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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Future Food: The Confusion around Cultured and Plant-Based Meat

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. In it we cover the alternative protein landscape, from plant-based meat to cellular agriculture to insects. Subscribe here!

Plant-based meat companies are leveraging technology to create a product so good it makes eating meat from an animal unnecessary. Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are both doing an excellent job of it so far, and will continue creating new iterations that taste even closer and closer to the real thing.

But where does cell-based meat — still likely a few years from our plates — fit into the equation? If plant-based meat tastes so good people will willingly choose it over the real thing, do we even need to bother making meat in a lab?

This week I tackled that question and zoomed out to take a broad picture of the alternative meat ecosystem, now and in 10 years. Spoiler: Yes, I think that cultured meat has a place in our future diets and is worth pursuing. See if I can convince you.

Photo: New Harvest.

*Is* plant-based meat actually healthy?

My boss Michael Wolf posted that piece on Linkedin got some interesting responses including one from Sean Butler, the Managing Director of LIDD Supply Chain Intelligence and former SVP of Retail at the meal kit startup Chef’d. He said:

I think that consumers may come to see the current crop of plant-based [meat] as “chemical-based” in the future, creating a strong opening for cellular meat, which can be billed as a (relatively) natural and sustainable alternative. Time will tell!

I’d always assumed consumers actually felt the opposite way. After all, plant-based meat is chiefly made up of recognizable ingredients, like soy and pea protein, whereas cell-based meat is more of a mystery — at least for those of us without a cell biology degree.

But just because we know the basic ingredients in plant-based meat doesn’t mean it’s necessarily more healthy. Many meat alternatives are quite high in fat (in order to mimic the juiciness of real meat), and are heavily processed to nail the texture. Despite this, plant-based meat companies like Beyond and Impossible typically market their products as healthy alternatives — which is one of the reasons why flexitarians are flocking to them in droves.

In the rapidly evolving world of alternative protein, it can be confusing for consumers to delineate healthy and non-healthy, natural and non-natural, meat and non-meat.

Mission (actually) Impossible

I got in a bit of a news kerfuffle this week. Spurred by a piece in the Washington Post, I wrote a story about how Burger King will start selling the Impossible Whopper in Sweden.

As it turns out… that’s not the case. A food tech-connected source in Sweden reached out to let us know that the new plant-based burger to be sold in BK is not, in fact, from Impossible and has nothing to do with the famous “bleeding” burger. A rep at Impossible later confirmed.

There’s one good reason that Impossible isn’t available in Europe yet, even while their competitor Beyond Meat is: heme. Impossible produces heme through genetic engineering. While we’re cool with that in the States, the EU is very hesitant about what sort of genetically engineered foods it allows to be sold. That’s one reason why I was surprised to hear that Impossible was moving into Sweden so quickly.

So which plant-based burger can Swedes expect to order from their local BK? According to an email from Iwo Zakowski, the General Manager of Burger King Sweden and Denmark, the new Unbelievable Whopper will be made with a plant-based burger composed of soy and wheat protein. He didn’t give the name of the producer but clarified that it wouldn’t be Nestlé’s Incredible Burger, which is on menus in McDonald’s Germany.

If you happen to be in Sweden and are able to take a taste, let us know what you think, wouldja?

Sausage party

It may not be in Sweden, but Impossible made some other expansion moves in the U.S. this week. They’re now at Little Caesar’s, whose new Impossible Supreme pie is topped with sausage made of Impossible’s “bleeding” plant-based meat.

Interestingly, this marks the first time the company has developed a unique, non-beef product for a restaurant partnership. Which makes me think that we’ll soon see a wave of new plant-based sausage products coming to market. Beyond’s already there, as are some veterans in the alterna-meat space like Field Roast and Lightlife. Now Impossible has followed suit. Maybe next they’ll roll out some plant-based breakfast sausage patties, or bratwursts for the grill?

Ocean Hugger Foods’ new plant-based eel sushi.

Protein new ’round the web

  • Ocean Hugger Foods, who make a vegan raw fish substitute from tomatoes, unveiled a new plant-based “eel” sushi at this weekend’s National Restaurant Association Show.
  • Livekindly: In the U.K., supermarket chain Aldi is expanding its line of private label plant-based products with “sausage” rolls and “chicken” burgers.
  • Nation’s Restaurant News: Pret A Manger is buying British competitor Eat and turning all of its locations into Veggie Prets, which only serve (you guessed it) vegan and vegetarian food.
  • malaymail: In Singapore, food delivery giant Deliveroo will offer dishes from eight restaurant brands made from Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat.

Eat well,
Catherine

If Plant-Based Meat Tastes This Good, Do We Even Need to Make Meat in a Lab?

There’s never been a better time to be a vegetarian. Or a flexitarian, for that matter.

Gone are the days when the only veggie option at a barbecue was a dry disc of a bean burger. Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have harnessed food science and culinary technology to essentially reverse engineer meat; taking the textures and flavors we crave and figuring out how to make them out of plants (and some genetically engineered yeast), skipping the animal entirely.

So far, they’ve done a pretty good job. When we tried Impossible’s new Recipe 2.0 at CES this January — where it won the Best of the Best award — we were blown away by how closely it replicated beef. It was almost uncanny. In the months leading up to its wildly successful IPO Beyond Meat also unveiled a tasty new recipe which has been roping in flexitarians at Carl’s Jr. and Del Taco.

