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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

alternative protein

NovoNutrients Raises $4.7M to Complete Its Pilot Program for Alt-Protein Made from CO2 Inputs

NovoNutrients, a company that creates protein from CO2 inputs, today announced a $4.7 million fundraise to complete its industrial pilot program that will capture CO2 emissions from from oil, gas, and cement-related plants.

The round was led by Happiness Capital, a Hong Kong-based venture firm that has previously invested in Redefine Meat, Ynsect, and Beyond Meat. E2JDJ and Marinya Capital also joined the round, which included re-ups from SOSV’s IndieBio and the Grantham Environmental Trust. Other investors include Stanford Graduate School of Business Impact Fund, Purple Orange Ventures, and Joyance Partners.

NovoNutrients feeds the CO2 inputs it collects to naturally occurring microbes via a fermentation process. The resulting proteins have a variety of uses, including as ingredients in meat analogues as well as animal feeds. NovoNutrients says its protein can improve the amino acid profile of food products.

That nutrition element will work in NovoNutrients favor as it continues to develop its air protein and looks to scale production. At the recent IFT FIRST event, panelists suggested that while a lot of the focus in meat analogues right now is on taste and texture, the nutritional profile of proteins will become more important to consumers moving forward.  

Actually getting a product to consumers is still a ways off for NovoNutrients, however. For the time being, the company is focused on showing its fermentation tech can work at scale. The company will co-locate its bioreactors (aka fermentation tanks) at industrial sites that produce high levels of greenhouse gases. 

The pilot project is focused on a 1,000-liter bioreactor. NovoNutrients says it will stand up a 20,000-liter industrial demo in the near future. 

NovoNutrients is one of a few companies now developing novel protein from CO2, hydrogen, and other air inputs. Others include Air Protein, Solar Foods, and Deep Branch. Last year, the European Space Agency started working with Solar Foods to develop the technology for use in space to feed astronauts.

NovoNutrients said today that its pilot project will allow the company to start raising Series A funding later this year.  

Plant-Based Cheese Company Nobell Foods Raises $75M

Plant-based cheesemaker Nobell Foods announced a $75 million Series B fundraise and launched out of stealth mode this week.

The round was led by investment group Breakthrough Energy Ventures and included participation from new investors Hillhouse Capital Group and Footprint Coalition. Existing investors AgFunder, Andreesen Horowitz, Mission Bay Capital, Fifty Years, New Crop Capital, Germin8 Ventures, former Muse frontman Matt Bellamy, and Pear VC also took part. Nobell has now raised $100 million in total, according to Fast Company, which was first to report the news.

Nobell will use the new funds to commercialize its first plant-based cheese products, including mozzarella, which the company makes from soybeans that are genetically edited to produce casein. Casein, a protein unique to milk, is a major contributor to the texture, taste, and melt-a-bility of cheese. It’s also an element most plant-based cheeses out there lack, which is why so many fall short of the mark when it comes to adequately mimicking the real thing. 

Nobell effectively trains soybeans to produce this casein. The company has been quietly developing this method for the last four years, and says it could wind up being cheaper than the costs of producing cheese using cow’s milk. 

Cheese comes with a heavy environmental footprint. As demand for dairy has increased, so too has the percentage of global emissions the sector produces. Cheese, in particular, is highly resource intensive. 

There are many, many plant-based cheese options out there. Most of them can’t replicate the taste, texture, and mouthfeel of dairy-based cheese yet, largely because they don’t contain the aforementioned casein.

However, Nobell isn’t quite the only company out there producing the protein from alternative sources, though it’s the only one using plants for the process. A company called New Culture uses genetically modified microbes like yeast to produce casein, training these microbes to make the protein. Alt-dairy company Perfect Day also uses genetically modified microbes. 

In a statement on the Nobell website, founder Magi Richani says that cheese is “the last frontier, the insurmountable thing” most consumers won’t get up. With Nobell, she aims to ensure these consumers don’t have to give it up and can still enjoy, stretchy, melty, tasty cheese without further compromising the health of the planet.  

