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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

alternative protein

Alternative Meat Start-up Hooray Foods Raises $2M in Seed Round

Plant-based meat company Hooray Foods announced today that it has raised $2 million for its seed round, bringing the company’s total funding to date around $4 million. This round was led by Evolution VC Partners, and also saw participation from Gaingels and Sand Hill Angels.

Hooray Foods’ only product at the moment is plant-based bacon, which is made from a combination of coconut oil, rice flour, tapioca starch, liquid smoke, umami seasoning, maple syrup, salt, and beet juice concentrate. The fat content of the bacon is 20 percent due to Hooray Foods’ encapsulation process, which can help provide a juicer texture to alternative meat products by emulating the richness and fatty texture of real bacon and other meats.

This new capital will be put towards developing additional alternative meat products, as well as improving its existing alternative bacon. The company will also scale its production capacity to expand its products into retail and grocery chains throughout the country.

Ethics, environmental concerns, or health risks are a few reasons someone might have the desire to drop bacon and replace it with a plant-based alternative. Bacon is a processed meat that contains nitrates which have been shown to increase one’s risk of certain cancers and diabetes. Pork has higher carbon emissions compared to plant-based ingredients, and pigs may live in unsanitary and unethical conditions.

Prime Roots is another startup that makes plant-based bacon, but uses mycelium as its main ingredient. I recently tried Prime Root’s new bacon flavors (maple, black pepper, and sriracha) and can attest that it is delicious. THIS, based in the UK, makes plant-based bacon (as well as other meat alternatives) from pea protein and soy.

Last year in November, Hooray Foods launched in 300 Whole Foods across the U.S., and continues to expand to more locations. In addition to Whole Foods, the company’s plant-based bacon can be found in some independent retailers, vegan markets, and small cafes in San Francisco.

Chile’s NotCo Nabs Investment From Danny Meyer-Affiliated Growth Equity Fund

Alternative protein company NotCo announced this week it has received an investment from from Enlightened Hospitality Investments (EHI), a growth equity fund affiliated with Union Square Hospitality’s Danny Meyer. Financial terms of the investment have not been disclosed at this time, though the company says it has raised “more than $130 million to date” and intends to get to a $1 billion valuation by the end of 2021.  

Chile-based NoCo says the investment will help it further expand in the U.S. and launch new products in the Latin America market. Currently, NotCo sells its pea protein-based milk alternative to U.S. consumers at Whole Foods stores and through online retailers Veji and Imperfect Foods. In Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, the company also has burger, mayonnaise, and ice cream alternatives. 

NotCo puts special emphasis on Giuseppe, the AI platform powering the company’s products. Giuseppe sifts through huge datasets (for example, from the USDA’s National Agricultural Library), to find ingredient and processing combinations that would best mimic the elements (flavor, texture, etc.) of real meat or dairy in plant-based alternatives. The goal is to eventually find flavor and ingredient combinations that can exactly mimic a burger, slice of cheese, or glass of milk.

A handful of other companies also use AI-based methods to create meat and dairy alternatives, from Climax’s cheese to Spoonshot’s platform that identifies novel flavor combinations.   

The EHI involvement will, says NotCo, expand into the U.S. foodservice market. In Latin America, the company already has existing partnerships with Papa John’s and Burger King.

A Spanish Dairy Company Has Launched a Startup Incubator to Help Cultured Milk Companies

Pascual Innoventures, the open innovation arm of Spanish dairy company Calidad Pascual, has launched what it says is the world’s first incubator program for cellular agriculture in the dairy industry. Dubbed Mylkubator, the program will select and work with startups hoping to change the dairy industry through the development of alternative proteins. 

The program, which is supported by investment network Eatable Adventures and technology partner CNTA, will choose up to 10 startups to join the six-month hybrid program. Either in-person or virtually (or both), companies will work with mentors and get access to Pascual’s R&D facilities to develop and test their products. 

