaces into the meat farms of the future?

No matter where we decide to put these future cell-based meat, poultry and fish production facilities, chances are we will need a lot of them. Those developers, entrepreneurs and city planners that start envisioning a future now that includes distributed cell-based meat production could help us usher in the cultured meat farmers and fishermen of the future.

Mirai Foods Raises $2.1M CHF for Commercialization of Cultured Meat

Switzerland-based Mirai Foods, announced this week that it has raised $2.1M CHF (~$2.4 million USD) in funding in its initial Seed round (hat tip to FoodBev Media). The round included participation from seven investors in total, including the Pauling Group and Team Europe.

This most recent round of funding will be used to accelerate the commercialization of Mirai Foods’ cultured meat products. The company was founded one year ago, and after six months produced its first cultured meat prototype. Currently, the company is focused on creating cultured beef products, like minced beef, but will eventually work on other meat analogs as well.

Like other cultured meat companies, Mirai Foods extracts stem cells from living animals to produce its cultured meat. However, no animals are slaughtered or harmed in the process, and the extracted cells are grown outside of animals in large bioreactors. Because living animals are not raised by the company, there is no need for land, feed, or water for animals, thus resulting in the cultured meat product having a lower carbon footprint. According to its press announcement, Mirai is the only cultivated meat player in Switzerland. The company says it differentiates itself from other players in the space in that it does not genetically manipulate their cells but keep the cells as they naturally occur in the animal.

Mirai Foods is not the only company racing to accelerate its commercialization efforts in hopes of bringing cultured meat to market. At the very beginning of 2021, Aleph Farms actually announced that it would be bringing its lab-grown whole-muscle steak to Japan, and will be releasing a limited launch of its products in Asia in 2022. IntegriCulture aims to launch a cultured liver product in restaurants this year, and SuperMeat has a test kitchen/restaurant in Tel-Aviv, Israel dedicated to sampling its cultured chicken to consumers in exchange for feedback.

Lab-grown meat, as science fiction-y and futuristic as it sounds, is inching closer to popping up on restaurant menus and retailer shelves. Regulatory approval from governments is still a barrier that cultured meat companies must cross, but approval could come sooner than later after the Singapore government’s approval of Eat Just’s cultured meat. Mirai Foods has not announced when it aims on launching its cultured meat in the market but did say in its press release that it is focused on bringing cell-based meat to the market as quickly and safely as possible.

Eat Just To Launch Vegan Sous Vide Egg Bites in Grocery Stores

Food tech company Eat Just announced today it will expand its retail line of products with the launch of JUST Egg Sous Vide bites, which the company has created in partnership with sous vide food manufacturer Cuisine Solutions.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Cuisine Solutions will produce the Sous Vide bites, which will arrive in the frozen food section of grocery stores in March. Customers will be able to choose from four different varieties, each based on a different geographical region and flavored with plants known to that area. They include America (potato, dill, chives, red and black pepper), India (curry, broccoli, cauliflower, coconut milk, lemongrass), Japan (mushroom, yams, togarashi, soy, tamari), and Mexico (poblanos, chipotle chile powder, black beans, corn, lime). The bites will be sold in boxes of four.  

The other major ingredient, of course, is mung bean protein, which is the key ingredient for all of Eat Just’s plant-based egg products.

Yours truly got the opportunity to try all four flavors recently. The flavor variety — which is executed well — is probably the biggest draw, as the ingredients are a welcome change from the usual cheese-tomato-spinach-or-basil mix that’s in most sous vide egg bites out there. Also, if you’re like me and constantly forget to cook breakfast, they’re a very easy plant-based solution. (Personal fave flavor: Mexico.)

The bites can be heated in a toaster, microwave, or conventional oven.

Eat Just hasn’t yet said which retail stores the product will debut at come March, nor how much each box will cost. (Those interested in getting those details can get updates here.)

Alongside the continuing evolution of its plant-based products, Eat Just has also hit a couple major milestones where its cell-based protein business is concerned. At the beginning of December, the company got the world’s first-ever regulatory approval to sell cultured meat, specifically in Singapore. The company followed that news up with the first actual sale of its GOOD cultured chicken bites at an upscale restaurant in the city-state.

Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick has suggested in the past that the company will continue developing both plant- and cell-based lines of business, rather than focusing solely on one approach over another.

Culture Biosciences Announces High-Throughput Mammalian Cell Culture Capability for Cloud-Based Bioreactors

One of the big challenges in developing cell-cultured meat products is the sheer amount of lab time needed to develop and optimize the manufacturing process so cells can be produced at scale.

