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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Cultured Meat

These Four Startups Are Growing Animal-free Scaffolds for Cell-Cultured Meat

It’s one thing to grow an amorphous blob of muscle or fat cells in a bioreactor—and another thing to recreate the structure of animal tissue. In order to make a complex product like a steak or a salmon fillet, cell-cultured meat producers need to provide their stem cells with a scaffold to grow on.

In nature, growing stem cells are housed within a structure of proteins and polysaccharides called the extracellular matrix. The cells’ interaction with this environment guides the way that they adhere, differentiate, and migrate.

Both cell-based meat manufacturers and business-to-business suppliers in the industry are experimenting with different scaffolding materials that can mimic the extracellular matrix. Below, we’ll discuss some scaffolding solutions and the startups that are exploring them.

You might notice that all of the materials we mention are animal-free—a significant development as alternative meat companies seek to reduce their dependence on animal inputs.


1. DaNAgreen is developing extracellular matrix stand-ins for both clinical and food applications. On its website, the South Korean startup describes Protinet™-P, its scaffolding product for cell-cultured meat manufacturing, as “a food that incubates food.” Protinet™-P scaffolds are completely edible, as they’re made from isolated plant proteins.

DanNAgreen currently offers its products in custom sizes and shapes. The company plans to spend the next few years scaling up production.

2. Seawith, a cell-cultured meat company also based in South Korea, is using algae-based scaffolds to grow its products. Along with being nutrient-rich, algae is relatively easy and inexpensive to grow. In The Spoon’s recent interview with Seawith, we learned that the company credits its algae scaffolding with the development of thicker cell-based steaks.

The company hopes to start selling its cell-cultured meat products to restaurants by 2023, though the team is awaiting regulatory decisions from the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

3. Excell is exploring the use of fungal mycelium as a scaffolding substrate. Mycelium contains the polymer chitin, which can be made to mimic some of the polysaccharides found in the natural extracellular matrix. Some fungi also have a meaty taste and texture, so it’s possible that mycelium-based substrates could enhance the sensory experience of eating cell-cultured meat.

Excell is currently offering mycelium scaffolding culture kits to researchers and product developers, and collecting feedback on how its products perform.

4. Matrix Meats of Ohio is approaching the challenge in a different way. The company uses an electrospinning technique to build nanofiber scaffolds. As FoodNavigator has reported, Matrix’s scaffolds can be made of a combination of different materials, which could allow cell-based meat producers to grow cultured muscles and fats together on a single structure.

Matrix works directly with cell-cultured meat startups to develop custom scaffolding solutions for their products. Client companies can control the scaffolding material, fiber size, and other factors.

These innovations with plant and fungi-based scaffolds could just be the start. Animal-derived collagen has been widely studied as a cellular scaffold material (which makes sense, as collagen is one of the proteins found in the natural extracellular matrix)—and it may be possible to make animal collagen scaffolds without using actual animals. Researchers have managed to produce animal collagen using gene-edited tobacco plants, and recombinant collagen produced by bacteria and yeast also look promising.

Advancements in animal-free scaffolding should help cell-cultured meat producers to cut costs and reduce their environmental impacts. (And this isn’t just a hypothetical: With its algae scaffold, DaNAgreen has been able to produce cell-based steaks at near price-parity with conventional products.) We’re likely to see much more innovation in the field as cell-cultured companies explore hybrid production options.

Meet Three Startups Developing Growth Mediums to Feed Cell-cultured Meat

Culture medium is one of the key building blocks for cell-cultured meat production: In order to grow stem cells into blobs of muscle and fat, you need a nutritious serum to feed and raise the cells.

For most of the nascent industry’s history, fetal bovine serum (or FBS) has been the only viable growth substrate. This reliance on FBS presents a quandary for startups seeking to market their products as ethical and sustainable: The serum is extracted from cow fetuses after slaughtering pregnant cows. FBS is also expensive—an issue for companies seeking to scale down production costs.