On a high level, cultured milk is created by growing mammary gland cells in an external environment (like a bioreactor) that mimics the one found inside mammals (like a cow). Micronutrients get converted into milk, which can then be harvested and purified. The process requires expertise in a number of different areas, from cell-growth media to machine learning modules that can optimize the production process. Different types of milk, including cow’s milk and human breastmilk, can be made from this process.

To that end, novel growth media, cell-growth techniques, and improvement of cell lines are among the topics the program says it is looking to find companies. And in addition to cellular ag, startups working with fermentation-based solutions or developing applied technologies like machine learning and biorecators are also welcome to apply. 

In the realm of alternative protein, the number of well-known companies currently developing milk analogues via cellular agriculture is still pretty small, particularly in comparison to the glut of cell-based meat makers. Turtle Tree Labs and Biomilq are the most well-known companies at this point.

On the other hand, companies like Perfect Day and ReMilk make milk analogues via fermentation, a process now seen as the third-pillar of alternative protein.  

Startups working with both methods are invited to apply for Mylkubator’s program. Those chosen will get a chance to prototype, test and scale their products, in addition to meeting with mentors and potential investors. The application process is open now.

Daring Secures $40M in Series B Round for Plant-Based Chicken

Daring, which makes realistic plant-based chicken analogues, this week announced a $40 million Series B funding round. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, D1 Capital Partners led this round, with participation from Maveron, Palm Tree Crew, and the Canadian rapper Drake.

Daring said it will use this most recent funding round to triple the size of its team. Additionally, the company will grow its presence in foodservice and retail channels, as well as focus on product development.

The main ingredients in Daring’s alternative chicken pieces are quite simple: water, soy protein concentrate, and a variety of spices and herbs depending on the flavor. Due to the use of soy, the product boasts 13 grams of protein in one serving. Currently, Daring chicken pieces come in four flavors: lemon & herb, cajun, breaded, and original.

The U.S. is the largest producer of poultry and the second-largest exporter of poultry in the world. Americans also consume more poultry than beef, pork, and other meats. But with veganism continuously on the rise in the U.S., there will be an increasing demand for plant-based chicken products.

Several other startups in the U.S. are focused on crafting plant-based chicken products. Nowadays, a newer start-up, recently raised $2 million in a pre-seed round of funding for its plant-based chicken nuggets. Nuggs also makes chicken nuggets, but announced last year it would also focus on creating alternative hot dogs. Rebellyous originally began with its only product being chicken nuggets, but has expanded its product line to include alternative chicken patties and tenders. Besides these startups, there are also large players like Gardein and Quorn that offer a variety of alternative chicken products.

Towards the end of last year, Daring raised $8 million in its Series A round, and used this capital to expand to 1,000 more retailers in the U.S., including Sprouts, Costco, Wegmans, and Kroger. Online, Daring’s products can be purchased on its website and via Imperfect Foods. The company plans on expanding to more retailers in the upcoming months.

Eat Just’s GOOD Meat Raises $170M, Brings Its Cultivated Meat to More Restaurants

Eat Just announced today that its GOOD Meat division has raised $170 million in new funding. The round included UBS O’Connor, Graphene Ventures, K3 Ventures, and others, and officially makes GOOD a subsidiary of Eat Just.

The company said today it plans to use the new funds to increase capacity of GOOD’s cultured meat production in addition to furthering research and development. 

Eat Just became the world’s first company to receive regulatory approval to sell cultured meat in December of 2020 in Singapore. It quickly followed that up with the actual sale of GOOD meat at the 1880 restaurant in the city-state. Since then, 1880 customers have continued to order GOOD’s cultivated chicken product at the restaurant, and can now even get it for delivery via foodpanda.  

With the new funds, Eat Just will expand the availability of GOOD’s cultivated meat from that single restaurant to another, the JW Marriott Singapore South Beach’s Madame Fan. Notably, the JW Marriott location has said it will outright replace its conventional chicken with GOOD’s cultivated version at certain times of the day. To start, GOOD meat will replace conventional chicken for delivery items ordered on Thursdays, starting May 20. GOOD will be available “for once-a-week dine-in starting soon.”