We’re not the only ones impressed by these companies’ meat-like vegan offerings. Consumers have been flocking to plant-based meat as of late. Spurred by increased demand, meat alternatives have become more widely accessible (geographically and price-wise) as it heads onto menus of nationwide fast-food chains like Burger King.

Plant-based meat may be doing a good job at imitating the real thing, but some companies are trying to actually make the real thing by growing animal cells in a lab.

No cell-based meat product has hit the market yet, though companies are already doing taste tests of everything from cell-based sausages to shrimp. Food tech company JUST is claiming it’ll make the first public sale of cell-based meat by the end of this year, but most other companies are estimating 2020/2021 as the launch date.

It sounds great on the surface: real meat, minus the environmental and ethical costs! But cultured meat is actually quite polarizing. First of all, it’s expensive — as of now, it costs around $50 to make a single burger. There are also questions around whether or not it’s actually better for the environment than traditional animal agriculture, especially considering many companies rely on controversial (and non-vegan) fetal bovine serum. And the FDA and USDA haven’t exactly nailed down how they’re going to regulate this new foodstuff.

Lately I’ve been wondering: If plant-based meat tastes so good people can’t even tell it’s vegan, do we even need cell-based meat? After all — it’s expensive, polarizing, and it’s unclear when (or where) we’ll be able to taste it. So why bother?

JUST’s nuggets made with cell-based chicken meat.

I actually think there are a couple reasons that cell-based meat is still a relevant endeavor. First: taste. Sure, companies may make pretty good imitations of chicken nuggets or beef burgers out of plant proteins. But it’ll be a much bigger lift to make a vegan version of a white meat chicken breast, a T-bone steak, or fatty bacon that will fool the average carnivore.

There, cell-based meat has more of a chance. As of now it certainly has textural and taste hurdles of its own. However, at least it’s working with the same raw material that goes into an animal product (muscle cells, fat cells, etc). I’m optimistic that scientists will eventually crack the code — finding an affordable animal-free media, figuring out the right scaffolding to create texture — and be able to make cell-based meats that are pretty darn indistinguishable from the real thing.

The second reason that cell-based might have the upper hand over plant-based meat is psychological. Some people are just very stubborn carnivores (hi there, my entire Southern family!). Even if they couldn’t tell the difference between a plant-based and a cell-based burger in a blind taste test, I’m guessing that, given the choice, the majority of them would go for the latter — because at least it’s real meat.

In fact, a recent consumer study from Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems found that 24 percent of consumers were not at all likely to purchase cultured meat, while 26 percent said the same for plant-based meat. Going forward, cell-based meat companies will have to figure out effective branding strategies to win over those that are hesitant and convince them that meat grown in a lab is the same — if not better — than what comes from a pasture.

In the end, it’s not an either-or. Our protein future will likely feature both plant-based and cell-based meat. Heck, there might even be some insects thrown in there. Consumers will choose different options based off of dietary preferences, budgets, marketing, etc.

So while plant-based meat does indeed rule for now, the alternative protein landscape will likely change in the next decade or so when cultured meat enters the scene. Until then, dig into your Impossible Whopper and let its (lab-made) blood run down your chin with abandon.

Want to keep tabs on the movers-and-shakers in the alternative protein space? Make sure to subscribe to our weekly Future Food newsletter!

Future Food: Beyond Impossible, Investment is Heating Up Throughout the Alt-Protein Space

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. In it we cover the alternative protein landscape, from plant-based meat to cellular agriculture to insects. Subscribe here!

Who’s investing in alternative protein?

Last week the interweb was all abuzz with Beyond Meat’s wildly successful IPO. This week, Impossible Foods raised $300 million and began selling the hotly anticipated Impossible Whopper in three more cities (besides the OG: St. Louis).

But a girl cannot live on plant-based meat alone, no matter how good it may taste. Plus, any news from Beyond/Impossible this week is really just a continuation of the trajectory we’ve been seeing:

  • Consumers are demanding more plant-based protein options at a variety of price points
  • Alternative meats are heading into more and more retail channels, including prepared meal delivery
  • Investors are hustling to get more involved in the white-hot plant-based meat space

Let’s take a closer look at that last one. We don’t often spend much time peeking behind the curtain at the companies doling out funding to these startup darlings making bleeding burgers or cultured steak. But they’re the ones dictating the pace of innovation in the space.

One company of particular interest is the newly-minted Big Idea Ventures (BIV). The hybrid venture/accelerator firm is backed by Tyson and Temasek, a holding firm owned by the Singaporean government. BIV’s goal is to be the largest accelerator dedicated entirely to the alternative protein space. It made its first investment a few weeks ago, in Singaporean cultured shrimp startup Shiok Meats.

BIV may be unique in its laser focus on animal-free proteins, but there are quite a few other VC firms investing in the space, like Stray Dog Capital and New Crop Capital. Big Food corporations like Cargill and Tyson are also reading the cards and investing in plant- and cell-based startups, expanding their portfolios and gradually reframing themselves as generalized protein companies.

If you’re interested, you can read my piece on BIV’s new protein fund and upcoming accelerator programs here.

Media holds the key

One of the costliest parts of making cultured meat is the media — essentially, the food that scientists feed animal cells to help them multiply enough that we can eat them. As of now a lot of cell-based companies rely on Fetal Bovine Serum. Since this is extracted from the necks of baby cows in slaughterhouses, it’s a) super controversial, b) not vegan, and c) expensive.