To get around the problems of FBS, some of the big names in cell-cultured meat have been developing their own alternative growth mediums. Mosa Meat announced last year that it had converted to a new medium that costs 88 times less than FBS. But there’s also a smattering of growth medium startups developing growth mediums to sell as stand-alone products. Here are some names to know in this space:


1. Multus Media’s Proliferum M serum is formulated with a proprietary mixture of proteins and other ingredients. Designed to facilitate growth for mammalian cells, the serum demonstrates what the company calls universibility: It can support a range of different cell lines.

Multus is currently working with partner companies to test Proliferum M. The company hopes to bring its first product to market later in 2021. (For more on Multus, check out our recent interview with company CEO Cai Linton.)

2. Back of the Yards Algae Sciences manufactures food ingredients like dyes and protein powders—all from algae. The company is experimenting with an algae-based culture medium in their research and development lab, seeking solutions for beef, pork, chicken, and fish cell growth. (And they’ve had some success, as Food Dive reported earlier this year.) Back of the Yards hasn’t yet released details about when their medium might become commercially available.

Seawith, a South Korean company, is also using algae to create culture medium and scaffolding for its cell-based meat products.

3. Biftek is working on a microorganism-based growth medium, although the Turkish startup hasn’t revealed what kinds of microorganisms it’s using. Biftek recently received a financial boost from CULT Food Science, a Canadian investment platform. They’ll use the money to send out culture medium samples to cell-based meat producers and apply for patents.


These aren’t the only serum ideas out there. There’s been some academic research around the use of platelet lysate (a liquid derived from blood platelets) as an alternative culture medium. Agulos Biotech is working on a simulated version of porcine platelet lysate. Driven by the theory that growing muscle cells in blood would produce better-tasting meat, Cultured Blood is developing a substrate of cell-cultured blood.

The cell-cultured meat industry is expected to be worth $248 million by 2026, and many industry leaders believe that cell-based products will reach price parity with conventional meat by then. In order to live up to these expectations, the industry will need to identify sustainable, cost-efficient culture mediums. One of the approaches above might be the key to unlocking more affordable, ethical, cell-based meat.

MeaTech 3D Files Provisional Patent Application For Cell-Cultured Fat Process

MeaTech 3D announced last week that it has filed a provisional patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to cover its new stem cell manipulation technology. The Israel-based company’s proprietary process uses plant inputs to transform embryonic mesenchymal stem cells (or eMSCs) into fat cells.

The patent-pending process can be used to produce intramuscular fat: the fat structures that ribbon through a sophisticated cut of meat such as a ribeye steak. The company envisions the technology working hand-in-hand with its meat bioprinting process, which involves extruding bio-inks made from muscle and fat cells to create complex structures.

This isn’t the first patent application that MeaTech has filed in the U.S. In June, they applied for a patent to secure their bioprinting process. This push to accumulate intellectual property should help the company to protect its investments in research and development as international cell-cultured meat producers prepare to compete for consumers’ affections. (The company spent $2.5 million on R&D in 2020, up from $0.2 million the year before.)

This latest patent application marks a milestone in MeaTech’s push to reduce its dependence on animal-derived materials. The most common method for turning eMSCs into fat cells involves the use of animal hormones insulin, dexamethasone, and isobutylmethylxanthine.

Yet despite this advancement, the company’s production process isn’t free of animal inputs. The eMSCs that the company relies on are generally derived from bone marrow or fat, and are most commonly grown in a substrate of fetal bovine serum.

Meanwhile, other food tech startups are vying to find alternative fat solutions that will further scale down animal intensivity. We recently reported on Nordic startup Melt&Marble’s ambitions in this arena: The company uses a fermentation process to produce fatty acids, and can customize its recipe to create fats that complement different plant-based proteins. Motif Foodworks is pursuing a different approach, tweaking plant oils to taste and feel more like animal fat.

Excell, a spinoff of Ecovative Designs, is working on another solution to the industry’s animal fat problem. The startup is currently working with cell-cultured companies to test its mycelium (or mushroom root system) materials as alternative growing scaffolds for their meat products.

Despite MeaTech’s eagerness to secure its fat production process against competitors, it’s hard to predict whether the stem-cell reliant technique will remain relevant for long in the rapidly advancing industry. As cell-cultured meat startups like MeaTech seek out ways to scale up production while cutting costs and reducing environmental impacts, it may ultimately make more sense to go hybrid, turning to plant-based fat sources.