Gathered Foods is Bringing Plant-Based Options to Long John Silver’s

Gathered Foods, the parent company of plant-based seafood brand Good Catch, is now supplying plant-based seafood products to select Long John Silver’s location. The new menu items launched today in five locations in California and Georgia.

Good Catch’s Crab-Free Cakes and Fish-Free Fillets are the two alternative products being featured at Long John Silver’s. The restaurant chain will incorporate these products into several new menu items, including the Plant-Based Platter, two meal options, and à la carte.

Good Catch uses a proprietary blend of six legumes to create its high-protein seafood alternatives. The plant-based fish fillets aim to mimic a flaky white fish and include a breaded coating. The plant-based crab cakes are also breaded and have a lump crabmeat-like texture. The crab cakes have 15 grams of protein per serving, while the fillets have 12 grams.

Gathered Foods is not the only company to bring its plant-based products to nationwide chains as of late. Beyond Meat recently launched its new plant-based chicken tenders products in around 400 restaurants nationwide. Impossible Foods has plans to unveil plant-based chicken nuggets this week, with the intention of launching the new product in restaurants this fall. Greenleaf Foods’ Field Roast brand partnered with Little Caesars to launch its alternative pepperoni (called “Planteroni”) in five U.S. markets last week. These partnerships signal that the demand for plant-based options is still going strong, and nationwide chains must respond.

Long John Silver’s will be serving up Good Catch’s plant-based seafood in Georgia cities of Newnan and Albany, and in California cities Bakersfield, Sacramento, and Clovis. The alternative seafood options will be available at the select locations until supplies last.

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.

Wicked Kitchen, UK Plant-Based Food Brand, Raises $14M Series A Round

Wicked Kitchen, a UK-based plant-based food and prepared meal brand, announced this week that has closed a Series A round of $14M. This is the company’s first public round and it was led by Unovis Asset Management and NRF Nove Foods.

Following this funding, Wicked Kitchen will soon expand into the U.S. with its plant-based offerings, and will build out its teams in London, Austin, and Minneapolis. Its current product lines are extensive, featuring everything from vegan desserts to alternative protein analogs. For the U.S. consumer, Wicked Kitchen will bring plant-based prepared frozen meals, ready-to-eat lunch and breakfast options, sauces, mayo, pesto, and meals kits to select retailers.

The founders of Wicked Kitchen are Chad and Derek Sarno, who are also chefs and co-founders of Good Catch, a plant-based seafood brand in the U.S. In 2018, the Sarnos collaborated with Tesco in the U.K. to launch Wicked Kitchen as a new plant-based range. Wicked Kitchen products are sold exclusively in Tesco, and has yet to be announced which retailers will carry the company’s products in the U.S.

In 2020, $2.1 billion was invested into plant-based companies, and they have continued to score a lot of funding this year. Large funding rounds like Wicked Kitchen’s recent round has allowed plant-based companies to expand into additional markets throughout the world. Singapore-based Next Gen Foods announced yesterday that it will be bringing its plant-based chicken brand TiNDLE to the U.S. following a $20 million extension of its seed round. Cultivated meat producer Aleph Farms raised $105 million earlier this month and shared it will use this funding to grow its operations internationally. Eat Just also shared that it plans to use its $200 million funding round that was closed this past March to expanding internationally.

Wicked Kitchen’s products are expected to roll out by the end of summer in the U.S., with a total of 20 products launching initially.

Schools Around The World Are Racing to Create Future Food Curriculum. Here’s Why it Matters.

Anyone familiar with the story of Silicon Valley knows just how fundamental the university system was in creating the center of the technology universe.

Colleges and universities have long served as launch pads for the world’s biggest tech companies, from the education of integrated circuit founding fathers William Shockely and Robert Noyce (at Caltech and MIT, respectively) to the creation of Yahoo! and Google by graduate students at Stanford, to Mark Zuckerberg hacking away at Hot or Not in his dorm at Harvard.

And now that food companies big and small are embracing new technologies to create alternative forms of meat, universities around the world are racing to create curriculum and innovation centers to create the food workforce of the future.