This week we also wrote about Canadian startup Future Fields, which is developing a media completely free of any animal products. Their solution could help cultured meat companies bring their product to market sooner, and with a more appealing price tag.

Impossible gets into dairy?

Okay okay, I know we said no more Impossible Food news. But one more tiny thing: this week FoodNavigator reported that Impossible is currently developing a suite of “dairy” products. This isn’t exactly surprising. When we spoke to Impossible CEO Pat Brown at CES this year he made it clear that Impossible wasn’t stopping just at burgers.

We asked Impossible if they had any updates in the dairy department, and they responded that it’s their mission to “make all meat, fish and dairy products that consumers love directly from plants as soon as possible.” No word on when, though I’m guessing Impossible will focus on meat for a while longer. What we do know is their next product: steak.

For now, flexitarians thirsty for plant-based dairy alternatives can opt for a creamy glass of Oatly — that is, if they can find it.

Photo: JUST.

Protein news ’round the web

  • This week JUST, maker of plant-based and (soon) cell-based animal products, officially launched its JUST Egg in China. Their product uses mung bean to replicate scrambled eggs’ signature texture.
  • Iconic Canadian fast-food joint Tim Horton’s is testing out breakfast sandwiches featuring Beyond Meat’s vegan sausage patties in 60 restaurants across Toronto.
  • Chick-fil-A is exploring adding plant-based meat options to their notoriously small menu.

Eat well,
Catherine

Future Fields is Making Serum-Free Media to Help Companies Grow Cheaper Meat

Up in Alberta, Canada, a young startup is quietly working to accelerate the production of cultured meat.

Future Fields is developing a key to unlock the potential of cellular agriculture: animal-free media. For those not in the know, media is the liquid, nutrient-dense “food” that allows animal cells to rapidly grow and form meat in a lab. It’s also one of the most expensive aspects of the cultured meat process, partially because the go-to media right now — Fetal Bovine Serum — is extremely expensive (and controversial).

Future Fields is developing an animal-free media which it will sell to cellular agriculture and biotech companies alike. If effective, it will help drive down manufacturing costs for cell-based meat. The serum is specifically made for cultured chicken cells and is expected to be available within two years. According to Future Fields co-founder Lejjy Gafour, who spoke to me on the phone last week, media is more effective when it’s specialized for one specific type of cell line.

Down the road, Future Fields wants to use its unique media to develop its next product: actual cultured chicken. The company plans to initially sell their poultry to secondary processors and then eventually develop their own line of consumer-ready products. If they stay within their two-year timeline for the serum, Gafour says they plan to have the cell-based chicken to market in five to seven years.

If so, that puts them well behind other cultured meat companies like Memphis Meats or Mosa Meats, both of which have claimed they’ll have cultured meat to market by 2021. There’s also JUST, who hopes to make the first sale of cell-based meat by the end of this year. In more direct competition, Japanese company Integriculture is also developing a food-grade media which can be used to make cultured meat.

Photo: Future Fields.

However, there are definite advantages to being one of the later entrants in the cell ag space. That means that other companies can shoulder the burden of figuring out cost-efficient production strategies, beginning to familiarize consumers with the concept of cell-based meat, and, most importantly, nailing down regulatory frameworks. By the time Future Fields enters the market with their cultured chicken, they’re no doubt hoping there will already be an established cell-based ecosystem in place.

In the end, it won’t really matter who gets to market first. The cellular agriculture space is new and has a lot of potential, especially if consumer concern around the negative environmental impact of animal agriculture continues to grow. “There’s room for a lot of players in the [cell-based meat] ecosystem,” Gafour told me.

That’s not to say that Future Fields won’t have its fair share of hurdles. The company has yet to publicly put its media or cultured chicken to the test, and it doesn’t have any outside funding. It also seems overly ambitious for such a small company to have multiple areas of focus. Future Fields is creating an animal-free media, developing a cell-based chicken product and, eventually plans to make its own branded product.

It’s probably best for Future Fields to focus their attention on the product with they could have the most wide-reaching impact: culture media. Hopefully the company can help put cell-based meat on our plates a lot sooner.

GFI: Investment in Plant-Based Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Hits $16 Billion, No Sign of Slowing

Today the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit promoting alternatives to conventional animal agriculture products, released a report on the state of investment in plant- and cell-based meat and dairy companies. You can download the report and read it in full, but here’s the main takeaway: the alternative protein space is on a massive upward trend, with record amounts of capital invested and high rates of new companies and acquisitions.

While it’s important to be aware of the author here — GFI has a clear agenda to promote alternative protein products — the numbers (below) are convincing. And also, not all that surprising. In fact, it’s in line with what we’ve been reporting all year.

Data from the report shows that alternative protein investment began experiencing a real boom in the past 2.5 years. Of the $16 billion invested in plant-based meat, egg, and dairy companies over the past 10 years, GFI reports that $13 billion of that occurred in 2017 and 2018 alone. We can attribute that to a corresponding increase in consumer demand for plant-based food options, specifically dairy and meat, spurred by trendy startups making tasty-in-their-own-right products like Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and Oatly oat milk.

There has also been an uptick in acquisitions of plant-based companies: of the 19 acquisitions in the space since 2009, 10 happened in 2017-18. That number could certainly increase as Big Food companies decide to invest more heavily in alternative protein sources (Unilever purchasing The Vegetarian Butcher; Maple Leaf Foods buying Lightlife and Field Roast). Beyond’s over-performing IPO could also entice these big corporations to spend big bucks.

