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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

cell-based meat

Israeli Startup Future Meat Technologies Raises $14M Series A to Grow More Meat from Animal Cells

Today Future Meat Technologies announced it has closed a $14 million Series A funding round led by S2G Ventures and Emerald Technology Ventures, with participation from Manta Ray Ventures, Bits x Bites, and investor Henry Soesanto. This brings Future Meat’s total funding to $16.2 million.

Israel-based Future Meat makes a variety of meats, including beef and chicken, directly from animal cells. The company made waves in 2018 when it snagged a $2.2 million investment from Tyson Ventures. Future Meat’s Series A is the second largest investment round in the cultured meat sector to date, after Memphis Meats’ $17 million fundraise in 2017.

According to a press release from the company, Future Meat will funnel their new funding into R&D as well as construction on what they call “the world’s first cultured meat pilot production facility,” which they hope will begin operations in 2020. The startup is aiming to start selling what it calls “hybrid products,” which I’m guessing will be a combination of cell-based and traditional or plant-based meat, at a competitive cost level with traditional meat by 2021. It’ll then follow that with cultured meat products priced at under $10 per pound by 2022.

Future Meat’s cell-based chicken vs. farmed chicken. (Photo: Yaakov Nahmias)

One thing Future Meat didn’t mention in the press release, however, is how it plans to deal with regulatory hurdles. As I discussed with Lou Cooperhouse of BlueNalu and David Kay of Memphis Meats at SKS 2019 this week, a lack of regulatory standards is the main thing standing in the way of bringing cultured meat to market. At least in the U.S., where the FDA and USDA will jointly regulate the new technology, we have a few years to go before we’ll be able to purchase cell-based meat.

But that’s where its location — Israel — could be a major boon. Israel is a leader in tissue engineering, which means it could be more willing to speed up the regulatory process and get cultured meat to market faster. The country also currently imports the majority of its meat, despite its prioritization of food security and safety. Accelerating the entry of cultured meat and seafood to market could help the country bring more of its protein development within its borders.

Israel has yet to establish any regulatory guidelines for the sale of cultured meat, though it’s currently home to two other later-stage cultured meat startups: the aforementioned Aleph Farms and SuperMeat. The latter company has partnered with Israeli meat producer Soglowek to receive a share of its profits for product development.

Building the world’s first cultured meat production facility in the next few years is an extremely ambitious goal. However, as someone who covers this space a lot, it’s refreshing to see companies deviate from the company line of “we’ll see” and give concrete go-to-market timelines and pricing details. Future Meat may be reaching for the stars, but at least they’ve got $14 million to help them get that much closer.

New Coalition Forms to Bring Cultured Meat to Market Faster

Today five cellular agriculture and aquaculture companies announced that they have formed a new coalition to educate and advocate for cultured meat — that is, meat or seafood grown outside the animal.

Called the Alliance for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), the group consists of cellular aquaculture companies BlueNalu and Finless Foods and cell-based meat companies Fork & Goode, JUST, and Memphis Meats.

The goal of the coalition is to twofold. They want to provide resources to educate consumers on what exactly cell-based meat is and its health and environmental footprint. But to get to that, they’ll first have to tackle their other goal: to get cell-based meat and fish approved by regulators.

According to a press release sent to the Spoon:

In the coming months, AMPS Innovation intends to engage policymakers and stakeholders to educate them on their products in addition to working with Congress, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration as they continue to build out a regulatory framework for meat, poultry and seafood that is grown directly from animal cells, rather than harvested from the animals themselves.

Basically, AMPS Innovation will act as a mouthpiece and knowledge expert for the larger cellular agriculture industry, pushing for regulatory acceptance needed to bring cultured meat to market.

As of now, the regulatory pathway for cell-based animal products is still pretty nebulous. Last year the FDA and USDA agreed that they would jointly regulate cultured meat; the FDA will oversee animal cell collection and initial cell growth, while the USDA will be in charge of large-scale production labeling. It’s still unclear at exactly what point in the process that handoff will take place, and there’s no timeline about when the governmental bodies will actually approve cultured meat for sale.

