Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Foodtech

Vertical Field Signs Agreement to Bring Controlled Ag to the UAE

Israel-based ag tech company Vertical Field announced today that it has signed an agreement with Emirates Smart Solutions & Technologies (ESST), which develops high-tech agricultural projects around the Persian Gulf, to pilot vertical farms in the United Arab Emirates. The first farm will be installed as part of a research, development, and training center in Umm Al Quwain. 

Vertical Field grows leafy greens vertically inside shipping containers that are equipped with technology like sensors that can monitor climate control, lighting, and irrigation levels inside the farm. Data on those elements and others can be fed back to the growers via Vertical Field’s proprietary app, which allows for remote monitoring and management of crops.

Many companies nowadays take a similar approach to controlled-environment agriculture these days, with Freight Farms, Thrive, and Brick Street Farms being a few notable examples. Where Vertical Field differs from these companies is its choice to use geoponics — soil-based growing — rather than the more common hydroponic method. Instead of plants growing in towers through which water is circulated, Vertical Field farms are made up of what the company calls “living walls” (see image above). The company claims this geoponic method means lower initial and operating costs as well as more crop variety.

Whether with geoponics or hydroponics, controlled ag is an obvious concept to try out in the Persian Gulf region, which endures high temperatures, sparse rainfall, high winds, and other extreme weather conditions around the year. These conditions limit the amount of traditional agriculture production that can happen, which makes controlled-environment container farming an attractive alternative. Another notable development in this part of the world is the Abu Dhabi Investment Office’s recent multimillion-dollar investment in a few agtech companies to innovate on the concept farming in this particular climate.

The Vertical Fields pilot project with ESST will be the first step towards full-scale deployment of the farms across the UAE. Through the partnership, the Vertical Field farm will run as a pilot project that will provide produce to both commercial establishments and the private sector. One of the goals of the project is to determine which crops are most suitable for the local market. 

Eventually, the partnership is expected to expand and include farm deployments around the rest of the Gulf states. 

UK Researchers Kickstart a New Project to Study and Fight At-Home Food Waste Behaviors

The United Kingdom has set up a national research project to study the impact of Covid-19 lockdowns on food waste and develop methods for helping consumers better manage that food waste. Researchers from the University of Leeds have teamed up with two environmental organizations — Zero Waste Scotland and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) — for the 18-month-long research project.

According to a press release, researchers will examine consumer behavior around food waste both during and after lockdown periods in the UK, and use those findings to develop new ways to help consumers fight food waste and change their behaviors in the home. The project has received £328,000 (~$448,000 USD) in funding, a sum that includes a £268,000 (~$366,000 USD) from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The project is “part of the UK Research and Innovation’s rapid response to Covid-19.”

Part of the project’s inspiration comes from earlier research by WRAP showing that self-reported levels of food waste in the UK fell by 34 percent during the country’s first Covid-19 lockdown. “While we understand some of this behaviour, we want to broaden our knowledge of why the changes came about, and how we can build on this to help people prevent more food going to waste in future,” Dr Gulbanu Kaptan, one of the individuals leading the new research project, said in a statement.

As is the case in the U.S., the bulk of food waste in Britain happens inside consumers’ own homes. Curbing it will come from a range of different approaches and solutions. Right now, some approaches include smarter storage systems a la Mimica, meal-planning tools like Kitche and Meal Hero, and fridge appliances that can track food inventory more precisely.

All of these methods have varying success rates. University of Leeds’ new project appears to be focused more on the consumer behavior aspect of food waste than on individual tech tools, however. 

For the new project, around 1,500 people across the UK will take part in a survey by relating details of how they choose, store, manage, and cook food. Roughly 30 people will take part in more detailed interviews and will also keep “diaries” of their household food waste.

MIT Research Opens Up Potential of Lab-Grown Plants

By now Spoon readers are most likely familiar with the idea of lab-grown meat. After all, there are a number of companies around the world tackling the issue. But lab-grown plants? That’s something we haven’t heard as much about. However, it’s an idea that got a little boost this week, thanks to new research from MIT (hat tip: TechCrunch).