However, acquisition isn’t the only way to get a bigger piece of the plant-based pie, especially going forward. For example, Tyson decided to end its investment in Beyond Meat to focus on developing its own line of plant-based products. And with its aforementioned successful IPO, Beyond has proven that acquisition isn’t the only end game for alternative protein companies.

The reports also covered investment and growth in the cell-based meat space, though products in that space have yet to come to market so there’s less going on overall. GFI notes that a whopping 11 new cultured meat companies were founded in 2018, bringing the total number of companies to 27. Of course, none of those companies have actually made a public sale. But 2019 might be the year that JUST finally makes good on its promise and brings cell-based meat to market — keep your eyes on Asia.

The plant-based/cell-based investment space isn’t about to cool anytime soon. So far in 2019 Shiok Meats, the Singaporean startup developing cultured shrimp, has raised $4.6 million, Singapore is investing over $100 million in cell-based meat (and other food innovations), and plant-based dairy company Eclipse Foods also closed a seed round. Add in Beyond Meat’s wildly successful IPO and it’s no wonder investors are scrambling to throw money at the alternative protein space. And it’s only May.

You can download the full report here.

Psst — want to stay up to date on all the investment trends in the protein alternative space? You’ve gotta subscribe to our Future Food newsletter — we cover it all. 

Introducing Future Food: Our Alternative Protein Newsletter

Have you checked what’s in your hamburger recently? It might be plant-based, made with “bloody” heme, or even grown in a bioreactor. (Just kidding — that last one isn’t here yet. But it will be soon.)

We’re fascinated by the fast-evolving alternative protein space. And clearly, so are you: the plant-based food industry increased by 20 percent in 2018, and is worth over $4.1 billion. In the cell-based (also called cultured) space, companies are doing everything from cheese to steak without the animal.

That’s why we decided it was timely and relevant to devote an entire newsletter to the topic of alternative protein products: meat, sure, but also eggs, dairy, bugs, seaweed, etc. It’s called Future Food, and this is the very first one!

We hope you like it. If so, you should sign up for the Future Food newsletter to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Now, to the news…

Photo: Beyond Meat.

Last week Beyond Meat, the El Segundo, California-based startup making plant-based burgers, chicken, sausage, and more, set the terms of its IPO.

The numbers were pretty eye-popping: the company could raise as much as $184 million, and might be valued at a whopping $1.2 billion. Beyond’s sales are also going through the roof, with revenues almost tripling from 2017 to 2018.
Whether Beyond Meat’s impending IPO fails or succeeds will be a be a sort of canary in the coal mine for the plant-based meat industry. It’s set to go public in early May, so keep an eye on this newsletter for ongoing analysis.

But all is not rosy in Beyond’s world right now. News broke that Tyson Foods had parted ways with the plant-based meat startup and sold its 6.5% stake, just days before Beyond goes public.

The news wasn’t shocking, since Tyson had recently announced plans of its own to get into the plant-based protein game. And we all know it’s bad practice to compete with a portfolio company. We analyzed the full reasonings behind Tyson’s exit — as well as the potential effects the move might have on Beyond’s IPO — here.

Photo: Stewart Butterfield via Flickr.

People are abuzz with excitement over cell-based meat: that is, meat that’s grown outside the animal. But we’re still not sure what it will be called, when it will come to market, or where it’ll first launch.

I have a theory, though: Asia. Specifically Hong Kong. Recently I explored the reasons why Asia is an ideal launch pad for cultured meat, from regulation to consumer interest. Feel free to @ me if you disagree.

Photo: A burger topped with a prototype of plant-based bacon grown on Ecovative’s mycelium.

A big struggle for all meat alternative companies — both plant-based and cell-based — is texture. They can do burgers, sure. But steak? That’s a lot more of a challenge.

Ecovative, a biotech company in New York, is growing scaffolds for meat alternatives out of mycelium. For all you non-mycologists out there, that basically means mushroom roots.

This method is cheap, quick, and scalable. But will it be enough to make animal-free steak that can fool even the most discerning of carnivores?

Photo: Meringues made with animal-free egg whites from Clara Foods.

But there’s a lot more going on in the protein alternatives world than just meat:

  • Clara Foods, a startup developing chicken-less egg white proteins with genetically engineered microbes, just raised an undisclosed Series B financing round led by ingredient giant Ingredion. They’re hoping to have a product to market as early as 2020.
  • Using a similar technology, New Culture is creating milk without the cow. Their end game is to make animal-free mozzarella cheese that tastes as creamy as the real thing.
  • There’s a nascent group of startups creating proteins not out of plants, sugar, or animal cells — but out of thin air. For real. Called ‘gas fermentation,’ the only inputs are electricity and air, making it a prime candidate for space travel.

Photo: Nestle.

Protein ’round the web

  • Eater L.A.: Los Angeles restaurants are using Impossible’s “bleeding” plant-based meat for a lot more than burgers. Think: taquitos, dumplings, and even tartare.
  • Beyond Meat is BBBTB: Bringing the Beyond Burger to Belgium. And the company is going Dutch with an expansion into the Netherlands.
  • Mcdonald’s Germany has chosen Nestlé’s Incredible burger for its vegan option.

    • I’m off! If you enjoyed this newsletter, be sure to subscribe here (it’s easy) and we’ll send it to you every Thursday. See you next week.

