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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

clean meat

FDA to Hold Public Meeting on Cultured Meat

There has been a lot of activity and investment in the lab-grown meat, or “cultured” meat space in the past year. Enough so that it has attracted the attention of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which announced today that it will be holding a public meeting about cultured meat technology next month.

For the uninitiated, cultured meat is animal tissue grown in a lab setting. It’s typically made through the use of starter cells from the animal, which are then developed in some kind of medium (often fetal bovine serum) in a bioreactor, then scaffolded to provide shape or texture.

Ethical and environmental issues with raising animals for slaughter and consumption have driven much of the competition and advancement in the cultured meat space, with Memphis Meats, SuperMeat, Future Meat, Aleph Farms and JUST among the leaders of this new type of food.

While it was once ridiculously expensive to grow meat in a lab, the large number of players and technological developments in the space are bringing that price down, and it seems that the FDA wants to be fully prepared before cultured meat makes it to the grocery aisle.

A meeting entitled “Foods Produced Using Animal Cell Culture Technology” will be held on July 12 in College Park, Maryland. From the FDA’s site:

The public meeting will give interested parties and the public an opportunity to comment on these emerging food technologies. Specifically, the agency is asking for input, relevant data and information on the following questions:

  • What considerations specific to animal cell culture technology would be appropriate to include in evaluation of food produced by this method of manufacture?
  • What kinds of variations in manufacturing methods would be relevant to safety for foods produced by animal cell culture technology?
  • What kinds of substances would be used in the manufacture of foods produced using animal cell culture technology and what considerations would be appropriate in evaluating the safety of these uses?
  • Are the potential hazards associated with production of foods using animal cell culture technology different from those associated with traditional food production/processing?
  • Is there a need for unique control measures to address potential hazards associated with production of foods using animal cell culture technology?

In a statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., and FDA Deputy Commissioner Anna Abram said that they want to “help foster dialogue regarding these emerging food technologies.” It went on to assert the USDA’s jurisdiction over cultured meat because, well, cultured meat is food, after all.

In reaction to the FDA’s announcement today, The Good Food Institute, which helps promote the work being done on clean meat, released a statement of its own saying “We are heartened to see that FDA is engaged in thinking through how clean meat can come to market under the existing regulatory framework. We are also encouraged that the FDA commissioner has acknowledged the benefits of clean meat, including animal welfare and environmental impacts. The United States has a robust food regulatory regime that is more than capable of ensuring that clean meat is safe and truthfully labeled.”

Speaking of labels, the FDA said this meeting will also include what we should actually label lab-grown meat. Cultured meat has raised the hackles of traditional meat producers who do not want the waters of what we consume muddied. Earlier this year, the United States Cattlemen’s Association filed a petition with the USDA asking for beef labeling requirements. The Cattlemen were specifically asking that “…any product labeled as “beef” come from cattle that have been born, raised, and harvested in the traditional manner, rather than coming from alternative sources such as a synthetic product from plant, insects, or other non-animal components and any product grown in labs from animal cells.”

If our recent “Future of Meat” meetup in Seattle is any indication, the public meeting next month promises to be a rousing event, and more importantly, the start of a broader discussion around alternative meats. If you’re going, be sure to drop us a line and tell us how it went.

Beyond Burger(s): Aleph Farms Wants to Grow Steak Outside the Animal

It’s not even to market yet, and Israeli-based startup Aleph Farms already wants to shake up the cultured meat industry. They’re developing a new way to grow clean meat; one that will (hopefully) give it the same texture, taste, and eating experience as its traditional counterparts. 

Co-founders Didier Toubia (CEO) and Professor Shulamit Levenberg (CSO) started Aleph Farms in 2017. Levenburg had been researching tissue engineering for medical purposes for 15 years, but turned her attention to growing complex-textured meats in 2016. Today Aleph Farms’ scientists work out of a lab in the Weizmann Institute of Science just south of Tel Aviv.

What sets Aleph Farms apart from other cultured meat companies is their focus on two things: structure and texture. They want to go way beyond ground meat, which is what other companies like Memphis Meats and Mosa Meats have been able to make so far — Aleph hopes to produce something that has the same complex texture and mouthfeel as, say, grass-fed steak. They’re also focusing strictly on beef, partially because of its disproportionately high environmental footprint, but also because it’s much more challenging to replicate than chicken or duck.