Eat Just CEO and founder Josh Tetrick has said before that he sees a world in which “restaurants remove conventional meat from their menu[s].” Eat Just’s plant-based egg products have already fully replaced their traditional counterparts at some restaurant chains, and more restaurants around the world are now exploring alternative protein as a regular staple on the menu.

For cultivated meat, the march into restaurants won’t happen overnight. Eat Just remains the only company in the world that can currently sell cultivated meat, and Singapore is still the only place in which the company can do that. However, other countries and companies are already in the process of granting and getting regulatory approval, which means in the next year or so, we’ll see more restaurant menus around the world debuting cultivated meat products.

Mosa Meat Achieves an ‘Over 65x Reduction’ in Costs for Its Cultured Fat

Dutch cultured protein company Mosa Meat said over the weekend it has reduced the cost of its fat media by 66 times thanks to the work of a group the company refers to as its Fat Team. Without listing actual price numbers, Mosa Meat said its fat medium now costs 1.52 percent of what it did less than two years ago, in September of 2019.

In the cultivated meat-making process, the nutrient-rich growth medium fed to cells triggers those cells to grow into muscle, fat, and tissue, all of which are put together to create a final end product. A company might grow fat cells for use in its own meat analogues, or it could sell the fat as an ingredient to other businesses. Fat is also a crucial component in achieving a “meatier” taste, texture, and mouthfeel when it comes to cultured protein.  

Mosa Meat, of course, is well known as the company that created the world’s first cultivated hamburger back in 2013 — for a cool $325,000. A huge part of this cost was (and still is for many) the growth medium, which at the time was made using fetal bovine serum (FBS). FBS is as expensive as it is controversial. As the Good Food Institute puts it, “The use of animal-derived components in cultivated meat production has prohibitive economic, food safety, and ethical constraints.”

In July of last year, Mosa Meat said it had achieved a more than 80x cost reduction for its growth media, a milestone largely driven by the company’s ability to develop FBS-free media. The company now uses an “animal component free” media that is part of the reason the Fat Team was able to announce its own cost reductions recently.

“We’ve definitely checked yet another box on our journey towards a product that meets the expectations of critical meat lovers,” company cofounder Peter Verstrate said in this weekend’s announcement. 

Mosa Meat’s announcement comes not long after MeaTech 3D, an Israeli company, said it would produce cultivated fat at a new pilot production facility. Additionally, last month Mission Barns raised $24 million to build up a production facility in San Francisco for its cultivated fat business. Meanwhile, multiple companies, from Avant Meats to Future Meat, have announced price slashes in production costs over the last several months.

Lowering costs, whether of fat, medium, or other components, will help the entire cultured meat industry get products closer to price parity with their traditional counterparts. Price parity is only of many other milestones that have to be achieved in order to make cultivated meat a commercial reality. However, it is seen by many as an extremely crucial step in the process. 

Mosa Meat doesn’t yet have a timeframe for when it might have burgers in front of customers, or how much they’ll cost once that happens. At last check, the company was working with European regulators to get approval for its products. 

Full English: Ivy Farm Aims to Launch Cell-Based Sausages by 2023

Add Ivy Farm Technologies to the growing number of startups around the world creating cell-based meat. Ivy Farm announced itself at the end of last week, saying it plans to produce cultured sausages for markets and restaurants by 2023.

U.K.-based Ivy Farm Technologies is a spin-off from Oxford University, where co-founders Dr. Russ Tucker and Professor Cathy Ye met at the school’s Department of Engineering Science. Oxford provided the source of Ivy Farm’s key technology as well as seed funding through the University Challenge Seed Fund.

Like most cell-based meat companies, Ivy Farm uses a small number of cells taken from an animal and places those cells in a bioreactor, where they are grown and multiplied into meat. According to a press announcement sent to The Spoon, Ivy Farm says its technology is a “game changer” because of “a unique ‘scaffold’ system where the cells grow.” UPDATE: In an email Ivy Farm said that it’s approach to scaffolding involves creating a special surface that allows for the “continuous harvest” of cells (there’s no need to stop the system), at a lower cost vs. other technologies. Oxford owns the technology and has licensed it out to Ivy Farm.