    Eat well,
    Catherine

    Shiok Meats Raises $4.6M for Cell-Based Shrimp

    Shiok Meats isn’t so shrimpy anymore. The Singapore-based cultured meat startup, which has been using cellular aquaculture to grow crustaceans in a lab, just completed a $4.6 million seed round (h/t Forbes).

    The round sports a pretty impressive list of investors, including the CEO of Monde Nissan (owner of popular plant-based meat product Quorn). Big Idea Ventures, a new venture fund focused on meat alternatives with backing from Tyson, also participated.

    This news comes just a few weeks after the startup held the first public taste-test of its shrimp. The cell-based crustaceans were tucked into dumplings and served at The Disruption in Food and Sustainability Summit (DFSS) on March 29th.

    For such a young company, Shiok Meats has been quickly gaining traction and notoriety. According to its CEO and co-founder Dr. Sandhya Sriram, Shiok Meats is the first cell-based meat company based in Asia. It was also the first cultured meat startup accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator.

    When we first wrote about Shiok Meats back in January, we were optimistic that their choice of location — that is, Asia — would serve them well. Not only is there far smaller competition than in, say, Silicon Valley, but Asia also has a huge appetite for alternative protein, as well as the regulatory flexibility to bring new edible technologies, like cell-based meat, to market before the U.S. does.

    Clearly, investors see the opportunity as well. Forbes reports that Shiok will use its new funding for R&D and to grow its bioengineering team. Next, the company will focus on scaling so that they can have a product to market in two to three years.

    New Culture is Developing Creamy Mozzarella Cheese Without the Cow

    If you’re seeking out plant-based dairy, odds are you’ll be able to track down pretty tasty vegan versions of yogurt, milk, butter, and ice cream. But the Holy Grail of dairy alternatives, which at least this writer thinks has yet to be cracked, is vegan cheese.

    New Culture, a New Zealand-based company that recently relocated to Silicon Valley, is trying to make an animal-free cheese that tastes just as good as the real thing. Only instead of turning to plants, they’re using biotechnology to reverse engineer cheese’s main ingredient: milk.

    According to New Culture’s founder Matt Gibson, there’s a good reason that we haven’t yet been able to make dairy-free cheese that would fool anyone: the cheesemaking process super complicated.

    Broadly speaking, milk is made up of water, fats, sugars (lactose) and proteins (casein + whey). When acid is introduced to the milk the proteins coagulate and bond to make water-resistant micelles, which are basically curds. Smoosh those curds together and you’ve got the makings of cheese.

    But without casein, it’s really, really hard to make a cheese that tastes, cuts, and melts like the real deal. “Proteins are what we love about dairy cheese,” Gibson explained me over Skype.

    As of now, there aren’t any plant-based options that can mimic casein well enough to fool anyone. So New Culture’s team decided to make it themselves using something called “recombinant protein technology.” The company uses genetically modified microbes — like yeast — and “trains” them to produce certain proteins, like casein. The team then adds water, plant-based fat, sugar, and minerals to the casein, which creates something that acts and tastes a lot like milk. “From there, it’s a pretty standard cheese-making process,” said Gibson.

    First up, New Culture will be tackling mozzarella, which Gibson called “the gold standard of cheese.” I’m partial to a sharp cheddar myself, but this makes sense from a proof of concept perspective. Mozzarella doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor to hide behind, so it’s a good blank canvas to prove just how good New Culture’s technology is. Gibson’s goal is to make a product that’s good enough to stand on its own on a cheese plate, not just as a melted pizza topping.

    New Culture’s animal-free mozzarella.

    The company has got a ways to go before they’ll get there. As of now, they haven’t even made cheese from their own proteins yet. While they’re making milk through the aforementioned recombinant protein technology, they haven’t made enough proteins to do their own mozzarella R&D. So for now, New Culture is also purchasing pre-made casein micelles to supplement their development efforts.

    The six-month-old startup is currently in science accelerator program IndieBio. Gibson told me they hope to have a cheese sample made with their own proteins ready for Demo Day on June 25.

    New Culture isn’t the first company to use this type of technology to make cow-free dairy. Most notable is Perfect Day, a Berkeley-based startup that is also creating milk proteins in a lab by creating casein and whey with genetically modified microbes.

    But where Perfect Day is targeting a B2B market, selling their “dairy” to big CPG companies, Gibson said that New Culture will have more of an Impossible Foods model. He plans to debut their cheese in a San Francisco high-end restaurant to validate the product before expanding into more mid-range food spots and maybe even retail. Gibson wouldn’t commit to an exact timeline, but said they plan to do their first taste test “at least 18 months from now.”

    The thing is, Perfect Day — which has been around 5 years longer than New Culture — initially also had a B2C go-to-market strategy. However, in 2017 they pivoted to a B2B model so they could focus their efforts on R&D and also scale more quickly. They’re currently partnering with ADM to debut a whey protein powder, so that strategy seems to be paying off.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if New Culture makes a similar pivot down the line. For a company that hasn’t even successfully developed a product, it’s pretty ambitious to say that they’ll have their own branded line of cheese in a restaurant in a year and a half. It’s also just a huge lift to simultaneously develop a product, create a brand strategy, and forge restaurant and retail partnership.

    Sure, cheese is more expensive than milk or yogurt and they’ll be debuting at a fancy restaurant, so their price point doesn’t have to be super low. But eventually it will have to be, especially if they want to capture the attention of flexitarians.

    New Culture is also working with a pretty lean team and comparatively little funding: as of now it’s just Gibson and two other founders. The company received $250k from IndieBio as part of the accelerator and has already raised an undisclosed amount of funding from “an international VC firm” over the past few months.