The USDA Is Seeking Comments About What to Call and How to Label Cell-Based Meat

It looks like the US government is getting serious about putting cell-based meat on consumer plates.

That’s because on Thursday, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced it had opened a 60 day period in which it will solicit comments to questions put forth in an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR).

Some of the topics/questions the FSIS is looking for feedback on include (italicized text excerpted from the notice):

Product name: “Should the product name of a meat or poultry product comprised of or containing cultured animal cells differentiate the product from slaughtered meat or poultry by informing consumers the product was made using animal cell culture technology? If yes, what criteria should the agency consider or use to differentiate the products? If no, why not?

Terminology: What term(s), if any, should be in the product name of a food comprised of or containing cultured animal cells to convey the nature or source of the food to consumers? (e.g., “cell cultured” or “cell cultivated.”)

What do about hybrid farmed/cell-based: If a meat or poultry product were comprised of both slaughtered meat or poultry and cultured animal cells, what unique labeling requirements, if any, should be required for such products?

Can cell-based meat use meat terminology to describe products? Should terms that specify the form of meat or poultry products (such as “fillet”, “patty”, or “steak”) be allowed to be included in or to accompany the name or standard of identity of foods comprised of or containing cultured animal cells?

I expect this process to be somewhat contentious. The powerful lobbying group, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), has shown it’s not a fan of cell-based meat production and will certainly have some thoughts to share during this process. Opponents can be expected to claim that applying terms and product names familiar to consumers from their consumption of traditionally farmed meat to cultured meat will be misleading.

This most recent move by the USDA is part of a process kickstarted way back in 2018 when the USDA and the FDA announced they were beginning to develop regulatory frameworks for the cell-based meat industry.

The division of oversight described in the initial announcement is referenced in yesterday’s announcement:

Under the agreement, FDA will oversee cell collection, growth, and differentiation of cells. FDA will transfer oversight at the cell harvest stage to FSIS. FSIS will then oversee the cell harvest, processing, packaging, and labeling of products.

Since those early days in 2018, cell-based meat has moved off the bench and into pilot production across the globe. Countries like Singapore have outpaced the US in opening regulatory glide paths for making cell-based meat available to consumers. Hopefully this news is a sign that the day when we can buy cell-based meat in the US will be here soon.

Eat Just Partners with Qatar Free Zones to Bring Cultured Meat Facility to the MENA Region

Eat Just announced today that it has partnered with Doha Venture Capital (DVC) and Qatar Free Zones Authority (QFZA) to build a cultured meat facility in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region.

The new facility will be located in the Umm Alhoul Free Zone in Qatar, and will at first house Eat Just’s cultured meat division, GOOD Meat. Eventually, the facility will accommodate Eat Just’s plant-based egg brand JUST Egg as well. In addition to those brands, the facility will also conduct research and development, engineering, and business development.

According to the press announcement, the Qatar Free Zones Authority and Qatar’s Ministry of Public Health have indicated that they will grant regulatory approval for GOOD Meat’s cultured chicken “very soon” and have formally granted an expert license for the cell-based meat. If Qatar does come through with this approval, it would be the second region in the world to approve the sale of cultured meat, following Singapore’s decision to do so in December of last year.

Gaining regulatory approval in more countries around the world is obviously a key milestone that needs to be reached in order for cultured meat to gain any sort of traction. Cell-based meat startups around the world have raised a ton of money over the past year, and the technology is rapidly maturing. But all the funding and the best technology in the world doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t allowed to sell your product.

While there are skeptics that doubt cell-based meat will ever be able to economically scale, a number of startups have made moves that aim to bring it to market. After two drastic price reductions this year, the production price of Israel-based Future Meat’s cell-based chicken is now $4 for 110g (check out our recent podcast interview with Future Meat Founder and CSO Yaakov Nahmias for more). Here in the U.S. Memphis Meats re-branded to the more consumer-friendly UPSIDE Foods and announced a partnership with the Altier Crenn restaurant in San Francisco.

Eat Just has definitely pushed its way to the front of the cultured meat pack, however. It is the first company to ever commercially sell its cultured meat, and now it will have large-scale production facilities in both Singapore and Qatar.