The company wasn’t more specific about its scaffold technology (we reached out to them for more informationSee Update above), but focusing on different scaffolding techniques certainly isn’t unique for an alternative protein startup. Matrix Meats, Ecovative, and NovaMeat all tout different solutions to scaffolding alternative meats.

Ivy Farm’s goal of selling its cultured meat in stores and restaurants by 2023 is certainly ambitious seeing as the only country to approve the sale of cultured meat so far has been Singapore. Additionally, Ivy Farm is only now kicking off its fundraising, with the goal of raising raising £16m (~$22.5M USD) to create an R&D facility. That’s a lot to accomplish in less than two years.

Ivy Farm isn’t the only cell-based meat startup in the U.K. to get funding this year, or the only startup to be spun out of a university there. CellulaREvolution, which raised £1 million (~$1.37M USD at the time) in February, was borne out of research done at Newcastle University. CellulaREvolution has developed a synthetic peptide coating and smaller footprint bioreactor.

We are all for more startups developing cell-based meat, especially ones with big ambitious goals. Ivy Farms is certainly ambitious, now we’ll have to see if its technology can match its claims.

A Mid-Year Assessment for Alternative Protein

More companies, more investments, and many more scientific breakthroughs. Those are just a few predictions for the future of alternative protein the Good Food Institute (GFI) sets out in its latest State of Industry reports. Three different papers — one each on plant-based protein, fermentation, and cultivated protein — go in-depth into the trends that drove alternative protein in 2020 and what we can expect for the rest of 2021.

As we’ve written before, investment in alternative protein topped $3.1 billion in 2020, which is more than three times the amount raised by the sector in 2019. Driving those investments are, says GFI, numerous developments across the commercial landscape, investments, scientific and technological developments, and regulatory and government activity.

The State of Industry reports cover the obvious developments, such as the world’s first sale of cultivated meat and plant-based meat’s $7 billion in retail sales. But more interesting now is what we can expect in the future — that is, for the remainder of 2021 and on into the next few years. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some of those developments:

Expect lots more pilot production environments for cultivated meat. Reaching pilot scale could be seen as the step that bridges a company’s proof-of-concept phase with its commercial phase. GFI notes that at this stage, companies would be producing “hundreds or thousands” of metric tons of cultured meat. (Millions would be required for a company to scale to an industrial level.) Reaching pilot scale would mean being able to supply “a limited number of high-end restaurants in the coming one to three years.” (Read more on why restaurants are critical to cultivated meat’s growth.)

As GFI points out, multiple companies are now transitioning into this pilot-scale phase, including BlueNalu, MosaMeat, and SuperMeat. The latter even turned its pilot production site (pictured above) into a restaurant where consumers can taste the company’s cultured chicken in exchange for leaving detailed feedback. Elsewhere, Aleph Farms and MeaTech 3D plan to have facilities running by 2022 and Avant Meats recently announced a pilot production facility for Singapore. UPSIDE Foods, formerly Memphis Meats, has also just broken ground on a facility.

Cellular agriculture will become its own field of study. One PhD candidate at Tufts University noted that we can expect cell ag to get its own degree program at universities, and have a “separate and distinct curriculum.”

Fermentation production will increase. “If we believe in the projection of 25%-30% CAGR, then for fermentation to even maintain its share of the market, there is a need for a 10x+ increase in capacity by 2030,” Jim Laird of 3F Bio states in GFI’s fermentation report. Of course, needing to increase and actually doing it are two different things, but one of the advantages of fermentation is that it is already seen as a ost-competitive, scalable, and validated process. Many, including the GFI, have begun calling it the “third pillar of alt protein.”

Meanwhile, a number of companies, including Solar Biotech, MycoTechnology, and Nature’s Fynd are developing technologies and processes that will make fermentation even more cost-effective, which could in turn increase companies’ ability to produce.

