Australian cultivated meat company Magic Valley this week proclaimed itself “the world’s first cultured lamb company” and provided some details on what it’s been up to since its recent launch. The company is currently in prototype stage and in the process of raising seed funding.
As a meat choice, lamb stands out in a world where the majority of cultivated meat companies are busy making beef, chicken, and pork analogues. In the U.S., lamb consumption has been on the decline since the 1960s, though consumption worldwide is actually expected to rise slightly. Growth is predicted to be the highest in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
Lamb production is similar to other forms of livestock production in terms of the land and water resources required to supply demand. Cultivated lamb, created by taking cells from a lamb and growing them in a nutrient-rich medium, addresses the problem of resources when it comes to developing a more sustainable end product. Magic Valley says it uses pluripotent stem cells, otherwise known as “master cells” that can create endless copies of themselves. The company does not use Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS), the expensive and highly controversial growth medium many cultivated meat companies are moving away from at this point.
To start, the Melbourne-based company said that its focus for now is on developing cultivated lamb products, including mince, strips, steaks, and, and chops.
Lamb is typically more expensive to buy than chicken or beef, so one major challenge for Magic Valley (and any other company hoping to develop a cultivated version) will be reaching price parity with that traditional lamb meat. There is also the ever-present question of what happens to the livelihoods of livestock producers if and when cultivated meat scales enough to feed global consumers en masse. Some have argued that traditional meat producers are actually a critical part of the evolution of cultivated meat, and that these groups could invest in bioreactors to grow meat right on the farm, becoming hybrid farmers of traditional and cultivated meat.
Answers to some of those questions are yet a long ways off. Nearer term, most cultivated meat companies are just trying to get to market in some capacity. Magic Valley has no direct competitors right now, since it’s the only known company currently developing cultivated lamb. However, another Australian company, Vow, specializes in “exotic” cultured meats and is currently amassing a cell library that includes everything from water buffalo to kangaroo. Lamb may very well end up in that cell library one of these days.
Magic Valley, meanwhile, hopes to complete its prototype and have products on shelves within one to two years.