Koby Nahmias Knew Cell-Based Meat Had Huge Potential But Was Too Expensive. He Set About Changing That.

Something was bothering Yaakov Nahmias.

The longtime bioengineer had been sitting alongside the Charles River near MIT drinking coffee when he got a call from an investor in Israel who wanted to know what he thought about Mark Post’s famous quarter-million euro hamburger.

“I told him, it’s probably the silliest idea I’ve ever heard,” said Nahmias, who also goes by Koby, in an interview with The Spoon.

It wasn’t the science itself Nahmias thought was silly – the longtime bioengineer knew making a burger in a lab was an impressive scientific feat – but rather the idea that consumers would pay hundreds of dollars, let alone hundreds of thousands, for a burger no matter how science-forward meat the meat is.

Sitting there, Nahmias began to think about what it would take to bring down the cost of growing meat in a bioreactor to result in prices approachable enough for the average consumer.

It wouldn’t be easy. As the founding director of the Alexander Grass Center for Bioengineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a longtime consultant to the pharma industry, Nahmias knew that this type of complicated biotech cell-reproduction work was hugely expensive and – the way things were structured back in 2015 – totally impractical for producing low-cost consumables.

Yaakov “Koby” Nahmias

But Nahmias also thought that maybe it didn’t need to be this way. After all, he had colleagues who ran an insect farm, which had a much lower cost per unit of biomass produced. So why, he wondered, was creating meat using cellular agriculture so much more expensive than other forms of biomass production?

One reason was that cells produced make a lots of toxins like ammonia. And, unlike insects which have livers to remove these toxins, cells produced in bioreactors “essentially grow in their own urine,” Nahmias said.

When he looked around for systems are good at ammonia removal, the obvious example was the aquarium.

“If you’re growing fish, and and you are giving them too much food, there is too much protein that breaks down into ammonia,” said Nahmias. “The only way to treat it is by adding zeolites that will bind the ammonia relatively fast. So using that type of insight, you can design a process that will do it at scale.”

Another early insight Nahmias had was that pharma bioreactors often grew one type of animal cell – hamster ovary cells – which are commonly used for vaccine development. While hamster cells grow easily in traditional bioreactors, that’s not the case with meat like beef or chicken.

But perhaps the biggest challenge Nahmias saw was the cost of growth medium used to feed the cells. After consulting to the pharma industry for the last decade, he knew it took about 10 liters of culture medium to make 1 kilogram of biomass. At what he estimated to be $20 per liter for medium at that time, he thought even with the world’s most advanced tech, they’d start hit a cost floor of around $200 per kilogram.

He would spend the next six months focused on reengineering the process of cell-based meat production. But this was only the beginning. Nahmias knew that it would take some time to commercialize his work.

So not long after, he would start a company called SuperMeat with a couple of other cofounders, where he further developed these early ideas. That company would eventually split up a year later and Nahmias would go on to found his current company, Future Meat Technologies, where he set about creating a scaled system for making low-cost cell-based meat.

Fast forward to today and he’s doing just that. Future Meat regularly makes news about reaching ever lower prices for its cell-based chicken, which is why I wanted to talk to him about how he achieved cost milestones that many have thought wouldn’t be achievable for at least half a decade.

You can listen to my full interview with Nahmias on the latest episode of The Food Tech Show. Just click play below or get the episode at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

San Francisco Restaurant to Serve UPSIDE Foods’ Cultivated Chicken

Berkeley, California-based cultivated meat company UPSIDE Foods, announced today that it has partnered with Dominique Crenn, the co-owner and chef of the three Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn restaurant in San Francisco. Crenn will assist with recipe development for the company, and, pending regulatory review and approval, will serve UPSIDE’s cultivated chicken at her restaurant in the future.

Previously known as Memphis Meats, UPSIDE Foods unveiled its first cultivated meatball in 2016 and its first cultivated piece of poultry in 2017. This past May, the company announced that its first consumer-facing product will be cultivated chicken. However, none of UPSIDE’s wares are on sale yet, since the company has yet to gain regulatory approval to sell these and other cultivated meat products.