In the U.S., future food activity is popping up at schools from coast to coast, with notable efforts that include UC Berkeley’s Alt Meat Lab, a cellular agriculture course at Tufts, CRISPR courses at Harvard and ReThink Meat courses at Stanford.

But it’s not just American schools. Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University has created an alternative protein course called “Future Foods—Introduction to Advanced Meat Alternatives.” In Israel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem launched a pilot course titled “Cultivated Meat and Plant-Based Meat.” An introduction to cell-based meat is now available for postgraduates at the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil.

So what’s driving all this interest in future food in the halls of academia across the globe? According to long-time future food pioneer and lecturer Ron Shigeta, one of the main forces is advocacy organizations.

Groups like the Good Food Institute “are leveraging money from ethical vegans and others interested in animal welfare,” Shigeta told me. “They are offering incentives to schools and programs, as well as driving the economic incentives by helping grants come through. This is happening in Davis, CA, Singapore and elsewhere.”

Amy Huang, who heads up the Good Food Institute’s efforts to encourage the academic community to embrace alternative protein education, says the reason we’re now seeing alt-protein education flourish around the world is simple: a fast-growing industry needs good people.

“People are the very backbone of our quest to reimagine the protein supply,” said Huang via email. “So, it’s essential that we equip students and industry professionals with a deeper, stronger foundation of specialized knowledge they’ll need to join the alternative protein sector.”

According to Huang, higher education institutions want to prepare students for what promises to be a potentially massive shift by helping them understand the enabling technologies and systems underpinning these changes.

“These courses are being driven by forward-thinking faculty and university administrators who are challenging the educational status quo and asking themselves: What emerging technologies have true disruptive potential? How can we equip our students with the skills they need to be leaders in these fields?”

And it almost goes without saying that by preparing their students with programs about disruptive new alt-meat technologies, these institutions are setting a foundation for their own future success.

“By prioritizing innovation over convention, they’re positioning their institutions as the centers of gravity for students seeking a groundbreaking education,” said Huang. “And they’re also establishing their regions as potential hubs for the explosion of entrepreneurial activity and economic growth that the alternative protein industry will bring.”

And it’s not just the schools who are driving change. Students, many of whom have value systems that align with a move away from industrial animal agriculture, are asking for classes and sometimes even creating their own.

This is something both Shigeta and Huang agree on.

Shigeta noted that, “Millennial and GenZ students (sometimes vegan) are much more focused on climate change, looking for socially positive ways to make changes they believe in. With the students advocating for movement from within, the doors are opening for sure.”

Huang believes the students themselves are perhaps “are perhaps the most powerful changemakers within academic ecosystems.” She adds that, “We see this playing out through The Alt Protein Project, like at Wageningen, Stanford, and UNC Chapel Hill, with students advocating for and successfully launching courses at universities around the world.”

The Alt Protein Project is the Good Food Institute’s own program to develop and encourage alt-protein education within the world of academia. The program has five objectives: building courses and majors, expanding open-access research, stimulating entrepreneurship, building awareness, and creating an inclusive and interdisciplinary community.

One example of this student-led change helped by GFI is at the Netherland’s Wageningen University. A group of five students wondered why there wasn’t a class in protein transition. To create one, the group, under the name of The Wageningen Alternative Protein Project, worked with the Good Food Institute on a student-led effort to build up both a community interested in this area as well as a group of teachers willing to lead such courses. The effort paid off, as teachers within the food science department have indicated they plan to teach the course the students proposed next year.

All this progress is exciting, but in many ways it’s still early days. Wageningen, after all, is widely recognized as the world’s top university in agriculture education and the school is just now getting around to creating a class on protein transition. UC Davis, one of the US’s leading ag research universities, created its Cultivated Meat Consortium in 2019 is just now launching the second phase of its formal cultured meat programming and research.

But according to Huang, what is early today in terms of future food education could become commonplace in a few years as colleges look to build a workforce and create a foundation for the world of alt protein.

“In five years, we hope to see alternative protein courses at every major university around the world,” said Huang. “The educators and institutions that begin cultivating these kinds of educational pathways today will hold the attention of alternative protein startups and companies as they expand their teams, build infrastructure, and establish industrial centers.”