Cell-based meat will make it to market; with the amount of interest around and capital invested in cell ag companies, that seems inevitable. At that point AMPS Innovation will likely pivot to focus more on educating consumers who are wary of eating meat grown in a lab — and pushing back against big meat and farming coalitions that don’t want them edging in on their sales.

AMPS Innovation is already building its case. In addition to resources such as high-res media images and descriptions about the cell-based meat production process, their website also has a page called “Terms that are accurate” (kind of an aggressive way to label a glossary, IMHO). The page states that terms like “Meat / poultry / seafood” or “meat / poultry / seafood products” are applicable to cell-based meat, poultry, and seafood, since they are made from animals and real animal flesh.

Big Meat is not going to like that. Farming groups and large meat corporations are already aggressively pushing for labeling restrictions for both plant-based and cell-based meat, even though the latter has yet to make it to market. AMPS Innovation clearly understands to gain regulatory approval, they’ll have to fight not only skeptical regulatory bodies, but also traditional animal agriculture companies with boatloads of money and governmental support.

The timing is right for AMPS Innovation. As the list of companies making cell-based meat and seafood grows, their messaging is becoming more fragmented. They need a unified voice with which to answer questions and advocate for their cause — both now as they start gearing up to advocate for regulatory acceptance, and later as they try to win over consumers.

Ecovative’s Mushroom Foam Could Solve Alternative Meat’s Texture Problem

When you bite into a juicy piece of steak — or any meat — a big part of the tasting experience is texture. It’s one of meat’s most defining characteristics, which also makes it really, really hard to accurately imitate. Alterna-meat companies are trying, but all too often their efforts fall short and we’re left with gummy vegan sausages or tough “chik’n” strips.

The secret to texture might lie in mushrooms. Or, more specifically, what lies beneath mushrooms. Ecovative, a biotech company based in upstate New York, is using mushroom roots (AKA mycelium) to give meat alternatives a better, meatier texture.

The company first developed a mycelium platform 12 years ago to use as sustainable packaging material. Then, a few years ago, they started developing a marshmallow-like mycelium foam, called “Atlast,” which could be used as scaffolding for tissue engineering. Ecovative co-founder and CEO Eben Bayer told me over the phone that they can grow the mycelium into a shape that emulates meat fibers, then infuse it with plant-based fats, flavors, and seasonings. In short: they can use it as a scaffold to grow meat.

This sort of scaffolding technology is really needed right now. Texture is a huge barrier to widespread acceptance for meat alternatives, both cell-based and plant-based. On the whole, cellular agriculture companies have figured out how to replicate animal cells. But as of now they can basically only copy and mush cells together, so they’re limited to making meats that don’t require much structure, like ground beef. Similarly, plant-based meat is struggling to replicate the exact texture of meat, cheese, and fish.

Ecovative isn’t the only company working on this problem. Redefine Meat is using 3D printing to try to make plants emulate the texture of beef. Researchers at Penn State are using LEGO pieces to spin edible scaffolds made of cornstarch, and others are experimenting with spinach leaves to help grow tissue.

But Ecovative’s platform has a couple of advantages. Mycelium is super easy and fast to grow: Bayer said it only takes nine days to grow a sizeable sheet of the mushroom foam. It’s also very cheap to make and extremely versatile. Scientists can either grow the foam into an intended shape — like, say, a pork chop — or cut and shape it after the sheet is ready.

Bayer told me that Ecovative will sell its mycelium foam to other businesses. He wouldn’t give specifics on pricing or when exactly they would head to market, but told me that the company will have “stuff to taste by this year.”

Sure, right now we’ve got vegan burgers that have a texture pretty close to the real thing. But what about bacon, or beef tenderloin, or steak? Until there are indistinguishable plant-based (or, down the road, cell-based) options for all cuts of meat, not just burgers, it’ll be hard to get carnivores on board with meat alternatives. Hopefully Ecovative’s mycelium can help crack the texture code.