At the moment, Singapore is the only country that has approved the sale of cultivated meat, and it isn’t clear who will be the next. In the U.S., the FDA and USDA will oversee the regulation of cultured meat, and figuring out this framework is still a work in progress. As a result, UPSIDE’s restaurant partnership won’t come to fruition until the company gets regulatory approval to sell its cultivated meat.

If and when that happens, it will be a big switch for Crenn’s restaurant, too. Because of environmental concerns around the production of meat, Crenn made the decision to remove all meat from Crenn Dining Group’s restaurants in 2019. Since UPSIDE’s cultivated chicken is actual meat made from harvested animal cells, the restaurant group will be deviating from that stance for the first time in a few years. Of course, one of the benefits touted by cultured meat industry is that its products are more environmentally friendly than conventionally raised meat, since no animals are slaughtered in the process.

Putting cultured meat on a restaurant menu is one way to introduce it to consumers. Other food tech start-ups like Impossible Foods and Meati have presented their products through restaurants first, before going diectly to consumers. This is one way to garner interest from the innovators and early adopters who are eager to try new products.

After getting regulatory approval, UPSIDE Foods will continue to partner with other chefs and restaurants throughout the U.S. The company has begun building a production facility in the San Francisco Bay Area, and eventually plans to roll out its cultivated meat in grocery stores.

Shiok Meats Acquires Gaia Foods, Will Add Beef to Its Cultured Meat Lineup

Shiok Meats, a company best known for its developments in cultured seafood, has acquired a 90 percent steak in Gaia Foods, according to Tech in Asia, which broke the news. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Through the deal, Singapore’s Shiok Meats will add “a variety of red meat products” to its roster, since the company will be able to draw on Gaia Foods expertise in developing cultured beef. Gaia, also based in Singapore is also developing cultured pork and mutton.

Both companies are targeting markets in Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Japan, Taiwan, India, and South Korea. Shiok Meats hopes to blend cultured beef and shrimp in order to create a product that can be used in a variety of dishes, from dumplings and noodles to spring rolls.

Shiok raised an undisclosed round of bridge funding last month that will go towards building out a production facility in Singapore. The company said at the time of the funding that it plans to launch commercially in that market by 2023 at the latest. Speaking to Tech in Asia today, company CEO Sandhya Sriram said Shiok Meats is ready to “power through to commercialization.”

Singapore is currently the only country in the world that has granted regulatory approval to sell cultured meat, and to just one company, Eat Just. Gaining its own approval — in Singapore and elsewhere — will be a major next step for Shiok on its path to commercialization. 

Beyond regulatory approval, Shiok Meats and every other company developing cultivated meat has a host of challenges to contend with before consumers can buy their products en masse at restaurants and grocery stores. Those challenges span everything from making cell lines more available to finding cheaper, less ethically hazy growth mediums, and educating the average consumer about what cultured meat actually is and why we need to consider it as a protein source in the first place.  

Gaia founders Vinayaka Srinivas and Hung Nguyen will lead the Shiok Meats technical team’s development process for cultured red meat products for the company moving forward. Meanwhile, Sriram told Tech in Asia that deals like this one will become “priorities” in the near-term future for the company.

Report: S2G Ventures Talks Alt-Protein, the Digitization of Grocery, and Other Areas of Food the Pandemic is Reshaping

“We continue to see the pandemic act as a catalyzing agent to accelerate trends that were in motion before it began. We believe that food and agriculture has undergone significant structural changes that will alter the course of the industry.” 

So says a new report from S2G Ventures, a VC firm based in Chicago, Illinois. The report, titled “The Ingredients for a Food System Revolution,” analyzes eight pandemics and outbreaks throughout history to pinpoint patterns around financial and economic recovery, innovation, and behavioral changes and norms. The analysis gives a clue as to how the current COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping norms, particularly when it comes to how we produce, get, and eat our food.

As an investment firm, S2G focuses mainly on the food and agriculture sectors, and counts AppHarvest, Shenandoah Growers, and Trace Genomics among its portfolio companies. It follows, then, that the new report is largely focused on how pandemics, epidemics, and outbreaks in the past have changed our food system and how the COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to do that at this very moment. “More decentralization [is] going to occur, more convergence of food and health, more decommodification as well,” Sanjeev Krishnan, S2G Ventures Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer, tells The Spoon.