Let’s hope she’s right. Just as the rise in computer science curriculum has helped fuel growth and an explosion in huge societal shifts (both good and bad) over the past century, we’re gonna need some serious creativity to help us manage and expand our food systems over the next 100 years. The pandemic exposed our food supply chains’ fragility and opacity while also illustrating how our continued over-reliance on industrial animal agriculture is not sustainable.

In other words, we’re gonna need lots of smart people to help us feed 10 billion people, and much of that will start with an education system that creates a qualified future food workforce.

Editor Note: This post originally said the alt-protein transition efforts at Wageningen University were started by one student. This has been changed to reflect the efforts of all the students involved.

Air Protein, GOOD Meat, IntegriCulture Among the Semifinalists for XPRIZE’s Alt-Protein Competition

Nonprofit XPRIZE has announced 28 semifinalists teams that will move forward in the Feed the Next Billion competition. The multi-year competition will support companies developing compelling chicken and fish alternatives that replicate or outperform the real thing in terms of nutrition, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, and taste and texture. 

The competition, first announced at the end of 2020, is being conducted in partnership with ASPIRE, the project management arm of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). Grand-prize winners will not be chosen until 2024. when multiple winners will collectively receive $15 million.

For now, the 28 finalists chosen to continue the competition will have the next year to work with the competition, ASPIRE, and The Tony Robbins Foundation to develop the first iterations of their products. Up to 10 finalist teams will be chosen towards the end of 2022 and will split a “milestone award” of $2.5 million. 

Those 10 finalists will have one last round of competition where they will need to create “at least twenty-five cuts of structured chicken breast or fish fillet analogs of 115 gram or four ounce that replicate the sensory properties, versatility, and nutritional profile of conventional chicken or fish.” One grand prize winner will receive $7 million, with second- and third-place winners getting $2 million and $1 million, respectively.

The 28 finalists chosen this week represent all three pillars of alternative protein: plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation. Some of these companies are better known than others. Eat Just’s GOOD Meat, for example, is the only company in the world that has regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat (in Singapore). MeatOurFuture, on the other hand, is a public-private partnership that is known primarily in South Africa at this point. Others, including plant-based seafood company Brew51 from India, Japan’s IntegriCulture, and Air Protein, are all at various stages of development in terms of their products.

You can read the full list of companies, which span 14 different countries, here.

XPRIZE’s Feed the Next Billion competition was developed in response to the organization’s Future of Food Impact Roadmap, where the organization pinpointed 12 “breakthrough opportunities” that could help build a better food system. Alt-protein is a major area.

No one company developing alternative proteins has yet proven their technology and/or ingredients can feed the next billion. There remain many, many questions around the nutrition of products, the cost of making them, and, for some, whether or not they can ever really be produced at that scale. XPRIZE’s competition will no doubt go some ways towards answering those questions over the next few years.  

Report: Nestlé Is Getting Into Cultivated Meat Through Deal With Israel’s Future Meat

CPG giant Nestlé intends to enter the cultured meat market via a partnership with Israel-based alt-protein company Future Meat, according to a report from Bloomberg. 

Unnamed sources familiar with the matter said Nestlé is working on various products that mix its own plant-based proteins with cultivated meat from Future Meat. 

More granular details on the deal, such as specific products are not available at this time. Future Meat recently opened what it says is the world’s first production facility for cultured meat. The plant, located in Future Meat’s hometown of Rehovot, Israel, can produce 500 kilograms of cultured meat per day, or the equivalent to about 5,000 hamburgers, according to the company. The new facility is currently processing cultured chicken, pork, and lamb. Beef production is also in the works.

Future Meat’s end products will be a combination of cultivated and plant-based protein, which is exactly what Nestlé is aiming for in its deal with the company. Future Meat told the Spoon recently that its products are currently 45 to 75 percent cultured meat, with an edible scaffold made of plant protein.

Earlier this year, Future Meat told The Spoon it has been able to decrease the cost of cultured meat production by 1,000x over the last three years. At last check, the company had brought the cost of its cultured chicken breast down to $7.50 USD per quarter-pound serving. It followed that up with news that the production price could drop to $2 within the next 12 to 18 months.