This optimization process can involve working to develop the right growth media, finding the optimal growth conditions for the cells, or evaluating ways to genetically modify cell lines for better reproduction.

Traditionally much of this cell culture process development takes place in-house using a benchtop stirred tank bioreactor. But a startup called Culture Biosciences wants to take this process off the hands of cell-meat makers and allow them to utilize Culture Biosciences’ cloud-based bioreactor systems.

To demonstrate its capabilities, Culture Biosciences recently announced its high-throughput mammalian cell-culture capabilities have been proven out using CHO (Chinese Hamster Ovar) cell cultures.

The news, announced via a white paper written by the company’s senior bioprocess engineer Michael McSunas, shows the results of the work they had done using CHO cells in the company’s 250 ML cloud bioreactor. According to the white paper, Culture Biosciences was able to grow the cell lines from a customer and show reproduceability alongside internally developed cultures, as well as the ability to scale-down results from a customers 1 L glass bioreactors.

In short, Culture showed that results produced on-site are consistent, can be reproduced and scaled using their connected bioreactor technology, all important proof points for the company’s “bioreactor-as-a-service” model for cell-based meat development.

In such a model, the customer sends in vials with cells and growth media and allows Culture to thaw them and perform the studies in their 250 ML connected bioreactors. The data is then uploaded to the cloud for the customer to analyze.

If this idea of moving away from a completely “roll-your-own” infrastructure model and pushing some of development process to a service-based cloud model sounds like a concept from the Internet technology world, you’re right. That’s because Culture Biosciences CEO Will Patrick, who previously worked at Google, wondered why the world of biosciences didn’t have the same type of toolsets and accessible infrastructure such as the cloud industry with AWS or semiconductor industry with manufacturing fabs like those from TSMC.

Patrick eventually decided to build some of these tools himself in the form of his cloud-based bioreactor, and now he hopes they can act as a platform for mammalian cell development.

“Culture can help optimize the manufacturing process,” Patrick told via email. “This is important because optimizing the manufacturing process such that production is cheaper is one of the biggest R&D challenges that face cell-based meat companies.” 

Spanish Government Funds BioTech Foods’ Cultured Meat Project

The Spanish government granted BioTech Foods €5.2 million ($6.3 million USD) this week for the company’s cultured meat project. The project will investigate the health benefits of cultured meat, and determine if cultured meat lacks the common health concerns associated with animal meat, such as increasing the risk of high cholesterol and certain cancers.

Like other cultured meat companies, BioTech Foods extracts cells from living animals without causing harm to the animal. The cells are then multiplied in a controlled envrionment. As a result, the multiplied cells become muscle tissue, which can be used to create different meat analogs. BioTech Foods’ cultured meat brand is called Ethicameat, and it appears the brand produces multispecies cultured meat products. The brand’s first prototypes so far include meatballs and a chicken cutlet.

This is not the first time the Spanish government has provided funding for a cultured meat company. During the first week of 2021, the government granted 3D and cultured meat producers, Nova Meat, €250,000 (~$307,500 USD). In the U.S., UC Davis received a $3.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (a government agency) to research cultivated meat and develop methods to amplify stem cells efficiently. With the Singapore government’s regulatory approval of Eat JUST’s first commercial sale of cultured meat, there now seems to be an opportunity for other cultured meat companies to ramp up R&D efforts to get their products to market.

It is currently unclear how long BioTech Foods’ project will take. However, by the end of the project, the company aims to have a cultured meat product containing healthy fats and functional ingredients that is healthier than traditional meat. The positive environmental impacts of cultured meat have often been touted by companies in this space, but the health benefits of cultured meat may also be an important selling point for hesitant consumers.

BlueNalu Secures $60M for Production of Cell-Based Seafood

San Diego-based BlueNalu, a startup building technology to make cell-based seafood, announced today that it has raised $60 million in convertible note financing from new and existing investors. Rage Capital led this round of financing, with other participants including Agronomics, Lewis & Clark AgriFood, McWin, KBW Ventures, and Siddhi Capital.

This most recent round of financing will enable BlueNalu to open its planned 40,000 square foot pilot production facility and begin producing its cultured seafood there. Additionally, the company will complete an FDA regulatory review for its initial cultured fish products. BlueNalu will be trialing these initial products in foodservice establishments across the US sometime this year.

BlueNalu creates a variety of different seafood species by extracting cells from fish and crustaceans and growing these cell samples in large bioreactors. The company said it will start by launching cell-based mahi-mahi later this year, and then cell-based bluefin tuna after.