Fermentation could “revolutionize” the entire alt-protein landscape. It has the potential to influence other areas of alternative protein. As GFI’s report notes, “Fermentation can enable a new generation of proteins, fats, and other functional ingredients that combine with plant-based and cultivated components to create biomimicking whole-cut meats, egg replacements, animal-free dairy proteins, seafood products, and more.” 

Along those lines, the next few years could see hybrid blends of meat, where fermentation-derived protein could also include plant and animal cell components. Fermentation is also already part of a number of other “alt” products besides meat, including cheese and bee honey.

More restaurants will go plant-based. We’ve been mulling the future of the plant-based restaurant for a while. Now that the world is beginning to come out of its various stages of lockdown and people are returning to dining rooms, there’s an enormous opportunity for plant-based foods to take center stage at restaurants. More restaurants will move to full plant-based menus, such as those seen from Canada-based Copper Branch and, most recently, Eleven Madison Park in NYC.

Plant-based chicken will be a big part of this shift. Right now there’s a distinct lack of choices, both in restaurants and grocery stores, when it comes to poultry. Expect this to change rapidly, starting with restaurants. 

This is by no means an exhaustive list. It is also important to keep in mind the many challenges the alt-protein sector still has to face, from improving the taste and texture of plant-based meat to bringing down the cost of cell-culture media. There are also heaps of regulatory approvals to be obtained before many of these companies and solutions can actually reach consumers.

Some of these challenges will be solved in 2021; others are years away from solutions. But if there’s one overarching takeaway we can glean from GFI’s report trio, it’s that everything — from number of companies to production levels to investment dollars — is going to increase astronomically this year for alternative protein.

More Headlines

MeaTech 3D Will Produce Cultivated Fat, Whole Steaks at Its Forthcoming Pilot Facility – The Israeli bioprinting startup this week announced a pilot production facility where the company will scale up production of its cultivated fat and continue work on whole cuts of cultivated steak.

Memphis Meats Rebrands as UPSIDE Foods, Announces Cultured Chicken Product – The company rebranded and also announced that its first consumer product, cultured chicken, will be available to customers this year, pending regulatory approval.

Solar Biotech Raises $2M for Its Fermentation Tech – The Raleigh, North Carolina-based startup will use the $2 million in a debt-financing round to scale up its renewable-energy-powered fermentation technology, which it licenses to other companies.

MeaTech 3D Will Produce Cultivated Fat, Whole Steaks at Its Forthcoming Pilot Facility

Israeli bioprinting startup MeaTech 3D this week became the latest cultivated meat company to announce a pilot production facility, which the company intends to have operational in 2022. The plant’s location is yet to be announced. MeaTech said they will use the facility to increase the production of cultured chicken fat from Peace of Meat, a Belgian company MeaTech acquired in December of 2020. 

MeaTech says cultured fat can “significantly enhance” the texture, flavor, and mouthfeel of plant-based meat alternatives, giving them an altogether “meatier” taste than is available with current plant-based meat analogues. MeaTech said in this week’s announcement that it plans to license its cultivated fat tech — including cell lines and bioprocesses — to other companies wishing to improve their plant-based products.

However, cultivated fat is only one part of MeaTech’s overall plan. In tandem, the company will continue to develop a process for whole cuts of cultivated meat — namely steak and chicken breast — using 3D bioprinting tech.

Developing full cuts of cultivated meat is far more difficult than making minced products for burgers or chicken bites. With full cuts of meat, the various cells, including those for muscle, fat, blood vessels, and connective tissue, have to grow together, on scaffolding, to achieve the desired cut of meat. This is a significantly more intricate process than simply growing the different cells then manually combining them at the end, as can be done for a patty or nugget.

Aleph Farms, also based in Israel, is the other notable company attempting to produce whole cuts of cultivated meat. Earlier this year, the company said they had developed a 3D bioprinted Ribeye steak from cultivated protein.

So far, MeaTech has printed a carpaccio-like layer of meat. A full steak or chicken breast is in all likelihood years away. While the forthcoming pilot production facility will first be used to scale up production of Peace of Meat’s cultured fat, it will eventually incorporate MeaTech’s bioprinting tech to produce the aforementioned whole cuts of meat.