MIT News reports today that researchers at that university grew wood-like plant structures in a lab from cells extracted from Zinnia leaves. The process is akin to the way meat is grown in a lab: starter plant cells were placed in a growth medium, and then engineers added different hormones and compounds to “tune” the final structure created.

While still very early on, the results from MIT and continued research could have a potential impact on agriculture and the way food is produced. Just as lab-grown meat looks to create actual meat without the environmental strains of raising animals, lab-grown plants could be raised anywhere at anytime, and require less land and fewer inputs.

This new research is actually coming out at a fortuitous time in the agriculture industry. Indoor farms, or controlled ag facilities, are popping up across the country, changing the way our produce is grown. For instance, the first tomatoes grown in AppHarvest’s 60-acre indoor farm in Kentucky hit store shelves this week. The facility is projected to grow 45 million pounds of tomatoes every year.

What if, instead of just controlling the growing conditions of a plant, they could also control the “manufacturing” of the plant as well, reducing the growth time, or developing different nutritional strains on the cellular level. Those controlled ag companies could truly “control” the entire process of growing food from the ground up.

That is still a ways off, but as we’ve seen with cultured meat, innovation in lab-grown food happens quickly.

Controlled Ag Company AppHarvest’s First-Ever Crop Arrives at Grocery Stores This Week

Controlled environment farming company AppHarvest announced this week it has completed the first-ever harvest of its Morehead, Kentucky-based flagship indoor farm. The Beefsteak tomatoes harvested from the 60-acre farm will ship to grocery stores this week.

The Morehead, Kentucky indoor farm clocks in at about 2.76 million square feet, and AppHarvest says the facility is expected to produce about 45 million pounds of tomatoes annually. The farm uses a mix of sensors, LEDs, and other technologies to grow tomatoes inside a completely controlled environment. Unique among controlled ag operations, AppHarvest also runs almost entirely off rainwater, an element that Eastern Kentucky has in abundance. 

In addition to the Morehead facility, the company is also finishing construction on two more Kentucky farms: another 60-acre farm outside of Richmond and a 15-acre one for growing leafy greens in Berea. AppHarvest said in a statement that it plans to construct more facilities across Kentucky and Central Appalachia, with the intent to be running 12 farms by 2025.

The focus on Appalachia is a crucial part of AppHarvest’s expansion strategy as it builds out its high-tech greenhouses. Thanks to the continued decline of the coal mining industry, the region’s economy has been hit hard, to put it lightly. AppHarvest’s growing presence in Appalachia has already created jobs and livelihoods for residents of surrounding communities. “What we’re able to do here and how quickly we’re able to move and how much communities want us to be here on the ground, you can’t put that in a pitch deck or capture it in financial means,” AppHarvest’s founder and CEO, Jonathan Webb, told me last year.

The Morehead facility is also within a day’s driving distance of 70 percent of the U.S. population, which means AppHarvest’s tomatoes, and whatever else the company plans to grow in future, will reach an extremely wide audience.

To start, the newly harvested Beefsteak tomatoes will be available at select locations of national grocery chains like Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Food City, and Meijer. Tomatoes will be available in the produce section of these stores, cobranded with produce company Sunset Grown. AppHarvest said the tomatoes would be “comparable in price to standard tomatoes.”

The milestone comes just as AppHarvest, which raised $28 million in August 2020, plans to go public via a merger with a SPAC called Novus Capital Corp. 

Here are the Kitchen Robots We Saw at CES & Food Tech Live 2021

One thing I miss most about heading to Vegas every January for CES is walking the basement of the Sands convention center. There, in the startup area known as Eureka Park, I’ll wander for hours and get lost amongst thousands of exhibitors in search of a few undiscovered food tech gems.

