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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Future Food: So… Lab-grown Breastmilk is a Thing Now

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Here is a sentence I never thought that I would type: It looks like lab-grown breastmilk might be a thing.

I first heard of this technology back in December when I interviewed the team behind TurtleTree Labs, a Singaporean startup that uses lactating mammary gland cells to produce milk. They can use the cells of any animal, but the company is starting with human breastmilk because a) it has a higher price point and thus can enter the market more quickly, and b) nobody else is doing it.

Then yesterday I spoke with BIOMILQ, a U.S.-based startup doing basically the same thing. However, while TurtleTree will eventually use its tech to develop a suite of milks, BIOMILQ is focused exclusively on developing human breastmilk.

It’s strange how quickly you get used to an idea. Back when I first heard about TurtleTree, I wrote a Future Food newsletter asking whether or not the world is ready to accept the idea of human breastmilk grown in a lab. (Conclusion: Maybe not yet, but soon.) Now that more companies are entering the space, I’m no longer questioning if people will accept this new technology, but when we’ll be able to put it to the test.

That’s why it’s so exciting to cover this space. Eating a “bleeding” plant-based burger sounds offputting, then Impossible Foods gets on the menu at Burger King. The idea of growing milk from genetically modified microbes starts out sounding far-fetched, then a few months later you’re eating ice cream made by Perfect Day.

Growing breastmilk in a lab might have a slightly longer adjustment period, but given the increasing interest in other cultured foods like meat and dairy, I really think it will become normalized. Provided these companies can actually scale and reach their pricing goals (admittedly, a big “if”), the technology could also have a massive potential in lower-income parts of the world without access to consistent infant nutrition.

Kind of makes you wonder what will become a “thing” next, huh?

Photo: Impossible Foods

Impossible Food claps back against Big Beef ad
If you’re one of those people who only watch the Super Bowl for the ads (guilty), you might have seen a very pointed spot attacking alternative meat. The next day Impossible Foods released a parody of that ad on YouTube.

You can see the full commercials here, but I’ll summarize and say that both featured spelling bees with cute kids having to spell words that are unappetizing ingredients — one found in meat alternatives, the other in beef. P’s and Q’s aside, it’s interesting (though not altogether surprising) these types of attack ads are happening at all. We’re used to seeing them around politicians, but meat? Not so much.

Clearly Big Beef and its friends are nervous about the growth of meat alternatives and are trying to throw money at the problem. Meat lobbying groups are already fighting plant-based meat in the courtroom over labeling restrictions, with Tofurky stepping up as leader of the resistance. It seems like Impossible is ready to do the same in the advertising field.

But fighting groups with funds hefty enough to pay for an ad during the Super Bowl ad will be a tough battle — alternative meat companies better come prepared for the fight.

Protein ’round the web

  • Canadian startup Noblegen has unveiled its first product: a plant-based “egg” that can work in scrambles as well as in baking (h/t FoodNavigator).
  • Purple Carrot, the plant-based meal kit company, is now including products from meatless meat brands Lightlife and Field Roast in its pre-prepped kits.
  • Ripple is launching a line of ice creams made with its signature pea protein-derived Ripptein (via Vegnews).
  • Israeli cultured meat company Aleph Farms is launching an educational center to educate consumers on cell-based meat.

Not sure what to get your S.O. for Valentine’s? How about some plant-based bacon? Prime Roots will be doing a one-day presale of its fungi-based “bacon” on February 14 — you can pick some up here while supplies last.

Eat well,
Catherine

BlueNalu Partners with Nutreco to Advance Cell-based Fish ‘Feed’

BlueNalu, a cellular aquaculture company growing seafood in the lab, announced a partnership with Nutreco, one of the world’s largest fish feed companies, late last week.

Speaking with BlueNalu CEO Lou Cooperhouse at the time, he told me that working with Nutreco will help BlueNalu commercialize its cell-based seafood in two ways. First, BlueNalu can tap into Nutreco’s extensive knowledge of fish feed so that BlueNalu can optimize its media: the nutrient-dense “food” in which cell cultures are grown.

Though Nutreco currently focuses on feeding live fish, Cooperhouse said that their solution has very similar components to what BlueNalu uses to grow its fish cells in a lab. In fact, he claims that making food for cell cultures is even simpler. “If you’re feeding a living fish, they need certain ingredients to maintain skin, brain, etc,” he said. “But we’re only trying to feed cells that we need.” Think: muscle and fat cells. 