Memphis Meats Re-Brands as UPSIDE Foods, Announces Cultured Chicken as its First Product

Memphis Meats, one of the older cell-based protein startups, announced today that it has rebranded and is now UPSIDE Foods. Perhaps more important, the company also announced that its first consumer product, cultured chicken, will be available to customers this year… pending regulatory approval.

Founded in 2015, UPSIDE Foods cultivates animal protein without the need to raise animals. The company is working on cell-based versions of different kinds of meat, but said in today’s press announcement that it chose chicken as its first product because of its versatility in recipes and culinary applications, as well as its appeal across geographic regions.

To make its cell-basd meat at scale, UPSIDE has broken ground on a production facility in the San Francisco Bay Area. The full-stack facility will produce, package and ship cultured meat at what the company says is a larger capacity than any other cell-based meat company.

Back in 2019, UPSIDE told The Spoon that the company was holding off on establishing a concrete launch date for their cultivated meat until they could guarantee their product was tasty and scalable, and until regulatory frameworks were established. This last bit was echoed in today’s press release with the “pending regulatory approval” caveat. So far, Singapore is the only country that has approved the sale of cultured meat. There hasn’t been as much clarity here in the U.S., though execs at cultured meat startups are hopeful approvals will be granted in the next two years.

We are definitely entering into a new phase in the evolution of cultured meat. A number of cell-based startups around the world have received funding this year, including CellulaRevolution, CellMeat, Mirai Foods and New Age Meats. In addition to more funding, UPSIDE and other established cultured protein startups like BlueNalu and Avant Meats are opening up their own production facilities to scale up the manufacturing of their meat.

It’s also worth noting that UPSIDE’s chicken announcement comes during the same week that Future Meat said it has dropped the production price of its cell-based chicken by 50 percent. In an interview with Plant Based News, Future Meat CEO, Rom Kshuk said it now costs $4 to produce 110 grams of its chicken, and that price should drop to $2 over the next year and a half. Reaching price parity with conventional animal meat will be a key factor in the success of cultured meat.

Along with a new identity, UPSIDE also announced a new investor today. Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, has invested an undisclosed sum in UPSIDE.

UPSIDE’s new name and look also reflects the company moving into its own next phase as it advances beyond research and into commercial production. If you’re interested in seeing how it all began with the company, I recommend watching the documentary Meat the Future, which chronicles the rise of Memphis Meats from its very early days through much of its growth.

Meat The Future (2020) I Official Trailer I MetFilm Sales

Europe? The U.S.? Israel? Which Country Might Be Next to Approve Cultured Meat

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Ever since Eat Just nabbed the world’s first regulatory approval to sell cultured meat in Singapore (and followed that milestone up by actually selling it), myself and many others have wondered which market will be next. 

The question was asked again this week when an article from Food Navigator zeroed in on Europe, noting, “Europeans want to know when it will be their turn: when will cultivated meat be served on EU plates?” It seems the most probable answer is three to five years. 

With Singapore already selling cultured meat at restaurants, five years seems a long time. But David Brandes, the Managing Director for Belgium-based company Piece of Meat, noted to Food Navigator that “bureaucracy and political interest” hold back the regulatory process, and that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)’s risk assessment process alone takes nine months.

Still, the European Commission has a clearly defined process for bringing cultured meat to market that is known as the Novel Food authorization, which makes it a logical market to try and bring a product into. For example, Mosa Meat, based in the Netherlands, has said it is focusing on Singapore and Europe for its first launches, specifically citing Europe’s Novel Food authorizations as a reason. Europe is also home to many other cultured meat companies, including Blue Biosciences, Mirai, and CellulaREvolution.

On the other hand, many have their sights set on the U.S. as the next destination for the sale of cultured meat. In 2019, the FDA and the USDA issued a formal agreement to jointly oversee regulation of cultured meat using existing frameworks. (The framework does not apply to cultured seafood, which is regulated exclusively by the FDA.)