I usually find a few and, since we’re talking CES, they sometimes come in the form of a food robot.

From there, I usually head across the street to Treasure Island where The Spoon has its own product showcase during CES week called Food Tech Live, where I can also get my fill of food robots while also doing such things as eating a cookie with my face on it.

While both CES and Food Tech Live didn’t take place in person in Sin City this year, that doesn’t mean there weren’t some cool food robots to check out at their virtual versions last week. Below is our roundup of home food robots I found at virtual CES and The Spoon’s annual first-of-the-year product showcase, Food Tech Live.

Moley Robotic Kitchen

Since 2015, the Moley robotic kitchen has captured the imagination of the tech journalists and robotics industry with its robot chef concept that can that can prepare full meals from prep to cook to clean up with a pair of articulating robot arms.

And while we’ve yet to actually see the Moley cook a full meal from start to finish, the system’s inventor told The Spoon that it’s finally on sale and will find its first home in 2021. The company, which had a virtual booth at CES 2021 and debuted a bunch of new highlight videos, will sell both a home and pro version of its robotic kitchen. Prices for the fully robotic kitchen will be about $335 thousand.

The Moley Robotic Kitchen System at CES 2021

Oliver

Else Labs Oliver is a single-pot cooking robot that dispenses fresh ingredients and automates the cooking process with the help of temperature sensing and machine vision capabilities.

Else Labs, which went on sale via Indiegogo last fall, was on display at Food Tech Live last week. The product’s inventor and company CEO Khalid Aboujassoum says the major difference between Oliver and other guided cooking appliances on the market is Oliver pretty much handles the entire cooking process for you.

“The Oliver can do unattended stovetop cooking,” Aboujassoum told me last fall when the product went on sale.

Oliver, the smart cooking robot

iWonderCook

The iWonderCook is a automated cooking machine that cooks one-pot meals. The meals are provided in the form of the company’s own meal kit service, which the user orders through the device’s touchscreen. From there, as can be seen in the video below, the user inserts a bowl, embeds the food “cartridge”, and then adjusts the amount of oil and water needed.

I haven’t gotten a chance to see the iWondercook in action or taste the food, I will say is the product’s reliance on its own meal kits might be a turn-off for some users.

iWONDERCOOK robotic chef does the cooking for you.

Yo-Kai Express Takumi

Technically the new Yo-Kai Express Takumi home ramen machine is something closer to a Keurig for food than a food robot, it’s worth looking at this machine given the company’s smart vending roots.

The Takumi, which debuted at Food Tech Live last week, follows Yo-Kai’s move into the home market with its home delivery service. The Takumi takes the frozen ramen bowls, which are centrally produced in Yo-Kai’s California facilities, and steams and reconstitutes the ramen in just a few minutes.

The company has plans to not only to start selling ramen to users in the office and home, but on the go with an autonomous ramen delivery cart.

Day With Yo Kai Final

Samsung Bot Handy

Samsung announced a trio of home robots aimed at helping humans around the house. The one that was most interesting when it comes to lending a hand in the kitchen was Bot Handy, a mobile bot with large articulating hand that can help with anything from pouring a glass of wine to doing the dishes.

It’s worth noting that Samsung -- like many big consumer electronics brands -- has a history of showing off cool new product prototypes at CES that are more conceptual than anything close to actually coming to market, including last year’s they showed off a Moley-kitchen style robot system. Let’s hope the Bot Handy is something the company delivers on.

[CES 2021] Next Generation Robotics | Samsung

Julia

The Julia is another single-pot home cooking robot that allows the user to set it and forget it for pretty much an entire meal. The Julia is made by a Nymble, an Indian-based startup with plans to start selling the product in 2021. Nymble CEO Raghav Gupta showed off the product at Food Tech Live, told us that they are expanding their alpha trial program in the United States in February.