As the report notes, “While there are many factors influencing the future of our food system, the study of past pandemic economic history is starkly consistent – an innovation cycle begins, and old habits and norms do shift.” 

A couple especially compelling areas where this is happening include alternative protein and online grocery.

As traditional meat-processing facilities face challenges and the unit economics for some types of alt-protein go down, we’re seeing more of the latter make its way into the mainstream. Krishnan explains we are moving more and more towards an “all of the above” view of protein. “I think there’s going to be animal protein, plant protein, and cell protein,” he says. Production of animal protein, in particular, will see “natural momentum around more niche, regional, decommoditized” products. Plant-based proteins, meanwhile, will see an increased focus on nutrition and affordability, while more countries will follow Singapore’s lead when it comes to cultivated meat. China is another important place to watch in this area, according to Krishnan.

S2G’s report also honed in on channel digitization, and specifically on the grocery sector. The report notes that a forced transition to online grocery during the pandemic “exponentially increased penetration from 24% to 49% between 2019 and 2020. Seniors became the fastest-growing segment of online shoppers on Instacart in 2020. In future, consumers will take “a hybrid approach” to groceries, and retailers will start to slightly differentiate what they sell online versus in the brick-and-mortar store.

The report also calls out controlled environment agriculture, a convergence of food and health, and food and agriculture digitization as other key areas to watch in terms of how the pandemic is reshaping the food system.  

“We can build a more resilient and hopeful food system that both addresses planet health and human health coming out of this,” says Krishnan. “Let’s use the pain and the agony and the anxiety that occurred as a call to action.

Shiok Meats Closes Bridge Funding Round, Plans R&D Facility for Cultivated Seafood

Cultured seafood company Shiok Meats has raised an undisclosed amount of investment in a bridge funding round from Woowa Brothers Asia Holdings, CJ CheilJedang Corporation, and Vietnamese-based seafood exporter Vinh Hoan Corporation. This brings Shiok Meats’ total funding to date to $30 million, according to a company press release. 

The round also included existing investors IRONGREY, Big Idea Ventures, Twynam Investments, Henry Soesanto, The Alexander Payne Living Trust, Beyond Impact Vegan Partners, Boom Capital Fund, Toyo Seikan Group Holdings, and Mindshift Capital.

While Shiok Meats did not disclose the exact amount of the bridge round, it likely clocked in around the $10 million mark, a figure based on publicly available information about the company’s financials.  

The new funds will go towards building an R&D production facility in Singapore, where the company is based. To date, Shiok Meats has developed cultivated shrimp and lobster, and aims to eventually produce those products at scale via its production facility.

Several other cultivated protein companies, including Future Meat, MeaTech 3D, and fellow cultured-seafood company Willdtype, have also announced production facilities over the last few months. BlueNalu, another seafood-focused company, announced a production facility back in 2020 that is slated to be operational towards the end of this year.

For its part, Shiok Meats says it plans to launch in Singapore by 2023 at the latest. The company received the prestigious Startup SG Tech Proof-of-Value grant, which helps companies fast-track development of their technologies/products and which could help Shiok Meats get to market faster.

In Singapore, at least, Shiok already has competition. San Francisco, California-based Eat Just nabbed the world’s first-ever regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat from Singapore and is currently selling its “chicken” at restaurants in the city-state.   

Multus Media Raises $2.2M for Cultured Meat Serum Replacement

Multus Media, a startup working on a replacement for animal serum used in cultivating meat, announced today that it has raised a £1.6 milliion (~$2.2M USD) Seed round of funding. Investors in the round include SOSV, Zero Carbon Capital, Marinya Capital and angel investor Sake Bosch. The round also includes an equity-free grant of £106,000 (~$146,000 USD) from the UK Research and Innovation Council.

Founded in 2019, Multus Media was spun out of SOSV’s IndieBio program and is developing a new type of growth medium for use in creating cultured meat that is more economical that current solutions. Serum is what cultivated animal cells are placed in, allowing them to grow and form cultured meat. Serum is also an expensive part of the cultivation process with the controversial fetal bovine serum costing $200 per liter. But it’s not just the cost of the serum itself, it’s how much is used to culture meat.