Shiok Meats is First Cultured Meat Company Accepted into Y Combinator

Famed startup accelerator Y Combinator just announced the 23 companies joining its newest YC Winer 2019 batch. Among them is Shiok Meats, a Singapore-based startup developing cell-based crab and shrimp, and the first cell-based meat company to join Y Combinator.

Though they’ll be in the Bay Area to participate in Y Combinator, co-founder Dr. Sandhya Sriram told The Spoon earlier this year that they’re planning to roll out their products in Southeast Asia, specifically Singapore, Hong Kong, and India. They expect to have their first cell-based product to market in three to five years.

Y Combinator has previously invested in plant-based meat companies like Seattle Food Tech. Last summer the accelerator even included the Good Food Institute, a non-profit promoting the growth of meat alternatives, both plant-based and cell-based.

However, by letting a cultured meat company through its hallowed doors, Y Combinator is now blessing cell-based meat as a viable investment opportunity. And a blessing from the accelerator that backed AirBnB and Dropbox, among other cash cow companies, is likely going to make clean meat even more of an investment magnet than it already is.

It’s interesting that Y Combinator chose Shiok Meats as the first cell-based meat company to join their ranks, since I’m betting they’re not the first to apply. Applications can be a crapshoot and all that, but perhaps the accelerator was convinced to accept the Singaporean startup because they were convinced, as I was, that Shiok Meat’s plan to launch in Southeast Asia means that it could have a greater global impact than cultured meat companies in the U.S. or Europe.

In any case, hopefully Y Combinator’s investment and mentorship will help Shiok Meats get cell-based shrimp dumplings on our plates even sooner. In fact, the startup already has a product ready for taste testing. Shiok Meats will be hosting a tasting of dumplings made with its cell-based shrimp later this month at the Disruption in Food and Sustainability Summit in their home country of Singapore.

When It Comes to Labeling Food “Meat,” Where Do We Draw The Line?

Things used to be so simple. Meat used to cover products that came from slaughtered animals, and everything else was, uh, not meat. But now the lines are blurred — and the meat industry is pissed about it.

This weekend the New York Times ran a story about pushback from animal agriculture industry groups against use the use of the term “meat” to describe any sausage, chop, or burger made from plants or grown in a petri dish — in short, anything that didn’t come from a slaughtered animal. Just this week, Arizona and Arkansas joined the over a dozen states that have introduced meat labeling bills.

The first law of this sort was passed last May in Missouri. The law prohibited companies from “misrepresenting a product as meat that is not derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.” A few months after it passed, a coalition led by Tofurky, the American Civil Liberties Union and others challenged the new law.

The debate isn’t just limited to the butcher counter. In July of last year FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced that his agency would start tightening regulations over what could and couldn’t be called “milk.”

On the surface, this pushback may seem a little bit petty. After all, the U.S. meat industry was worth $4.2 trillion in 2016 and show no signs of slowing down, while plant-based meat netted a comparatively tiny $670 million in 2018. Why does Big Meat care what vegan burgers call themselves?

In short, they care because they’re threatened. From 2017 to 2018, demand for plant-based meat rose a whopping 24 percent. To meet that demand we’ve seen an explosion of plant-based meat options, many of which do a pretty dang good job imitating meat thanks to new technologies like genetically modified heme or new protein extrusion methods. On top of that, companies like Beyond Meat are pushing to have their products displayed in the meat aisle of grocery stores.

Plant-based meat is no longer a fringe product for hippies — it’s now a legitimate competitor for traditional meat. And animal agriculture groups know it.

Once cell-based meat comes to market, the issue of what defines “meat” will become even more pressing. No matter how bloody or juicy the taste, plant-based burgers are still fundamentally not made of animals. Cell-based (or cultured) meat, however, is actual animal tissue — that just happens to have been made in a bath of serum, not a slaughterhouse. And some cultured meat companies have made the point that cell-based fish and pork must be labeled as “fish” and “pork” for both allergy and transparency reasons.