ColdSnap

Like the Takumi, the ColdSnap isn’t quite a full-fledged food robot, but something closer to a Bartesian style automated appliance that makes cold ice cream (as well as frozen margaritas and smoothies). While we weren’t able to get our hands on the ColdSnap, the company gave CNET a hands-on preview of the appliance and the editors were impressed. The appliance, which is going to a fairly spending $500-1,000, reminds me of the Wim fro-yo appliance that never made it to market after an acqui-hire of the founding by Walmart.

Impact Investor Norrsken Is Taking Applications for Its Food-Tech-Focused Accelerator Program

Stockholm, Sweden-based Norrsken Foundation announced this week it will launch an eight-week accelerator program this summer for startups, including those working in the food tech realm. 

The Norrsken Impact Accelerator will, as its name suggests, look for companies enacting positive change across all areas of sustainability that encompass the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. While Norskken says on the program’s website that it supports startups “across all verticals,” food tech is a particular focus this year. Norskken did not name exact areas of food tech, but given its alignment with the UN SDGs, it’s safe to assume the program is looking for companies that work in areas like health and wellness, food waste, food insecurity, alternative protein sources, and other areas with a sustainability angle. 

Companies should ideally be at early (pre-seed) stage. While geographically they can be based anywhere in the world, applicants should plan to relocate to Stockholm for the duration of the program if accepted. Norrsken will choose 20 companies from the pool of applicants to participate in the eight-week program, which begins on July 5, 2021. 

Chosen companies won’t follow a set curriculum. Rather, they will focus on the issues most pressing to their specific company’s journey, whether that’s product development, regulatory issues, marketing, or strategy. Mentorship is also a big part of Norrsken’s program. Companies participating will get access to a range of executive mentors from Oatly, Voi, Klarna, Wild Earth, and many others.

Participants will also receive a $100,0000 investment (with 5 percent equity) at the start of the program and a chance to pitch to potential investors via a demo day near the program’s end. 

Applications are open until February 28.

Ÿnsect Plans to Make Its Edible Mealworms Available for Human Consumption in Europe, the U.S.

From the locust to the Goliath Beetle, insects of many kinds are a regular part of people’s diets in many parts of the world, including Mexico, South Korea, Australia, and multiple African nations. In Western cultures, folks are far less excited about the prospect of eating bugs, though that is slowly changing. Just this week, the bugs-as-protein got another boost when Paris-based Ÿnsect announced it will enter the market for human food following a positive assessment of mealworms from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

Up to now, Ÿnsect has historically always farmed insects to use as fish and pet food as well as fertilizer. Specifically, the company focuses on Molitor larvae, also known as the mealworm. Mealworms are the larvae form of the darkling beetle, and this week, the EFSA officially declared them fit for human consumption “under the procedures required by the European Union regarding new food legislation,” according to Ÿnsect’s press release.

“This is a recognition that mealworm ingredients are premium products as they are uniquely ‘food grade’ compared to other insects used only in animal feed,” the company said.

For Ÿnsect, that means a move towards farming mealworms for human consumption, especially as part of sports and nutrition edibles. Before any food businesses in Europe can enter the market, it must first file a Novel Food application and get it approved. Ÿnsect said this week it has already done so, and also plans to file a GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) request in the U.S. “in the coming months.”

In Western countries, at least, there’s a well-documented “ick” factor when it comes to eating insects, Squirmy, slimy bits that they are, mealworms might require even more effort on the part of edible insect startups when it comes to helping consumers overcome their doubts. (We had our own heated discussion about mealworms last year on a weekly Spoon podcast.)

That said, our food has more insect parts than one might think, since it is “impossible” to completely remove all insects when harvesting and processing certain crops. Because of that, the USDA actually already permits a certain amount of insects or their parts in foods. In other words, Ÿnsect will in all likelihood receive GRAS for its mealworms once it files in the U.S.

In Europe, the company will compete with multiple others in bringing Molitor larvae to the masses. Notable among those is Sweden-based startup Tebrito, which raised €800,000 at the end of 2020 to scale up production of its nutrient-rich powder made from mealworms. And in Finland, EntoCube grows insects for human consumption. Outside Europe, Beobia has an at-home countertop device for growing mealworms in your own kitchen, should you so desire.