Once BlueNalu brings its cell-based fish to market — which he hopes will be within two years — Cooperhouse said that Nutreco could also serve as a supply chain partner for media ingredients. BlueNalu will need a lot of feed; in five years, the startup plans build a massive facility that will produce a whopping 18 million pounds of cell-baased seafood per year.

Media (or cell food) is typically one of the most significant hurdles for cell-based meat and seafood companies. Extracting cells from an animal is cheap; it’s growing them to a significant number in a short time frame that’s the real challenge. Currently media is quite costly, which is why cell-based meat is so costly (it’s typically at least 10x more expensive than animal meat).

Other companies are trying to solve the cell culture feed issue. Canadian startup Future Fields is developing an animal-free media to sell to cellular agriculture companies; in Japan, Integriculture is developing its own B2B feed solution. Some cellular ag companies, like JUST, are developing their own plant-based media internally.

The partnership with Nutreco could give BlueNalu a leg up over other cultured seafood companies. Nutreco’s expertise and existing supply chain could help the cell-based fish startup develop more efficient growth media, and scale it more quickly when the time comes.

But the partnership isn’t just beneficial for BlueNalu. It will also give Nutreco an “in” to the cell-based meat space, where it will join other large ingredient suppliers like Merck and Cargill. Talk about a big fish in a small pond.

Lab-Made Cheese Maker Legendairy Raises $4.7 Million

Legendairy Foods, which ferments microorganisms into cheeses with the same process used for making insulin, has raised $4.7 million from a group of investors that include German drugs and tech company Merck KGaA (not to be confused with the American drug company, Merck) and UK-based investment company Agronomics.

The Berlin-based startup told Bloomberg it has already created prototypes of mozzarella and ricotta. The company’s process involves mixing microorganisms and sugar, fermenting them into milk protein and creating dairy products such as cheese. It also plans to integrate plant-based ingredients into its products.

“The food industry has crossed an inflection point — for the first time in human history, we are capable of producing real dairy products without the need of breeding and raising animals,” Raffael Wohlgensinger, co-founder and CEO of Legendairy, said in an investor release. He added that the company will “fully leverage our core technology and bring our delicious, animal-free cheese to market in the coming years.”

Legendairy, which says it is Europe’s first cellular agriculture company developing lab-grown dairy products, joins a growing group of startups dedicated to removing animals from the process of creating milk. Perfect Day, which this month raised $140 million in Series C funding, creates dairy products with genetically engineered microbes and plans to sell its products to foodmakers. Another company that creates dairy from genetically engineered microbes is New Culture, which closed a $3.5 million seed round. It plans to sell its cheeses into high-end restaurants. Meanwhile, TurtleTree Labs is creating milk in a whole different way: actually growing mammary gland cells in a lab to produce milk.

It’s clear that in the coming years, there will be plenty of options besides nut- and soy-based milk and cheeses for those who forgo animal-derived dairy products.

TurtleTree Labs is Creating All Kinds of Milk (Even Human Milk) in a Lab

When I first heard about TurtleTree Labs, a new self-described “clean milk” company based in Singapore, I assumed that the startup was creating milk proteins from genetically modified microbes, similar to alternative dairy companies like Perfect Day or New Culture.

Boy, was I wrong. “That’s very much not what we’re doing,” TurtleTree’s CTO Max Rye explained to me over the phone. Instead, their scientists are using cellular agriculture to grow mammary gland cells in a lab which actually lactate milk.

And by milk, we mean any kind of milk — not just cow milk. In fact, according to TurtleTree’s CEO Fengru Lin their first product will likely be human milk.

Yep, human. She said that they’ll focus on human breastmilk initially for a few reasons. One, it could sell at a much higher cost, so they could reach price parity more quickly than with, say, cow’s milk. For context, their cultured milk — any type — currently costs about $138 per liter to produce.

However, TurtleTree won’t be selling its cell-based milk directly to consumers. Instead, the company plans to license out its milk-producing technology, for which it has a provisional patent, to large dairy companies as a SaaS model.

Rye told me that since the milk is cell-based, there’s a huge amount of versatility to their product. Their scientists can play with the settings to create milk that’s lactose-free and has different cholesterol and fat levels. So, for example, they could make a healthier milk for those following strict diets, or an ultra-creamy options for gourmet chefs. 

The startup plans to have a media day in Q1 of next year to debut their first glass of milk, which will likely be human. It’ll be a while yet before they enter the market — two years, according to Lin. The startup has raised an undisclosed amount of funding and is in the midst of raising their seed round. 