Finless Foods is creating cultured bluefin tuna [Taylor Grote vis Upsplash]

It’s hard to make the argument that meat made from actual animal muscle and fat cells should be called anything other than “meat.” (The USDA will have the final say on how to label cell-based meat.) However, adding qualifiers seems to make a lot of sense, both for plant-based and cultured meat. Not only to appease the cattlemen, but also for consumers.

Nebraska Democratic state senator Carol Blood, a vegan, was inspired to write a meat-labeling bill after she witnessed two women who were unclear over whether or not Beyond Meat contained animal tissue. “I don’t care that it says burger — I care that it says it’s meat,” Ms. Blood said in the New York Times.

The fact that meat alternatives are, well, alternative to meat is one of their main selling points. It would follow, then, that these companies would want to call out the fact that their products are not made from slaughtered animals. At the same time, plant-based meat companies are trying to draw in flexitarian consumers by making products that taste just as good as meat, without the animal.

Do you see how easy it is to spin yourself up into a tangled mess of meat labeling confusion?

There isn’t a clear-cut answer here, but I for one am team let-alternatives-call-themselves-meat-if-they-want — as long as they add a qualifier like “plant-based” or “cultured” so that the consumer is clear on what they’re buying.

Instead of putting their energy into pushing for labeling crackdowns, meat industry players would do well to take a page from Tyson’s and Cargill’s books and invest in their competition. (In fact, Tyson is reportedly developing its own line of plant-based “meats.”) It won’t solve the meat labeling question, but by having a stake in the meat alternatives game could help ease tensions in a future that’s only going to get more and more complicated.

USDA and FDA Will Tag Team Regulation of Cell-Based Meat

Last Friday, we got one step closer to figuring out the regulatory future of cell-based meat.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a statement stating that they would work together with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to oversee production of what they called “cell-cultured food products derived from livestock and poultry.” The statement comes almost a month after the two organizations led a joint meeting to focus on regulation and labeling of the new technology.

We knew from the get-go that the two organizations would work together on the regulation of this new technology, so that part isn’t exactly news. But the statement also outlines exactly which roles each organization will take on. From the USDA (bolding our own):

Agencies are today announcing agreement on a joint regulatory framework wherein FDA oversees cell collection, cell banks, and cell growth and differentiation. A transition from FDA to USDA oversight will occur during the cell harvest stage. USDA will then oversee the production and labeling of food products derived from the cells of livestock and poultry. 

So the FDA will oversee everything from gathering the tissue to cultivating it (growing it into enough muscle fibers to eat). Once the meat is complete, the USDA will take over and oversee the process of labeling. This division “leverage[s] both the FDA’s experience regulating cell-culture technology and living biosystems and the USDA’s expertise in regulating livestock and poultry products for human consumption.”

True enough, the USDA typically oversees meat at the point of slaughter. Since there’s no slaughter when meat is cultured outside the animal, it makes sense that the closest equivalent would be the point of “harvest” in which the cells are done reproducing and ready to be processed and eaten.

Dr. Mark Post with the world’s first burger made of cells grown in a lab.

Sentiment seems to be positive about the new division of power. Initially, cell-based meat companies advocated for the FDA to be the primary regulatory body involved, but they seem to be okay with this arrangement. Jessica Almy, the Director of Policy of the Good Food Institute, a non-profit which supports meat and dairy alternatives, issued a statement writing that “This announcement is an exciting indication that FDA and USDA are clearing the way for a transparent and predictable regulatory path forward.”

Big Beef is also pleased(ish) with the division. In a statement emailed to Food Dive, The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association wrote: “This announcement that USDA would have primary jurisdiction over the most important facets of lab-produced fake meat is a step in the right direction.”

In the end, it seems that the USDA will have the trickier job of the two. Labeling is one of the most contentious issues surrounding cell-based meat: In the last few years alone, it has been called in-vitro, lab-grown, cultured, clean, and, most recently, cell-based meat. Traditional meat companies are pushing back on calling it meat at all (see “fake meat” reference above). The fact that USDA has the power in the labeling department could mean an uphill battle for cell-based companies who want to use the term “meat”.