Due to global concerns of overfishing and pollution in seafood stocks, cell-based seafood may play an important role in the next few years by offering an alternative to wild-caught and farmed seafood. Avant Meat is focused on satisfying the tastebuds of consumers in China and Hong Kong through cell-based fish maw and sea cucumber. Singapore-based Shiok Meats has so far produced cell-based lobster and shrimp, with plans to make the shrimp commercially available sometime in 2022.

BlueNalu’s new production facility will be used to produce commercial-grade cultured fish for restaurants and other food outlets, and the new facility will be capable of providing 200 – 500 pounds of cell-based seafood per week.

Next Up for Cellular Agriculture: Scalability, Accessibility

At one point in the not-too-distant past, the idea of edible protein grown in a lab was the stuff of science fiction. But in what’s felt like a relatively short period of time (a few years), a greater number of companies, individuals, and investors have embraced the concept of cellular agriculture and, more and more, consider it a vital part of our future food system. 

Now the cell-based protein sector has a new set of challenges to tackle. As HigherSteaks’ Benjamina Bollag and BIOMILQ’s Michelle Egger discussed this week during The Spoon’s Food Tech Live event, we’re past the days of trying to convince folks that cellular agriculture is a viable reality. Now, companies have to prove the idea of growing protein in a lab can work at scale outside that lab to feed a growing world population, and do so while keeping environmental degradation minimal.

It’s not exactly a simple feat (understatement), and it certainly won’t happen next week (or next year). But during this week’s Food Tech Live, Bollag and Egger pinpointed not just the areas cellular agriculture needs to focus on in order to continue its evolution towards the mainstream, but also ideas for how to get there.

Among those are safety and quality assurance, equipment design, supply chain logistics, and cell culture density, to name just a few things. Egger added that one of the challenges cellular agriculture companies face right now is they are relying on technology from industries (biotech, Pharma) that have never had to scale to the level of mass commodity, which essentially the holy grail for cell ag companies.

Perhaps the biggest — and most important — challenge for these companies will be making cell-cultured protein, whether meat, breast milk, cheese, or eggs, into the hands of many. In other words, how do we make it more accessible to everyone?

It’s a question that isn’t possible to answer in the span of a 30-minute online chat, but definitely one the industry as a whole should consider now, though we’re years away from reaching that stage of mass commodity. Right now, a select few consumers can get their hands on alternative proteins grown in a lab. Those are usually the folks invited to exclusive taste-testings or the ones that can afford the rare fine dining experience for cultured protein.

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that if you truly want to reduce the amount of environmental degradation or provide more options to people or subsidize diets in a healthier manner, you have to get into the hands of everyone throughout this world,” said Egger.

That in turn will require more strategic thinking on the part of the industry in terms of how to reach a wider audience. It will also require collaboration amongst the difference companies currently innovating across the cellular agriculture sector.

Four Predictions for the Future of Food in 2021

It goes without saying that 2020 was a challenging year for the food industry. A worldwide pandemic that wreaked havoc on food supply chains, forced the permanent closure of thousands of restaurants worldwide, and pushed millions of people deeper into food insecurity showed us just how fragile the systems that keep us nourished and fed are.

But it’s also the recognition of this fragility that’s led to an increasing sense of urgency to invest in the future of food. The good news is the timing couldn’t be better. We are at a culmination point in the fields of bioengineering, chemistry and food science where decades of hard work and progress have allowed ideas that once seemed the domain of science fiction to leap into the labs and, now and in the not-to-distant future, onto our plates.

And while 2020 was a year of unprecedented progress across our food system, I expect 2021 to be even more impactful. Below are four predictions for some of what we could see this year.

Cultured Meat Milestones Will Accelerate

Throughout 2020, announcements of milestones for cultured meat flowed with increasing regularity. New prototypes of practically every type of meat ranging from chicken to beef to kangaroo debuted, heads of state and other famous folks got their first tastes of lab-grown meat, and at the end Eat Just announced the first regulatory approval and retail sale of cultured chicken in Singapore.

And we’ll see even more milestones this year. Investment will grow and excitement will build as more companies move out of the labs and into early pilot production facilities for their cultured meat products. Other countries will follow Singapore’s lead and give regulatory green light for the sale of cultured meat. And finally, we’ll see the debut of more cultured meat products in high-end cuisine as chefs look to achieve similar firsts for their restaurants. We may even see the rollout of cultured meat in some select experiential, high-end retail.

Fermentation Powers Growth in Exciting New Consumer-Facing Products

One of the of most exciting areas in the future of food is microbial fermentation. High-volume production of interesting new biomass proteins such as mycelium-based meat replacements and the arrival of animal-free proteins, fats and other compounds created using precision fermentation helped illustrate why the Good Food Institute called fermentation the third leg of the alternative protein market.