TurtleTree’s decision to operate out of Singapore is a very conscious one. Not only were two of the four co-founders already based there, but the local government is very supportive of food tech initiatives. The country has a goal to produce 30 percent of its own food by 2030 (they currently import over 90 percent). As a result, the Singaporean government gives more support to startups to get new products to market more quickly. 

That could give TurtleTree an advantage against other dairy disruptors. As I mentioned at the beginning of the piece, TurtleTree isn’t the only company trying to make milk without the animal. Perfect Day or New Culture are both using microbes to create the protein building blocks of dairy — casein and whey — to create milk that’s genetically similar to the real thing. However, Rye said that TurtleTree has an advantage over these competitors because they can make milk “without having to break it down piece by piece.” Their technology is also species agnostic, meaning they can create milk of any animal without having to rebuild an entirely new process.

I understand why heading to market with cell-based human milk makes sense from a cost perspective, but I’m not sure how well it’ll be received — at least at first. People are pretty skeptical about eating lab-grown food to begin with. Developing a product that normally only comes from humans has a distinctly Soylent Green-y vibe that could be very off-putting to consumers. Especially as something to feed to their babies.

However, as cultured meat and other products hit the market and become more commonplace, maybe that perception will change.

Meatable Raises $10M to Develop Cultivated Pork Prototype

Today cultured meat startup Meatable announced it had raised an additional $10 million in seed funding. The capital came from existing investors including BlueYard Capital, as well as angel investors and the European Commission. This brings Meatable’s total funding to $13 million.

According to the press announcement, the Dutch startup will use its new capital to reach its goal of unveiling its first cultivated pork prototype in the summer of 2020.

So far 2019 has been a boom year for cell-based meat and seafood funding. Shiok Meat raised $5.3 million over two funding rounds, Future Meat secured $14 million, and Wild Type closed a $12.5 million Series A, to name a few fundraises of note.

In the growing crowd of cultured meat companies, Meatable hopes to differentiate itself with speed and versatility. Founded in 2018, the company has been developing a technology that will let it grow meat from a single cell quickly, and without the need for controversial (and expensive) Fetal Bovine Serum.

They do this by using pluripotent stem cells, which can proliferate faster than regular stem cells and are malleable, meaning they can be coaxed to turn into any type of animal cell (muscle, fat, etc). Meatable claims that with its unique technology it can make large batches of animal tissue cells in a matter of days to weeks, whereas most companies need months. The startup has an exclusive license to use their pluripotent cell-based technology, which could give them an advantage in the race to bring tasty, affordable cultured meat to market.

It seems they’re going to reach that goal faster than expected. When I spoke to Meatable’s co-founders last October they told me they were hoping to debut a prototype in three years. With a new release date of next summer, clearly things have accelerated — likely in part thanks to their substantial new funding.

Japanese Startup Integriculture Tests Foie Gras Grown in a Lab

Foie gras is one of the most contentious animal products out there. In order to get the goose liver so fatty, farmers have to force feed the animals — a practice that makes foie gras both ethically iffy and really expensive. Some cities are even considering banning it altogether.

However, Japanese cellular agriculture startup Integriculture is developing a cultured foie gras that can be made entirely without animals and therefore without the ethical hangups. This week, the company got one step closer to its goal when it did a private taste test of its cell-based liver at the Beyond Next Ventures office in Tokyo.

Integriculture has done previous tests of its product, but according to an email from Integriculture CEO Yuki Hanyu, this version was significantly more sophisticated. He noted that previous experiments were “chicken cell liver paste,” while this new product was “actual fat-loaded duck liver cells.” It apparently tasted much better and had a cleaner flavor than earlier versions. Hanyu said that they didn’t calculate the cost of producing the cultured foie gras.

The company is also finishing development on their SpaceSalt, a powdered version of cell media (the nutrient-rich bath in which cellular meat is grown) which they’ll sell to biohackers who want to grow their own meat at home using the guide from Shojinmeat, the DIY cultured meat community which Integriculture grew out of. in the aforementioned email, Hanyu told me he hopes to start selling the SpaceSalt by the end of this year.

Integriculture is on a tight timeline to perfect its cell-based foie gras and make it in large enough quantities to sell. The startup plans to launch the cultured liver in restaurants in 2021 and roll it out in Japanese retail in 2023, assuming the government approves cell-based meat for sale. That’s not a lot of time, but this latest test seems to show that the company is at least getting closer to perfecting the product.

Wild Type’s Cell-Based Salmon Costs $200, But Not For Long

A few weeks ago Wild Type, the San Francisco-based startup growing salmon in a lab, did a tasting of its cultured salmon.