Actual product launches for both Future Meat and Nestlé are contingent on the companies getting regulatory approvals. Currently, Future Meat is working to get regulatory approval here in the U.S., with the goal of selling its products in foodservice venues next year. A partnership with a major CPG like Nestlé may boost the company’s ambitions in this area.

Aleph Farms Raises $105M in Series B Funding

Cultivated meat company Aleph Farms announced today it has completed a $105 million Series B round of funding, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $118 million. The Series B round was led by L Catterton and DisruptAD with participation from Skyviews Life Science, Thai Union, BRF, and CJ CheilJedang. Existing investors VisVires New Protein, Strauss Group, Cargill, Peregrine Ventures, and CPT Capital also participated in the round.

Israel-based Aleph Farms said the new funds will go towards increasing manufacturing, growing operations internationally, and expanding product lines. Currently, the company is developing a cultivated beef steak and will unveil a prototype for that product in November at the Agri-Food Innovation Summit. 

There is of course an enormous difference between unveiling a prototype and making these whole-muscle cuts of cultivated meat at scale. One of the challenges for cultivated meat companies is being able to produce large quantities of product at a cost that is on par with traditional meat. Aleph Farms launched a new production process at the end of 2020 that will eventually be able to reach that price parity, according to the company.

The process is the first part of a phased build-out for Aleph’s forthcoming pilot production facility, which the company says will be operational by 2022. Aleph Farms also plans to do an initial market launch at that time. The Series B funding will, in bigger-picture terms, go towards helping the company realize that goal. 

Aleph’s announcement today follows recent news from other cultivated meat companies that are also opening pilot production facilities and also aiming for commercial launches in 2022. That includes MeaTech 3D, also based in Israel and also developing whole cuts of cultivated meat. Another Israeli company, Future Meat, has already opened its facility and says it plans to sell cultivated meat in the U.S. by 2022.

Before anyone sells anything, however, these companies must get regulatory approval for each market they want to enter. So far, just one company, Eat Just, has regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat, and that’s only in Singapore. Along with price parity, getting regulatory approval is a major topic in the cultivated meat conversation these days. 

Aleph Farms says it is working with regulatory agencies, though the company did not specify for which markets. Part of the company’s international expansion will be to the United Arab Emirates and the wider Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Aleph said it is also evaluating the possibility of a manufacturing facility located in the UAE.

Meati Raises $50M Series B for Mycelium-Based Meat Alternatives

Colorado-based Meati produces whole cuts of meat alternative analogs from mycelium, and today the start-up announced that it has raised $50 million in its series B round (news from Forbes). The round was led by Acre Venture Partners and BOND, with participation from Prelude Ventures, Congruent Ventures, and Tao Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $109.1 million.

Meati uses fermentation to produce its alternative protein products, a technique that the Good Food Institute calls the third pillar of alternative protein. The company has so far introduced two products, a whole cut alternative steak and chicken breast. The mycelium steak was piloted at a restaurant in Boulder, Colorado last year, and the chicken alternative was only offered to select consumers that applied to taste test it. Through the versatility of mycelium, it is likely that Meati will be able to create a wide variety of alternative protein analogs.

This most recent round of capital will be used to develop an 80,000 square foot production plant in preparation for the startup’s commercial launch. According to the Forbes article, Meati’s goal is to be able to produce enough of its alternative protein in its new facility that would be the equivalent of 4,500 cows in a single day.

The Good Food Institute reported that approximately $1 billion has been invested into companies using fermentation to develop alternative protein. That being said, Meati faces a few competitors in this space. AtLast had an impressive funding round earlier this year ($40M), and is currently developing new alternative protein analogs alongside its existing bacon product. Prime Roots uses fermentation and fungi to craft various protein alternatives, including bacon, chicken, lobster, and beef. Focusing on the B2B realm, Mushlabs also ferments mycelium to create alternative proteins products.

Meati has stated that the commercial launch of its first product will be sometime in 2022. According to an article published on Techcrunch, the first commercial product will likely be a mycelium-based jerky.