Of course, all cultured meat companies hope to eventually make a product that replicates the texture and shape of traditional meat. But Aleph Farms is unique on how single-mindedly they approach the problem. Instead of starting with a simpler ground “meat” product and later developing 3D tissue-growing technology, they’re hoping to skip ahead and bring a fully developed product — one with the same texture, structure, and taste as beef — to market.

To do that, their scientists are working on growing four types of cells: muscle, fat, blood vessels, and connective tissue. While those last two might not sound very appetizing, Toubia said that they’re critical to replicating the texture of meat. Once they cultivate the various types of cells, they place them on scaffolds which act as a framework for the cells to cling onto. That way, the four types of cells can grow together into a finished product with the shape of steak — not just blobs of separate cell types in petri dishes that have to be manually combined.

According to Toubia, Aleph Farms is the only company developing this technology for beef.

Toubia hopes to grow meat much like farmers grow plants.

But they’re is still a ways away from making a steak that would fool anyone. Toubia said that they’re still in the R&D phase, and probably wouldn’t finish developing their first product for a few years. After that, they’ll still have to scale up production and make their “meat” affordable.

With JUST Foods aiming to make the first sale of a cultured meat product by the end of 2018, and Finless Foods and Memphis Meats not far behind (2019 and 2021, respectively), Aleph Farms won’t win the race to bring clean meat to market. But if they can achieve their goal of growing meat outside a cow that’s indistinguishable from “the real thing,” the startup might be able to convert the more hardcore carnivores who won’t be swayed by reasonable meat approximations. Slow(er) and steady might not be such a bad thing.

If cultured meat ever hopes to disrupt — or even replace — the meat industry, it has to mimic meat exactly. Mark Post, who made the first lab-grown burger in 2013 and started the company Mosa Meats, wrote that it has to “recreate conventional meat in all of its physical sensations, such as visual appearance, smell, texture and of course, taste.”

That means that a cultured steak not only has to look and taste like a steak, it also has to have the same texture, the same mouthfeel, and the react the same way as it’s cooked. And, considering that the only lab-grown meat we’ve seen so far has been made of thousands of muscle strands smushed together with added fat, flavor, and coloring, we’ve got a long way to go.

But Aleph Farms has a leg up on the competition in a few ways.

First and foremost, according to Toubia, are their connections. Specifically Professor Levenberg’s extensive experience in tissue engineering, which informs the core of Aleph Farms’ production methods.

They also have friends in quite high places. The startup partnered with Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, and participated in Israeli food-tech incubator The Kitchen, which is owned by food product manufacturing giant Strauss Group. That means that Strauss Group invested in, and has a direct stake (steak?) in Aleph.

Though Strauss Group isn’t particularly active in meat products, this relationship still brings to mind stories like Tyson Foods’ investment in Memphis Meats and Future Meat. 

Aleph Farms is also in a promising area for cultured meat. They’re based in Israel, along with other clean cultured meat companies Supermeat and Future Meat. Toubia guessed that this concentration was probably thanks to a few factors: Israel’s friendliness towards entrepreneurs, their expertise in and open laws about stem cells; and their large vegan community.

Talk of Israel brought our conversation to a question that often comes up when discussing the implications of cultured meat: will lab-grown pork be kosher? According to Toubia, the answer will depend on whether or not clean meat is considered “meat” from a religious perspective. If it is, cultured pork will not be kosher; but if it’s not, it would be. Which could radically change the diet of Jews that keep kosher, or Muslims who keep Halal, or Hindus who abstain from beef, etc.

As with most labeling issues around lab-grown meat, there’s no consensus on this issue yet. But Toubia likes this question because it gives him an opportunity to clarify what the cultured meat he’s working on actually is: “It’s really meat,” he said. “The end product is real meat cells which are not modified, just grown outside the animal.” So while the production method might differ, the end result is the same.

Though we may call what they make lab-grown meat, at least for now, Aleph Farms’ finished product will not be grown in a lab. “The cultured meat that people buy in grocery stores will not be grown in a lab,” said Toubia. Instead, he said it will be grown in a facility similar to a brewery — though he views it more like a farm. “I like to think of those facilities as ‘biofarms,’ places to farm animal tissue,” Toubia said. Which is why they decided to include “farms” in the name of their company. 

Aleph Farms is currently venture backed; they raised a seed round for an undisclosed amount in 2017, and are starting the process for a Series A round this year. Which puts them quite a bit behind other cultured meat companies who have already raised millions of dollars from high-profile investors like Bill Gates, Cargill, and Richard Branson. 