    Regardless of whether they end up changing go-to-market strategies, New Culture is still getting into the dairy alternative space at a good time. Consumer demand for plant-based dairy is on the rise: according to Research and Markets, the global dairy alternative market is projected to reach $26 billion by 2023. And while Perfect Day may have a head start, there’s plenty of space for two (or more) players in the alt-dairy space. Especially if it means better tasting dairy-free cheese.

    Avant Meats Develops Cultured Seafood (Fish Maw, Sea Cucumber) for a Chinese Audience

    Last week we wrote a think piece about how cultured meat — that is, meat grown outside the animal in a lab setting — will likely debut in Asia. Part of the reasoning behind this is because of all the innovative cellular agriculture startups popping up in the area, targeting local cultural demands and restrictions.

    One of said innovative startups is Avant Meats, a new cell-based meat company operating out of Hong Kong. Avant Meats isn’t developing cultured burgers, sausages, steaks, or tuna — but fish maw.

    Many Westerners (the author included) have never come across fish maw, or dried swim bladder. Upon first glance it might seem like an odd choice. But there are a few very good reasons why Avant Meats is starting with this particular food item:

    First and foremost, it’s easy(er) to make. Unlike a cut of meat like steak, which requires muscle cells, fat cells, and connective tissue, fish maw is made up of only one cell type. That simplicity allows Avant Meats to grow a fish maw from scratch in as little as one and a half months. “The route to scaling up is much simpler,” Avant Meats CEO and co-founder Carrie Chan told me over the phone.

    The choice of fish maw was also a strategic nod to Avant Meats’ target demographic: consumers in China and Hong Kong. “Our food culture is very different from the West,” said Chan. Dried fish swim bladder is considered a delicacy in traditional Chinese cuisine, prized for its texture and purported health benefits.

    There’s also an environmental aspect at play. Fish maw is in such high demand in China that the two main fish species that are hunted for it — Bahaba and Totoba — are on the brink of extinction. There are even black markets dedicated to the bladders, which can fetch up to HK$1 million ($~127,000) per kilogram. “It’s similar to shark fin,” explained Chan.

    Finally, there’s a health and safety consideration. China struggles with food traceability issues. In fact, last year a study from Food Control found that more than half of the fish fillets sold under commercial brands were mislabeled. By growing food in a lab — especially products as rare and coveted as fish maw — consumers can know exactly what they’re getting and where it came from.

    Photo: Photo by Duangphorn Wiriya on Unsplash.

    As noted in the intro, Avant Meats isn’t the only cell-based meat company targeting Asia as their launch pad. JUST, who is aiming to be the first to bring cultured meat to market, announced recently that the product will likely debut in Asia. In Singapore, Shiok Meats is developing cell-based crustaceans. Part of the reason so many cultured meat companies are looking to Asia is because it has relatively looser regulatory standards, especially in Hong Kong.

    Chan was hesitant to speak too much about the regulatory framework in Hong Kong, where Avant Meats is headquartered, but did admit that it’s an ideal place to launch a new food product. “It has a very robust market and lots of disposable income,” she told me.

    Though they have a very developed strategy, Avant Meats is a very new startup — even in a field that’s quite new itself. Chan started the company in July of last year, and was recently joined by Dr. Mario Chin, her co-founder and the company’s CSO (and only other employee).

    Considering their late start and lean team, Avant Meats likely won’t be part of the first wave of companies selling clean meat. Chan said that they expect to have a commercial product out in three to four years, though they’ll be doing taste tests of their fish maw in Q3 or Q4 of this year. But she believes their strategy to start with a simple, unique product will help them stand out. “We’re starting behind the other guys, so we better find something that’s commercially more pragmatic,” she explained.

    Fish maw is just the first stepping stone for the company. Down the road, Avant Meats will expand their lineup, developing more complex seafood products. Chan told me that next they’ll look into making sea cucumber. Their end goal is to make an entire fish filet, likely using some scaffolding to help emulate the texture.

    Chan didn’t specify what type of fish they would be tackling. There are a couple cellular aquaculture companies further along in the development process. Finless Foods is developing cell-based bluefin tuna, and Wild Type is growing salmon.

    However, both these companies are based in the U.S. Avant Meats’ Hong Kong HQ and strategic product choice could help them stand out in a field that’s getting more exciting — and more crowded — by the day.

    Cultured Meat Will Likely Debut in Asia, Not Silicon Valley. Here’s Why.

    It’s no longer a question of whether or not we can make meat without the animal. We can, and there are taste tests to prove we can do so and still make it taste and feel like the real thing. What is still up in the air is what this new product will be called, when exactly you’ll be able to buy it, and where it will be available.

    The “where” is getting clearer: Asia. JUST, the San Francisco-based company racing to be the first to bring cell-based meat to market, announced in a CBS San Francisco interview last month that they would debut their first product — a cultured chicken nugget — in Asia sometime this year. The exact country was not specified.

    This news surprised me. The majority of startups developing cell-based meat are in Silicon Valley, Europe, or Israel, so I naturally assumed cultured meat would launch in one of those spots.

    But when I sat down to think about it, there are actually quite a few good reasons why Asia is the ideal launch grounds for this new food.