As Cai Linton, Multus Media CEO explained to me last week, part of the issue is how quickly existing serum formulations deplete. Linton said that because of this depletion, serums need to be replaced every two to three days in order to keep the meat cells growing. Multus is developing a formulation that will last twice that, saving cultured meat companies money because they don’t need to buy as much of it.

Right now, Multus has identified the formulation of proteins, compounds and other ingredients it needs to make its serum. The next phase will be producing the serum, dubbed Proliferum M. Linton said that the company is looking to bring its first product to market by the end of this year, and ramp up production by the end of 2022. Multus’ formulation is not animal free at this point, though Linton said it will be as they scale up production. By 2026, the company projects that Proliferum M will cost less than $1 per liter.

There are a number of startups working on novel replacements for animal-based growth serums. In South Korea, Seawith is using algae to create both growth serum and scaffolding in cultured meat. In Canada, Future Fields is developing an animal-free serum designed to cultivate chicken.

Bringing the cost of cultured meat into parity with animal meat is a critical part of the market gaining widespread adoption. We’ve already seen companies like Mosa Meat and Future Meat both slash the production costs of their cultured meat over the past year. Perhaps Multus Media can help them, and other players in the space, bring those costs down even further.

Mzansi Meat Co. is Bringing Cultured Meat to Africa

After Eat Just gained regulatory approval in Singapore for its cultured meat last year, companies from countries all over the world are racing to bring their cultured meat products to market. We’ve heard news from Asia, the United States, Europe, and Australia regarding cultured meat, but one continent that seems to be left out of this space is Africa. Mzansi Meat Co., based in South Africa, is changing this as the first cultured meat company on the continent of Africa.

This week I spoke with Brett Thompson, a co-founder and the CEO of Mzansi Meat Co., who said he realized “There is no one doing cultivated meat or cellular agriculture in the entire African continent, which is insane to think about. The opportunity was there, and that is the beginning of our story.” The co-founders formed the company in 2020, and shortly after connected with scientist and CEO of Wild Earth, Ryan Bethencourt. Bethencourt invested in Mzansi Meat Co., which enabled the co-founders to start building out a team.

Mzansi Meat Co. is developing cell lines by extracting cells from animal donors, which are not harmed in the process. After the cells are extracted, they are grown in a bioreactor and then are differentiated into muscle and fat cells. Cultured meat companies have traditionally used FBS (fetal bovine serum) as a growth medium, but Mzansi is in discussion with companies that create growth factors from non-animal derived sources. The company will first focus on beef, using the biomass end product as an ingredient for ground meat. Eventually, the company will work on producing cultured whole cuts.

Representing the food and farming culture of Africa is important to Mzansi Meat Co., and the company will be extracting cells from indigenous cattle breeds. Recently, the start-up asked South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa if they could extract cells from his prize-winning Ankole cattle herd to produce sought-after beef cuts without any slaughter.

“Braai” means to barbeque or grill food over an open fire, and this type of social gathering is a huge part of African culture. More urbanized countries and areas in Africa, like South Africa, tend to gravitate towards eating more Western styles of meat analogs for braais, like sausages and burgers patties. Mzansi Meat Co. will first start out with these analogs, and then begin producing more traditionally African cuts of meat.

As the first cultured meat company in Africa, Mzansi Meat Co. does not seem to face local competition in this space. However, Thompson said that there are possibly one or two other cultured meat start-ups in South Africa (this is currently all the information we have). With Mzansi, we are starting to see more activity with alternative proteins in Africa. VeggieVictory is the first plant-based meat company in Nigeria, and earlier this year it raised an undisclosed pre-seed round (Bethencourt also invested in this company).

Mzansi Meat Co. is currently in its pilot production phase, and hopes to have its first products available to sample by the end of this year. By the second half of next year, the company aims to have its products on retail shelves.

UPDATE: This article originally stated that Mzansi Meat does not face competition in South Africa; according to Thompson there are one or two other cultured meat start-ups in the country.