Sadly I was not there to taste the goods (hint hint, guys). But I did get to connect with Wild Type co-founders Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck over the phone this week to learn more about how their dinner went and what’s next for the cellular aquaculture startup.

According to the co-founders, the taste test was a critical step in their R&D process. While there are things they still want to improve on their product — tasters apparently thought the flavor was quite faint and the color wasn’t as vibrant as wild salmon — they were impressed with how the salmon adapted to a variety of dishes.

Wild Type’s salmon falls apart if it’s heated above 212°F, so for now the company is focusing on raw applications. Their first product will be a smoked salmon similar to lox. Apparently Wild Type’s scientists can already produce a thin sheet of salmon that’s 10.5 inches x 11 inches, which can then be sliced, cold smoked, and presumably put on a bagel alongside schmear and capers.

While they eventually want to sell their cell-based lox directly to consumers, the Wild Type founders first need to get their price down. Way down.

Right now, Kolbeck and Elfenbein estimated that it cost roughly $200 dollars to produce one serving of their cultured salmon. (They specifically referenced the cost of to make the eight-piece spicy salmon sushi roll they served at their recent dinner.) Though high-quality wild salmon is pricey, up to $30 a pound, Wild Type still has a ways to go before their fish is cost-competitive with the real thing. Kolbeck explained that they’re currently working on making their animal-free cell media — one of the biggest costs in cellular agriculture/aquaculture — more efficient, which would make the growth process significantly cheaper.

Kolbeck and Elfenbein wouldn’t give a timeline for their product release, but seeing as they won’t launch until they’re at least close to price parity with traditional salmon — roughly one-tenth their current cost — it’ll likely be several years at least.

However, Wild Type does have one significant advantage over companies like JUST and Mosa Meats, which claim to be closer to bringing their cultured meat to market. Fish are cold-blooded, so the startup’s salmon cells can be grown at room temperature. Mammalian and avian cells, on the other hand, have to be grown in little ovens to stay warm. That means that cultured fish requires fewer energy inputs than cultured beef, pork, or chicken, and can also be produced more cheaply.

For now, Wild Type is focused on perfecting their product, reducing growth costs, and planning more tastings of their salmon. Maybe this writer will be able to snag an invite for the next one.

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.

Aleph Farms Puts a Steak in the Ground, Unveils New Cell-Based Cut of Meat

Israeli startup Aleph Farms has unveiled what it calls “the first cell-grown minute steak” — that is, the first steak made from cow cells, but grown outside a cow in a bioreactor.

Up until now, companies such as Finless Foods, JUST, and Mosa Meats have made cultured tuna, chicken nuggets, and hamburgers, respectively. But cell-based steak, with its complex, sliceable texture, has remained elusive.

I spoke with Aleph Farms CEO Didier Toubia back in May about their plans to make the first cultured steak:

“Instead of starting with a simpler ground “meat” product and later developing 3D tissue-growing technology, [Aleph Farms] is 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… 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.”

Wall Street Journal senior correspondent Jason Bellini got to taste this new cut of cell-based meat on camera. In the video, Amir Ilan, a chef at the restaurant Paris Texas in Israel, seared the thin slices of pre-cooked steak about the size of a credit card. (Interestingly, the camera crew was not allowed to film raw slices of the steak.) He served the meat with a truffle glaze and mushrooms. The consensus? “It’s pretty good, I have to say,” said Bellini between chews. “It’s pretty close to a regular steak… it passes.”

For now, the size and texture of Aleph Farms’ steaks are limited. They can’t grow them bigger than a few inches and no thicker than a few centimeters. Though companies are working to create bigger and better-textured cuts of cultured meat through 3D printing or using plants as scaffolds, texture remains one of the biggest challenges in making cell-based meat taste like the real thing.

Aleph Farms’ news comes just a day after JUST, a San Francisco startup most known for their plant-based foods, announced that it has partnered with Japanese producer Toriyama to create the first cell-based Wagyu. Though they’re planning to make a burger instead of a steak, the one-two punch speaks to how quickly the field of cultured meat is accelerating — though it’ll be a while yet (at least a year) before JUST’s product is to market.

If you want to try Aleph Farms’ steaks, you’ll have to wait even longer. While the company didn’t give an exact timeline, the WSJ video stated that their cultured steak is still at least two years away. But the implications of this first taste test are still significant. As I wrote back in May, “If they can nail the texture of a steak, Aleph Farms has a real shot at converting even the most hardcore of carnivores.” It seems that the startup has taken one big step closer to that goal.