Report: Eat Just Aiming for $3B IPO in 2021

Eat Just is reportedly targeting Q4 2021 or early 2022 for its IPO, which currently has a valuation of $3 billion, according to an Eat Just investor. Forbes was first to break the news after one of its contributors spoke to an anonymous investor in the company.

To date, Eat Just has raised $440 million, with its most recent fundraise being a $200 million round led by Qatar Investment Authority earlier this year.

Eat Just is best known right now for its plant-based egg products, which are available in the U.S. through grocery retailers as well as at restaurants. The company has also steadily built a significant international presence over the last few years, too. Notably, that includes teaming up with China-based QSR chain Discos to replace traditional eggs on the latter’s menu and expanding across Canada in March of this year.

Of late, however, Eat Just has grabbed the most headlines for its cultivated meat business, GOOD, which won the world’s first regulatory approval to sell cultured meat this past December in Singapore. The company has since sold its GOOD cultured chicken bites on the regular at restaurants in the city-state and even partnered with Delivery Hero subsidiary Foodpanda to deliver them.

GOOD raised its own $170 million in May of this year. At the time, Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick hinted to The Spoon that regulatory approval in the U.S. was on its way for the company. In its report today, Forbes name-dropped China as another potential country that could next grant regulatory approval to sell cultured meat.

Whether the company will go public before achieving these regulatory milestones or after is not clear at this time.

Future Meat Opens Production Facility, Aims to Sell Cultured Meat in the US by 2022

Future Meat has officially opened what it says is the world’s first production facility for cultured meat. The plant, located in the company’s hometown of Rehovot, Israel, is a big step in accelerating Future Meat’s timeline for getting regulatory approval to sell cultured meat and then actually getting products onto consumers’ plates.

Future Meat says the plant can produce 500 kilograms of cultured meat per day, which is equivalent to roughly 5,000 hamburgers. Those numbers may pale in comparison to traditional meat (this McDonald’s factory produces 5 million burgers every day), but for the extremely nascent cultured meat industry, they make for significant progress. 

Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, founder and chief scientific officer of Future Meat Technologies, told The Spoon that the new facility is currently processing cultured chicken, pork, and lamb. Beef production will arrive soon. The company’s first official products to come out of the facility will be a cultured chicken breast, chicken fingers, and hamburgers. 

Earlier this year, Future Meat told The Spoon it has been able to decrease the cost of cultured meat production by 1,000x over the last three years. At last check, the company had brought the cost of its cultured chicken breast down to $7.50 USD per quarter-pound serving. It followed that up with news that the production price could drop to $2 within the next 12 to 18 months.

Future Meat’s end products will be a combination of cell-cultured and plant-based protein. Nahmias said that his company’s products are 45 to 75 percent cultured meat, with an edible scaffold made of plant protein. Cell-based protein will replace plant-based elements in future generations of product as the cost of cultured meat continues to decrease.

No technologies out there, he said, use 100 percent cultured meat. “Meat is composed of cells and a three-dimensional protein scaffold that holds the cells together. Companies are either adding the edible scaffold to the cells or adding the cells to the edible scaffold. It is pretty much the same.”

Importantly, Future Meat has also developed a serum-free growth medium for feeding cells. This allows the company to avoid using the controversial fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is both expensive and ethically controversial. According to Nahmias, Future Meat’s medium is made up of a mixture of amino acids, oils, glucose, and naturally occurring hormones. “Removing serum is a critics step in market realization of cultured meat,” he said. “Companies that fail to do that require the slaughter of dozens of calves to grow a single hamburger.” The company’s chicken, lamb, and pork cells are currently growing “in scale” without serum at the production facility.

Future Meat may be the first to open the doors on a production facility for cultured meat, but others won’t be long in coming. Bioprinting startup MeaTech 3D, also based in Israel, says it will have a production facility operational by 2022. San Francisco, California-based Wildtype also opened a production facility this week, though it is focused solely on cultured seafood at the moment and is therefore not a direct competitor to Future Meat. 

Down the line, Future Meat would like to open another production facility, ideally in the United States. For now, Future Meat is working to get regulatory approval here in the U.S., with the goal of selling its products in foodservice venues next year.