However, if they can nail the texture of a steak, Aleph Farms has a real shot at converting even the most hardcore of carnivores. And that, we’re happy to wait for.

Shojinmeat is Growing a DIY Clean Meat Community

In our video conference chat, Yuki Hanyu is almost matter of fact as he explains to me the steps involved when growing your own lab meat (or clean meat, whatever you want to call it) at home. It involves a fertilized chicken egg, dry ice, a centrifuge and an incubator. His English is a little broken, but his instructions are so clear I pause to wonder, “Well, why aren’t I growing lab meat in my kitchen?”

While the idea of cultivating lab-grown meat in your garage may sound like the beginnings of some 1980s B-movie, there are actually groups of people working on just such endeavors — and Hanyu is connecting them online with the Shojinmeat Project.

Hanyu, who has a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Oxford, started Shojinmeat in 2014 as part of his mission to democratize cell agriculture, including cell culture technology. Based out of Tokyo, Shojinmeat is now an active Slack channel that connects roughly 30 DIY citizen scientists from across Japan. They gather to talk about their homegrown meat experiments and related topics such as tissue engineering, animal welfare, and regenerative medicine. Shojinmeat has also put out ‘zines with articles and pictures about their work, and recently made a move to the West by creating an English-speaking Slack channel.

When you think of lab-grown meat, you probably think of–you know–a lab, with pristine white countertops, glass walls, and beakers gurgling. And if you know your way around lab meat, you may also know that the most common form of cell media is fetal bovine serum (FBS), which comes from slaughtered cow fetuses. You may wonder how everyday people would get their hands on such a thing, which is difficult to produce and therefore very expensive.

According to their presentation deck, Shojinmeat has done away with FBS altogether, using yeast extract as a cheaper, plant-based media, oftentimes supplemented with egg whites for necessary growth factors.

The homegrown meat process starts with a fertilized egg which, at least in Japan, is available at the local supermarket. Without getting too graphic, you incubate that egg for a dozen days, crack it open and extract your cells from the fetus inside.

Now those cells need to multiply. Historically, according to Hanyu, the biggest barrier to homegrown meat has been contamination. In order to multiply, meat cells need to be incubated at 38.5 degrees Celsius with 100 percent humidity — which happens to also be the perfect temperature for mold. Hanyu says that the egg whites make more common culture media mold-resistant.

Finally, to give the meat structure, Hanyu adds konjac, an East Asian plant, which the meat cells glom on to, adding depth. After incubating for a week to ten days, you will have a visible amount of meat growing!

Hanyu likens DIY lab meat enthusiasts to homebrewers, saying “They grow yeast cells, we grow meat.” While people in the Shojinmeat group have been successful growing meat, Hanyu didn’t mention anything about its taste during our chat.

But Hanyu is no mere enthusiast. In 2015 he spun out Integriculture, an ambitious startup that he hopes will create a “general purpose large-scale cell culture system.” He’s assembled a team of scientists and Hanyu says the company has already patented its core concept. But with Integriculture, Hanyu is thinking beyond meat (no pun intended), and even beyond our own planet.

In the short term, Integriculture won’t even make meat. Instead, it will use its cell growing technology to create customized products for cosmetics and supplements companies. Hanyu is vague on details, but says he’s been talking with potential customers who are interested in Integriculture’s general purpose cell growth capabilities across a wide array of applications.

Further out, the company plans to create a clean meat infrastructure that it could license out to other companies. Which means you probably won’t see Integriculture meat on the store shelves; instead, Integriculture’s process will be used to create meat that will be branded and sold by other companies.

Eventually, and this was where Hanyu’s straightforward demeanor gave way to something altogether more animated, Integriculture wants to create a clean meat facility that could be used on Mars. “We’re sci-fi freaks!” he said, beaming.

When asked what makes his company different from other players in the lab-meat space, such as Memphis Meat and SuperMeat, Hanyu says that Integriculture’s technology is more general purpose. In addition to meat, Integriculture has proven that it can grow foie gras (liver), and Hanyu says they can also grow other types of cells, such as pancreatic cells (though in our talk he did not mention any pharmaceutical applications).

Hanyu said that Integriculture is currently closing a ¥300,000,000 ($2.7 million USD) round of funding. While the company has space age dreams, cultured meat has the potential to make a big impact right here on Earth by providing a more eco-friendly and safer source of animal protein to the planet’s growing population.

Until lab meat becomes more mainstream, however, Shojinmeat will be growing its own culture of DIY enthusiasts who create their own meat at home. Will you be among them?