But the USDA’s timeline to deciding on a name for the stuff is ticking down. JUST, Inc. is still planning to bring a cell-based poultry product to market by the end of 2018, provided it gains regulatory approval. With just over a month remaining, it seems ambitious that they will indeed be able to get the regulatory thumbs-up to meet their goal.

Progress may be slow, but all involved — traditional and cell-based meat companies — seem pleased that the government is taking steps to address this new technology. However, there’s still a lot to work out. It remains to be seen what information the two organizations will share, how and to what extent they’ll collaborate, and, of course, what we’re going to call the stuff.

The public comment period of last month’s meeting has been extended will be open until December 26th. Speak now, or forever hold your peace (of steak).

Video: Plant-Based, Cellular, and Sustainable — What is the Future of Meat?

Cell-based meat (also known as “clean” and “lab-grown” meat) is set to hit the market by the end of 2018, even though the FDA and USDA are still figuring out how to regulate it. At the same time, plant-based meat companies are seeing unprecedented levels of consumer interest and investment, even from Big Meat companies.

Watch as our panel from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, featuring Tom Mastrobuoni of Tyson Ventures, Christie Lagally of Seattle Food Tech, and Thomas Bowman of JUST, Inc., explores the challenges and opportunities of the future of meat: plant-based, cell-based, and otherwise.

Plant-Based, Cellular & Sustainable: Exploring The Future of Meat

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Allergy Fears and Transparency Among Issues at latest USDA/FDA Meat-ing

Earlier this week, scientists, entrepreneurs, and concerned members of the public got together to discuss the future of cell-based (also called “cultured” and “lab-grown”) meat during a joint meeting put on by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to the FDA news release, the meeting was intended to “focus on the potential hazards, oversight considerations, and labeling of cell cultured food products derived from livestock and poultry.”

The FDA held the first meeting on cultured meat back in July, and while it succeeded in starting the conversation around regulation of meat grown outside an animal, not much was concluded. From the people I spoke to who attended the meeting, everyone agreed that something had to be done to regulate this new edible technology, but no one could agree exactly what — or even what to call it.

Watching recordings from the meeting and scanning through Twitter, one topic seemed to be the most divisive, contentious, and downright critical: labeling. It’s where I think that the real stakes (steaks?) are: nomenclature will be a determining factor in consumer perception of this new technology. Here are a few interesting points that came up during the meeting:

Labeling is actually a health concern

“We cell-based food producers do need to use the terms ‘fish’ and ‘meat’,” said Michael Selden, the CEO of cultured seafood company Finless Foods. “If one is allergic to animal-based seafood, that person has a high probability that they’ll be allergic to the seafood made with our technology.”

His company is working to create fish meat that is identical, on a cellular level, to traditional fish. If they succeed, labeling cultured salmon something like “cell-based artificial salmon product,” consumers with a life-threatening allergy to salmon might not realize that it posed just as big a threat.

Given, not all that many consumers are allergic to meat and seafood. But it’s still an important point: cultured meat is meat on a molecular level.

Photo: Flickr, by Adactio

Should labeling address how the product is made?

“It’s clear that consumers care about the way that their food is produced,” said Liz Holt of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. If cultured meat is required to disclose all the substances that went into it, should traditional meat be held to the same standards?

As of now, meat companies can choose whether or not to display information about the animal’s life and diet, such as “grass-fed” or “free-range.” They don’t have to disclose what the animal ate, or where it was raised.

Some consumers might not want to know exactly what type of life the cow in their bargain ground beef had before making its way onto their plate. Specht’s point shows that more information is generally good — but sometimes the consumer doesn’t want or need it.

Cell-based meat wants its own labels

Both sides of the table agreed on one thing: cultured meat should be labeled differently than traditional meat. Cultured meat startups want to indicate to the consumer that their product is meat, but is also different than meat from a slaughtered animal.