U.S.-based companies are still leading the cultured meat industry, too, and have attracted huge amounts of investment in the recent past, including Memphis Meats’ $161 million round in 2020, BlueNalu’s $60 million fundraise, and, of course, Eat Just’s recent $200 million fundraise. The latter — still the only cultured meat company in the world cleared to sell a product — hasn’t explicitly said it will next launch commercially in the U.S. In a recent conversation, Eat Just founder and CEO Josh Tetrick only hinted, saying “I think it’s more likely than not that we’ll see clearance sometime in the next two years. I hope it’s this year — we’re going to be ready if it is. But it’s hard to tell.”

Additionally, California-based BlueNalu has said its products will launch in the second half of 2021, though it hasn’t yet said where. And an organization known as the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, which includes Memphis Meats, New Age Meats, Eat Just, and others, is dedicated to advancing the reach of cultured meat in the U.S.

Let’s also keep one eye on Israel. While its a smaller market than the U.S. or Europe, the country is like Singapore in that its government is very keen on advancing cultured meat. That includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyah, who in December of last year became the first head of state to taste cultured meat. He noted at the time that Israel will “become a powerhouse for alternative meat and alternative protein.”

Israel is also home to the world’s first restaurant dedicated to cultured meat, SuperMeat’s The Chicken. No products are sold their. Rather, consumers apply to gain entry then give detailed feedback in exchange for tasting the company’s cultured meat product. (Spoiler alert: it’s chicken.) 

There are also a growing number of companies coming from Israel, including Aleph Farms, Future Meat, and MeaTech 3D, which already publicly trades on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. 

Worth noting is that MeaTech 3D has also filed to go public in the U.S., which may suggest where its sights are set in terms of initial commercialization. Future Meat, too, has also said it plans to launch in the U.S. by 2022 via restaurants and direct-to-consumer sales. So while Israel may not necessarily be host the world’s second commercial sale of cultured meat, it may well provide the companies doing so elsewhere. Say, in the U.S.

Other Headlines

Tyson’s Raised & Rooted Expands into Plant-Based Burgers, Brats and Italian Sausage. Tyson Foods’ plant-based protein brand, announced today that it is expanding its lineup with three new offerings: burgers, Bratwurst and Italian sausages. 

Sweden: Stockeld Dreamery Launching First Plant-Based Cheese This Week. Plant-based cheese startup Stockeld Dreamerly, will launch its first product, Stockeld Chunk, at select stores in Stockholm, Sweden on May 6. 

OmniFoods Plans to Launch Its Plant-Based OmniPork Products in the U.S. This Year. OmniPork, the plant-based meat line from Green Monday subsidiary OmniFoods, will launch in the U.S. later this year.

OmniFoods Plans to Launch Its Plant-Based OmniPork Products in the U.S. This Year

OmniPork, the plant-based meat line from Green Monday subsidiary OmniFoods, will launch in the U.S. later this year, according to an article from Food Navigator. 

OmniFoods launched its OmniPork line in 2018 in Hong Kong, where the company is also headquartered. As its name suggests, the line features various plant-based replacements for pork, which is the most widely consumed meat in the world. As of now, the OmniPork line includes grounds, lunch meats, and strips as well as OmniPork buns and dumplings. 

Products are made from a proprietary blend of pea and soy protein along with shiitake mushroom and rice. 

The OmniPork line debuted on mainland China in 2019. For its U.S. expansion, OmniFoods will maintain its Asian-inspired focus for its products, rather than creating meat analogues of American staples (e.g., bacon). That said, OmniPork products are, in the company’s own words, “a relatively bland flavor,” which ensures a certain amount of versatility in the products.

Speaking to Food Navigator, OmniFoods founder David Yeung, said its ready meals (dumplings, stir fry, dim sum) are also “extremely well received,” and that down the line, the company may work with U.S.-based food manufacturers to develop meals in addition to the protein products. 

OmniFood debuted products in the U.S. at eight different restaurants across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu. The company used this same strategy — launching in restaurants before expanding across retail outlets — with its U.K. launch earlier this year. 

The U.S. retail launch doesn’t yet have a specific date applied to it, but will happen at some point later in 2021.