Looking forward, you can expect lots of new products to debut powered by precision fermentation in 2021. MeliBio, a maker of bee-free honey, expects to debut their first product in 2021, while Clara Foods plans to release its animal-free egg this year as well, and I expect to see more companies like Brave Robot rise up and offer new products built around precision fermented food platforms created by companies like Perfect Day.

CRISPR and Gene-Edited Food See Accelerated Product Pipelines

There was big news in the CRISPR and gene-edited food realm in December when the USDA proposed a change in the regulatory oversight of gene-edited animals for human consumption. The organization proposed that they take over oversight responsibility for approving gene-edited animal products from the FDA which, in 2018, famously declared that gene-edited animals should be regulated in the same manner as drugs.

Under a new USDA regulatory framework, the organization is proposing a fairly light regulatory approach to animals compared to the previous oversight of the FDA, which in turn could speed up time to market for new products. While there has been lots of focus on CRISPR-derived future food innovation, I expect changes to US regulatory oversight of gene-edited animal products to create a wave of new interest in developing CRISPR-based product lines from both startups and established food product companies.

Finally, the US may not be the only market to see a change in oversight for gene-edited food. The UK is looking to extract itself from the heavier-handed oversight of the EU post-Brexit, and some in Europe are suggesting that the EU’s classification of all gene-edited food as GMO might be overbroad and need adjusting.

3D Food Printing Moves Beyond the Cake

While 3D food printing has largely been relegated to the world of confections and cake decorating, a world with food replicators from the pages of science fiction novels seems to be inching closer to reality.

Companies like Redefine Meat are making high-volume plant-based meat printers and plan to have meat in supermarkets in a year, while others like Meat-Tech are showing off prototypes of cultured meat printers. One of the challenges for food printing will be scaling the technology to make it quicker, something Novameat is working on as it begins to enter commercial rollout phase of its plant-based meat printing technology. On the consumer front, while I don’t expect the food printers to start printing out Jamie Oliver recipes this year, companies like Savoreat are working on commercializing products for the professional space with the end-goal of eventually creating a home consumer food printer like the one you might see in a show like Upload.

Finally, these advances and technologies do not happen in a vacuum. The future of food is reliant on a multitude of new innovations and technologies. CRISPR, precision fermentation and 3D food printing are just some of the tools being interwoven and utilized together to help bring innovative new products to cultured, plant-based and other emerging food markets.

While we don’t know what 2021 will hold for us with any certainty, what we can be certain of is that progress in these important building blocks for the future of food will continue to march forward.

Vow Foods, Maker of Cell-Based Kangaroo and Other Meats, Raises $6M

Sydney, Australia-based company Vow Foods announced today that it has raised $6 million in seed funding to further develop alternative forms of meat — chicken, pork, and kangaroo among them. The round was led by Square Peg Capital, with participation from Tenacious Ventures and existing investors Blackbird Ventures and Grok Ventures, according to an email sent to The Spoon.

Investment in the cell-based meat sector has steadily increased over the last several months, though most of that funding has gone towards companies producing alt forms of the most common meats, including chicken, pork, beef, and bacon. 

Like other cell-based meat companies, Vow uses animal cells, rather than actual animals, to produce alternative meat products. In cultivators, it nourishes the animal cells, which then form fat, tissue, and muscle just as they would if they were growing inside the animal itself. 

Unlike others in the space, Vow hasn’t limited itself to just the basics when it comes to meat types. As of this writing, the company has a cell library of 11 different animals that includes more exotic fare such as alpaca, water buffalo, and the aforementioned kangaroo. 

The company did a taste testing of its kangaroo dumpling in 2019. More recently, it held a “culinary demonstration” event that showed off six of its cell-based meat products. The company will also soon open a “food design studio” and laboratory in Sydney to further develop its products. 

And while eating a lab-grown kangaroo might still seem like the stuff of fantasy for many, cell-based meat as a legitimate player in the food industry is very much a reality now. As mentioned above, investment dollars for cell-based meat increased in 2020, and new companies and approaches emerged steadily throughout the year. To cap it all off, cell-based meat got its first-ever regulatory stamp of approval in Singapore, thereby opening the gates of opportunity for others.

Parts of the world — the U.S. being one of them — will probably never see cell-based kangaroo on grocery store shelves. However, Vow’s fundraise this week highlights not just further growth for the cell-based meat sector, but also an interest in the kind of variety and versatility the whole industry needs to continue its march into the mainstream food system.