Peter Licari, CTO of JUST, said that there should be a regulatory nomenclature that “sufficiently differentiates cell-cultured products from traditional meat products but appropriately acknowledges these products as meat.”

What exactly that elusive final term will be — one that effectively communicates both that the product is meat, but not meat from a slaughtered animal — isn’t clear. But companies and regulatory bodies need to figure it out pretty quickly. JUST is still planning to be the first company to bring cultured meat to market by the end of this year, and Finless Foods will launch its cell-based tuna in 2019. By 2021 Mosa Meats and Memphis Meats will join them.

Isha Datar of New Harvest said it best, speaking at the meeting: “This is not just a product, but a new paradigm for food production.” Now the FDA and USDA need to figure out what to call it.

Meatable Claims to Hold the Key to Scalable Cultured Meat In a Single Cell

Meatable, a new startup creating cell-based meat, claims it will be able to change the world with a single cell. It’s a tagline, sure, but it might also be true. The Netherlands-based company works with pluripotent cells to create cultured meat quickly and without a need for fetal bovine serum (FBS).

They’re not the only ones who believe in their potential. Last month the startup, which was founded in early 2018, raised a $3.5 million seed round led by BlueYard Capital, with participation from Atlantic Food Labs, Backed VC, and angel investors.

Pluripotent stem cells are superior to other stem cells (which cultured meat companies have been using up until now) for two reasons: versatility and speed.

A muscle stem cell can only ever proliferate to create muscle, and a fat stem cell can only be fat. Pluripotent cells, however, can transform into whatever type of cell the scientist chooses. “They’re very malleable, with a high proliferation capacity,” Meatable CTO Daan Luining explained to me over the phone. “Like a blank slate.” Before Meatable, Luining cut his teeth with Dr. Mark Post, creator the first cultured burger, and spent time at New Harvest, an NGO which finances research into cell-based meat.

Pluripotent cells also divide 2 to 2.5 times faster than non-pluripotent cells, proliferating to create a burger-sized amount of meat in just three weeks. “You have to wait three years to raise a cow,” said Luining.

Significantly, Pluripotent cells require minimal animal intervention. Instead of gathering a tissue sample from a living animal, which is what most cultured meat companies are doing, Meatable scientists collect blood from the clipped umbilical cord of a just-birthed calf then filter it to harvest the special cells.

Perhaps most importantly, they don’t rely on fetal bovine serum (FBS), the controversial media many startups making cell-based meat take from the necks of baby cows in slaughterhouses and use to grow their product. But FBS is expensive and, well, requires animals to be killed. “FBS defeats the purpose of cell-based meat,” said Meatable CEO Krijn De Nood.

The independence from FBS alone would be enough of a reason to get jazzed about pluripotent cells. Add in their speed and agility, however, and they’re Meatable’s ticket to culture meat a lot quicker than their competitors in a completely non-invasive, animal-free way. And make it cheaper, to boot.

Meatable CTO Daan Luining, left; CEO Krijn De Nood, middle; Ruud Out, who runs Meatable lab in Leiden, right.

So why don’t all cultured meat companies take advantage of these miracle cells, you might ask? Up until now, pluripotent cells were difficult to control. However, recently Dr. Mark Kotter, a scientist at the University of Cambridge, collaborated with Dr. Roger Pedersenat of Stanford University to develop a technology which can better manage the cells and dictate their growth. Luining told me that Meatable has an exclusive license to use this tech in cell-based meat production, which should theoretically give them a leg up on the competition.

But first, they’ll have to debut the cells in a taste test. Meatable is currently focusing on beef, but they hope to rapidly expand into pork, poultry, and even liver, for ethical foie gras. They expect to present their first burger to the public in three years, by which time they’ll already have a production process in place so they can quickly scale. Commercial sales are probably five years down the road.