The EFSA’s recognition isn’t quite final: the favorable assessment has to be confirmed by European Commission’s Health Directorate General, which will give final market authorization for the European Union. 

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.

Air Protein Raises $32M to Make Meat From Air

Air Protein, a company using technology to make meat from elements in the air, announced today it has completed a $32 million Series A round of fundraising. The round was led by ADM Ventures, Barclays, and GV (formerly Google Ventures), according to a press announcement sent to The Spoon.

Air Protein’s approach to alternative meat is fairly unique at this point in the evolution of alt-protein. The company feeds elements found in the air, such as carbon dioxide, to microbes in a fermentation tank. The microbes ingest the air elements and output a healthy protein that then gets texturized and turned into various alt meat products. Though the company has not yet named specific types of meat it is developing, it does plan to create products it will sell directly to consumers (as opposed to selling to other food producers). 

Speaking on the phone this week, Air Protein’s CEO and cofounder Dr. Lisa Dyson told me the company’s technology is “very flexible” in terms of the types of meat it can produce. And since air protein, the concept, requires very few resources (e.g., land, water) to produce, it can be produced virtually anywhere in the world.  

To that end, San Francisco Bay Area-based Air Protein plans to use its new funds in part to launch an R&D lab that will help develop different types of alt-meats as well as scale production. On the phone, Dr. Dyson said the lab will allow her company to “produce and expand” its product line, and that the forthcoming R&D innovation lab will be key to that process. 

Air Protein will also use the new funds to recruit and build up its team of employees.

For now, at least, the company is focused on producing only meat alternatives. As Dr. Dyson explained, the traditional meat industry is one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet, as well as an industry that uses unsustainable amounts of resources like land and water. But demand for meat continues to rise, and with a global population moving steadily towards 10 billion people by 2050, the need for alternatives gets more urgent each year. “We need solutions and Air Protein is excited to be one of those solutions,” Dr. Dyson said. 

She was quick to applaud the efforts of other types of alternative meat production, including plant-based meat, and suggested that due to the sheer amount of demand globally for meat, opportunity exists now and will continue to for many different methods and companies. Air Protein’s high-tech, resource-light method for meat is one way to satiate the planet’s appetite for meat without incurring so heavy an environmental burden. 

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.

Aleph Farms’ Cultured Meat Coming to Japan Courtesy of Mitsubishi

Israel-based Aleph Farms announced today that its cultured meat is headed for the Japanese market, thanks to a new Memorandum of Understanding with Mitsubishi.

Through the new deal, Aleph Farms will provide its BioFarm platform to cultivate whole-muscle steaks, while Mitsubishi provides its expertise in biotechnology processes, branded food manufacturing and distribution throughout Japan.

In addition opening up a new market for Aleph Farms, today’s announcement is a nice bit of validation for the company’s BioFarm technology. Announced last November, Aleph says its BioFarm facility will allow it to scale the production of cull cultured cow meat affordably, bringing the price down to parity with factory farmed meat.

But Aleph will face some cell-cultured competition in Japan. Japanese company, Integriculture has its own lab meat technology and was awarded a grant by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry last year to build out a commercial cell ag facility.

While we’re only in January, the building blocks were put in place last year to make 2021 a breakout year for the technology. Last month, Eat Just made history by making the world’s first sale of cultured meat in Singapore. In Israel, Supermeat opened a test kitchen that offers cell-cultured chicken dishes in exchange for feedback from diners.

Aleph Farms even generated a bit of high-profile news itself last month when Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did a public tasting of the company’s steak.

Despite all the forward momentum, there are still a number of regulatory issues that need to be designed and implemented for this new technology. With cell cultured meat technology becoming more of a reality, expect a steady stream of announcements in the space throughout the year.