    New startups

    Asia is an up-and-coming hotspot for cellular agriculture, the technology behind cultured meat. These past few months alone we’ve seen a flurry of new cell-based activity in the geographic area:

    • Shiok Meats, a startup based in Singapore, is developing cultured crustaceans, like shrimp and crab. Co-founder Dr. Sandhya Sriram told us last year that the company is planning a taste test of its cultured shrimp later this month in Singapore and will roll out its products in Southeast Asia in a few years. The startup also just became the first cell-based meat company to be accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator.
    • In Hong Kong, Avant Meats is in the early stages of developing a cultured-fish product. In an interview with the Good Food Institute (GFI), Avant Meats founder Carrie Chan said their product will be “tailored for the preference and consumption behavior of consumers in China and Asia,” and will likely launch there.
    • Japanese biohacking hobbyist club Shojinmeat is enabling anyone to grow their own meat by open-sourcing cellular agriculture technology. It also has a spinoff startup, Integriculture.
    • A few weeks ago, the GFI announced they would partner with the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) to set up a research center for cellular agriculture in Mumbai. They plan to set up a lab in the city by 2020 and construct a larger facility the following year.

    This recent uptick in cellular agriculture activity in Asia isn’t out of the blue. In fact, there are a couple of reasons why Asia is a more fertile launching ground for cell-based meat than, say, the U.S.

    Regulations

    Before cultured meat can get to our plates, we need to figure out how to regulate it. In fact, regulatory clearance — the official stamp that cell-based meat is safe to eat — is probably the biggest hurdle to getting clean meat to market.

    In the U.S., we have a path in place — mostly. The USDA and FDA decided last year to jointly regulate cell-based meat. However, the two organizations left a lot of things open-ended — including the question of labeling. Until labeling is sorted out, cultured meat won’t be approved by the FDA and can’t be legally sold in the U.S.

    Of course, cell-based meat will have to pass muster by regulators in Asia as well before it can be sold. But in a phone interview, Shiok Meats’ Sriram told me that “Asia seems to be pushing the regulators within to come up with a framework sooner than the West.”

    In particular, Hong Kong seems a likely spot for the launch of cultured meat. “Hong Kong is … a free market where many industries are not heavily regulated, including food,” Elaine Siu, GFI’s Managing Director of Asia-Pacific, told me in an interview. While the regulatory landscapes of the E.U. and China are extremely stringent, Hong Kong is comparatively more flexible — at least for the moment.

    The Impossible Burger.

    Consumer Interest

    A 2018 study from Kadence International showed that 66 percent of Americans would try clean meat, as would 75 percent of people in Belgium and the Netherlands.

    There’s less data out there on Asian consumers’ openness towards cultured meat. However, one study by Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems cites higher levels of consumer acceptance in China and India than the U.S. — almost two-thirds of Chinese people were very or extremely likely to purchase cultured meat. Indeed, Sriram seems confident that there’s more demand for clean meat in Asia than in the U.S. “People in Asia are super interested and intrigued by the concept of clean meat,” she told me.

    She referenced the recent launch of the Impossible burger in Singapore as a use-case for the demand for meat alternatives. “1000’s of people queued up for a taste of it!” she wrote to me over email, referencing the “bleeding” vegan burger. Plant-based meat is less controversial than cell-based meat, sure. But the success of Impossible in Singapore backs up a report from Allied Market Research which cites Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing market for meat alternatives.

    GFI’s Siu also noted that, at least in Hong Kong, people are “comfort[able] with trying new products” and have a wide-ranging and diverse palate. That, plus the relatively high spending power of Hong Kong inhabitants, could make its population the perfect test ground for cell-based meat.

    Investment Interest


    In order to continue developing better iterations of cell-based meat — better texture, cheaper production methods, etc. — researchers need some serious capital.

    So far a wide variety of investors have gotten involved in the space, from celebrities like Bill Gates and Richard Branson to major meat companies like Tyson and PHW Group (one of Europe’s largest poultry producers).

    In certain Asian countries, the government is eager to get involved. The Singaporean government has “publicly announced its interest and investment into the cell-based agriculture space,” according to Siu. She told me that Japan has also expressed interest. Having government support could not only be a financial boon, but could also help cellular agriculture companies expedite the tricky regulatory process for cultured meat.

    One thing might make investment tricky though, at least in China. In 2017 the country signed a $300 million agreement with Israel promising that the country would import cell-based meat from Israel companies SuperMeat, Future Meat Technologies, and Meat the Future. That could hinder China’s ability to invest in/import clean meat from nearby Asian countries, though it wouldn’t necessarily quench Chinese investors’ thirst for meat alternatives. 

    JUST’s cell-based chicken nuggets.

    Manufacturing Capabilities

    One of the obvious advantages of producing clean meat in Asia is its wealth of manufacturing resources. They have the necessary production infrastructure in place to scale clean meat, making it affordable and more widely accessible faster. According to Deloitte, five Asia-Pacific nations are expected to be in the top 10 global manufacturers by 2020.

    This might not be relevant to producers in the immediate future. For now, cultured meat production is happening on a relatively small scale, usually in research labs. But as cellular agriculture technology improves and demand increases, as I assume it will, manufacturing for cell-based meat will scale up quickly. At that time, Asia’s wealth of production facilities — and manufacturing prowess — will become a huge help.

    —

    Despite the recent uptick in cellular agriculture activity in Asia, as of now there are many more cell-based meat startups in the U.S. and Europe. “But if we are looking into a few years from now, then the answer may be different,” Siu predicted.