This timeline puts them behind other cell-based meat companies. Memphis Meat and Mosa Meat have stated that they will bring cultured meat fully to market by 2021, and Just Inc. claims it will make the first sale of cell-based meat by the end of this year. But Meatable isn’t necessarily in a rush. “We’re not necessarily going for first; we’re going for best,” Luining told me.

Their timing might actually be an advantage. When cell-based meat products first come to market, it will no doubt take time for consumers to warm up to the idea of chowing down on a hamburger grown in a lab. By the time there’s a hungry demand for cultured meat, Meatable will be there — with cheap, scalable beef — to meet it.

“Eventually, people will choose a product that tastes the best and is the cheapest,” said Luining. “We will have the edge there.”

Food Tech News Roundup: Big Moves in Alterna-Meats and Army Pizza

Boy oh boy, what a week for news! In addition to the new product launches at the Amazon Event (hi, Alexa-powered microwave), InstantPot also came up with a blender that blends hot and cold, and a new law passed which will allow Californians to sell home-cooked meals.

But there were quite a few other food tech-y stories that caught our eye this week, from the first cell-based pork tasting to a pizza with a three-year (!) shelf life. Start off your weekend by catching up on the latest:

 

JUST Inc. debuts sustainable food accelerator to tackle Asian market
Plant-based food company JUST Inc. announced plans this week to launch Made JUST, a “first-of-its-kind approach to bring sustainable and functional tools from the plant and animal kingdoms to the world’s brightest entrepreneurs.” For their first iteration, the startup teamed up with global venture accelerator Brinc and plans to tackle the Asian market. Each chosen company will receive $500,000 HKD (~$64,000 USD), as well as mentorship opportunities, access to Asian consumers, and access to JUST’s discovery pipeline. Any goods that come out of the platform will have a “Made JUST” logo.

 

Photo: OBRC.

Oregon launches America’s first statewide refillable bottle system
The Oregon Beverage Recycling Group (OBRC) has developed a new bottle that can be refilled up to 40 times. The bottles are made chiefly out of recycled glass and have a unique barcode that distinguishes them from other, non-refillable bottles. With their statewide infrastructure for bottle collection, the OBRC can find bottles that have been thrown in the recycling and return them to breweries for refilling.

 

Photo: U.S. Army

The Army has developed a pizza M.R.E.
M.R.E.’s (or Meals Ready to Eat) are meals that are long-lasting and require no cooking, making them ideal for combat missions or extreme temperatures. Generally, they’re pretty unappetizing — but recently the U.S. Army came out with an M.R.E. (soon to be deployed) featuring a food that nobody doesn’t love: pizza. The new Sicilian-style slice has cheese, tomato sauce, and pepperoni bits, and stays good for at least 36 months. 

 

Photo: Field Roast

Danone & co. form plant-based food lobby in Canada
This week Danone, Hain Celestial, Ripple Foods, Field Roast, and other plant-based producers teamed up to form a lobbying organization called Plant-Based Foods of Canada (PBFA). PBFA’s aim is to protect the market and regulatory interests of plant-based food companies in the Great North. This comes around the same time the FDA and USDA are tackling issues of labeling for plant-based milks and cell-based meat; Canada clearly wants to make sure its alterna-meats have the right to market themselves in the ways in which they see fit.

 

Photo: New Age Meats

New Age Meats does world’s first cell-based pork taste test
This past Monday cell-based meat startup New Age Meats invited journalists to a San Francisco brewery for the world’s first taste test of cultured pork. Co-founders Brian Spears and Andra Necula teamed up with chef/butcher Matt Murphy to turn their lab-grown pork muscle and fat tissue into sausages (with a vegan casing, of course). Business Insider’s Erin Brodwin got to taste the slaughter-free sausages, and had this to say:

The flavor was smoky and savory. The texture was distinctly sausage-like. It tasted like meat. Then again, it is meat.

This test was an exciting landmark in the march to bring cell-based meat to market. There have been taste tests of cultured duck and beef, but never pork — by harnessing automation and data, Indie Bio-backed New Age Meats hopes to have their product on the market in a couple of years.

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