    That’s not to say that there won’t be any cellular agriculture developments in the U.S. or Europe. There will be. But if JUST indeed launches its first clean chicken nugget in Asia, I believe that that’s where we’ll see some of the more exciting cultured meat innovations over the next few years. Critically, it’s also where we’ll get the first data points about consumer reactions to cultured meat.

    All this to say that when it comes to the future of cellular agriculture, I’d spend less time watching what’s happening in Silicon Valley, and more time watching Hong Kong.

    Good Food Institute Announces Winners of $3M Grant to Revolutionize Meat Alternatives

    Back in September, GFI called for applicants for a $3 million grant to fund research into plant- and cell-based meat. Yesterday, the company named the 14 winning scientists, each of whom will receive up to $250,000 over the next two years to fund their investigations.

    The chosen projects are pretty evenly divided between cell-based meat (six companies) and plant-based meat (eight companies). Some topics were broad, like how to scale up cell-based meat production, how to improve texture in plant-based meats. Others were quite specific, like a project exploring the potential of red seaweed as a meat substitute, or a Norwegian research center building out a “farmyard” of animal tissue for cell-based meat.

    The most interesting part of the grant awards, however, is the purpose behind the grant itself. According to an email from GFI to The Spoon, the grant was created in order to establish “a base of scientific inquiry” in the meat alternative space. The email goes on to say that the science of plant-based and cell-based meat “skipped a step,” leaping immediately from idea to product in development by private companies. That means that there’s no scientific basis for the technology, so meat alternative companies end up doing duplicating a lot of scientific legwork.

    Which is actually true. Many cell-based and plant-based companies are very protective of their technologies (the exception being Shojinmeat’s open source clean meat initiative), so any new company in the space basically has to start from scratch. That means a lot of trial and error, a lot of wasted money, and a slower route towards the end goal: making a product that tastes as good as — and costs less than — traditional meat.

    But if the GFI’s chosen scientists can help establish some base framework for the technology used to create plant-based and cell-based meats, alterna-meat companies new and old could use it as a resource to optimize R&D and eventual product scaling. And with $250,000 in their coffers, hopefully the winning scientists will be able to do just that.

    Shiok Meats is The First Cell-Based Meat Company in Southeast Asia

    If you’ve been on the internet in the past, oh, year or so, you’ve probably heard some media buzz about cell-based meat: animal tissue produced outside of an animal. But the pool of companies working in this space is actually pretty small in terms of product and geography.

    Cellular aquacultured startup Shiok Meats is pushing the industry envelope on both accounts. Firstly, they’re developing ways to make cell-based crustaceans. Companies are working on ground beef, steak, pork sausages, salmon, and tuna — but as far as I’ve heard (and granted, some companies are in stealth mode), Shiok is the first to tackle crab, lobster, and shrimp.

    When I spoke with Shiok Meats CEO and co-founder Dr. Sandhya Sriram, my first question was about texture. Replicating meat’s texture is one of the biggest challenges for cellular agriculture/aquaculture companies, and crustaceans in particular have a toothsome bite that seems like it would be much harder to copy than, say, ground beef or processed pork sausage. But Sriram is undaunted. “Yes, the technology and science are different [than other clean meat companies,] but we all have similar challenges,” she told me. They also won’t be trying to make the shell, which keeps things simpler. And with new innovations continuously being developed to facilitate cell growth, such as edible scaffolds, perhaps Shiok’s relatively late entrance will serve them well.

    The fact that I could eventually taste a cell-based lobster roll is certainly exciting, but what’s more notable about Shiok Meats is its location. The startup is based in Singapore, which makes it, according to Sriram, the first cell-based meat company in Southeast Asia.

    This is huge. Asia is the largest meat producer in the world, making 40-50 percent of the world’s meat. From a consumption perspective, there’s expected to be a 78 percent increase in demand for meat and seafood by year 2050. Yet the vast majority of cultured meat companies are based in the U.S. or, across the Atlantic, in the U.K. and Israel. (The notable exception is Shojinmeat, a Japanese company open sourcing clean meat production.) It makes sense that a company is bringing cell-based meat, which some herald as the solution to the evils of industrial meat consumption, to one of the regions where it could make the biggest impact.

    But the choice to operate out of Singapore brings plenty of challenges. At the Alternative Protein Show this week in San Francisco, Sriram spoke about the differences between operating a cell-based meat company in the U.S. vs. Asia. Cultured meat companies in the U.S. have more access to funding and infrastructure than they would in Asia, and American and European consumers are more amenable to the concept of meat grown outside the animal.

    Sriram told me that they expect to bring their first product to market in 3-5 years, with a taste test happening in the next year in high-end restaurants. Their target market is Asia-Pacific, so they’ll start rolling out products in Singapore, Hong Kong, and India, then eventually move onto Australia. Eventually, Shiok will sell their cell-based crustaceans to food companies who will incorporate their products into frozen meals.

    For now, Shiok Meats is still in the R&D phase. They’ve developed a media (food which helps the animal cells grow) made of synthetic and plant-based substances, so they don’t have to use the very contentious Fetal Bovine Serum. They just closed their pre-seed round for an undisclosed amount and are working on raising a seed round over the next few months.

    Currently, Shiok Meats just staffed by Sriram and her co-founder Ka Yi Ling. Compared to “veteran” cell-based meat companies like Memphis Meats, which was founded in 2015, the startup is small, young, and untested. But because of its location, Shiok Meats has the potential to make a global impact that could far outweigh cultured meat companies in the U.S. and Europe.