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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

cultured meat

A Conversation With BioCraft On Building an AI to Accelerate Cultured Meat Development

Over the past few years, companies in food tech product development have begun to utilize machine learning and other AI techniques to accelerate the development of their products. One of those companies is Biocraft, a company focused on developing pet food utilizing cultured meat as its primary protein input.

The company announced in May they would focus exclusively on B2B (they had previously been developing a consumer-facing product under the brand Because Animals), and this week started talking about how they are utilizing AI to assist in product development.

I sat down with Biocraft CEO Shannon Falconer and AI lead Chai Molina to learn more about the company’s AI and the future direction of the company.

Tell us why you decided to investigate how AI could help you develop cultivated meat.

Falconer: My background is my PhD is in biochemistry, and so mostly I was working on drug discovery and antibiotic research. And you know, when AI really hit the pharmaceutical industry in a meaningful way about a decade ago, it dropped the time and the cost of bringing a drug to market, so I’ve been very bullish on integrating this technology into what we’re doing for cultured meat.

I asked Chai if there are any types of tools that are available or that could work for us to actually do what we want to help in dropping our costs, and getting the right ingredient and nutritional profile of our products. Chai looked around and said, “No, there is not.” And so it was then really that we decided if there’s nothing available that we can purchase and use, then we’ve just got to build this ourselves.

Molina: I come to this with a view that this is a mathematical problem, that we just have to find the connections between kind of modeling out how human reasoning sort of works and connecting the dots between pieces of machinery in the cell. To try to understand how we can tweak this Rube Goldberg machine. How we can push it into the direction that we want it to go.

How did you start building the AI model?

Molina: There’s a machine learning component that is along the lines of natural language processing, where we collect our data from lots of publicly available papers and databases. From there, we process the data and basically build out a picture of the machinery inside the cell.

What do you mean by that?

Molina: These databases and papers might show a tiny glimpse of one piece of that machinery inside a cell. In a way, we’re superimposing little pictures and little parts of that machinery to build out the bigger picture. From there, we try to understand if you pull this cable or take this step, what’s it gonna do? There are all these threads of biochemistry in the cell, I like to think of it like dominoes where you push one, and then you see downstream effects. And so that is more of a mathematical modeling approach, involving network theory.

You’re using the analogy of a machine to describe a cell and understand what the domino effects of a certain action or input within a given hypothesis about that cell.

Molina: Yes. Once we have a picture of the machinery in the cell, it’s like, okay, ‘what can we how can we tweak that to make it do what we want?’ Say we want to add a novel medium component for a growth serum for the cells that will hopefully push them in the direction that we want, such as cell proliferation. So, for example, we look at different substances that are safe for consumption and ask how would the addition of these things at least qualitatively impacts the machinery in the cell.

And you’re running these hypotheses in the AI and then testing out promising results in a wet lab?

Falconer: If you’re a wet lab scientist, and you generate a hypothesis, there are so many things to test. Especially when you’re working on something as complicated as media optimization in order to achieve the right cocktail that will elicit proliferation as well as the nutritional profile that you are that you want that you desire. And so the time that it would take to perform all these various experiments empirically, not only of course, is very lengthy and very expensive. And so what this tool does is it allows us to trim down that list of experiments. This tool is able to prioritize for us and give us sort of a ranking order as to which hypotheses are more likely to succeed or fail. And so this shortens the time and the number of experiments.

And then and then the other thing that it does for us is, it allows us to actually get better at identifying sort of the unknowns. What this tool can do is it can identify, say, anywhere between, say, A and Z -anywhere along this line where a human brain cannot read and put into place all of the different connections – what might ultimately elicit the end desired effect. We can then go back and say, Oh, but we now know that five nodes upstream in these completely disconnected papers, we see that this domino will hit this one, and then this one hits this one, etc. And then we can actually achieve this desired effect down the road.

You announced last May you were becoming a B2B company exclusively, and you were sunsetting your CPG products. How has this new focus, combined with the AI development tool, changed your product development speed?

Falconer: Yes, so now we’re exclusively a b2b company, focused on delivering volumes and working with existing pet food manufacturers who already have that massive consumer base and who can disseminate product quickly as soon as we have it available to sell it. And so that’s what we’re focused on right now. I’d say over the past 12 months, with just focusing on this product development. I think we’ve made probably more progress in 12 months than we did in five years. And a big part of that is the development of our AI platform.

If you’d like to learn more about how AI is accelerating next-generation food development, join us October 25th at the Food AI Summit.

What’s Next For Cellular Agriculture: 5 Takeaways From Tufts Cellular Agriculture Innovation Day

Pioneers in cellular agriculture came together in Boston last week to discuss the state of the industry – and what it will take to take cell-cultivated products to the next level.

Tufts University’s inaugural Cellular Agriculture Innovation Day featured panel discussions with industry leaders, researchers, and other experts. The panelists reflected on how far the technology to grow meat and other products has come over the last decade, and shared their visions of how that momentum will continue over the next few years.

A decade ago, “you could count the number of people dedicated to cellular agriculture on one hand,” said Isha Datar, executive director of the research nonprofit New Harvest, in a panel discussion at the event.

“To see 10 years go by, and to see 150 companies pop up, so much private investment pop up, lots more people in the academic space – to me, it’s like, ‘okay, the party has been started,’” Datar said.


All eyes on cell culture media

Cellular agriculture has many research and development hurdles to clear in coming years, said Mark Post, chief scientific officer at Mosa Meats, in a panel discussion.

In particular, the industry still needs to work “quite extensively” on the cost-effectiveness – and in particular, the resource efficiency – of its manufacturing processes, Post said.

The biggest cost driver for cell-cultivated products today is culture media: the nutrient-rich material that supports the growth of cells.

According to Andrew Stout, a PhD student focusing on cultivated cell lines and culture media at Tufts University, the cellular agriculture field has already seen success in cutting costs for some culture media components, such as growth factors.

Those components were the “low-hanging fruit” of culture media, Stout said at the event.

Moving forward, researchers in the field will likely address “the next lowest fruit,” such as amino acids and vitamins, he said.


Collaborating to solve key questions

Datar, the executive director at New Harvest, forecast that industry players will increasingly find answers to their questions by working together.

Much of the news from the industry in recent years has concerned individual companies and products – but over the next decade, we’ll hear more about how different companies and other players are working together to “solve [the] puzzle,” Datar said.

In particular, companies collaboratively address the challenge of scaling up using shared facilities, she said.

In 2021, we saw an announcement for one such facility in Europe: the Cultured Food Innovation Hub planned by Swiss flavor manufacturer Givaudan and other partners. The companies planned the Innovation Hub as a space for startups to access shared equipment, enabling more players to innovate in the field at lower cost.


Securing public funding

Bruce Friedrich, president and co-founder of the Good Food Institute, forecast that public funding will play an increasingly important role in helping the industry to address challenges of cost and scale.

In the last three years, governments around the world have already “gone from almost zero to hundreds of millions of dollars” in funding, Friedrich said.

Friedrich laid out a vision of government funding for cellular agriculture that would mirror investments in renewable energy and electric vehicles.

In the U.S., there could be bipartisan support for spending to support the industry, he said – pointing to efforts by the Good Food Institute to communicate with Republican lawmakers about the potential employment and economic benefits of such spending.


Introducing cell-cultivated products to the public

The speakers at the Tufts event also addressed the need to continue improving cell-cultivated products themselves before introducing them to consumers.

For Post, the chief scientific officer at Mosa Meats, one step to improve product quality could be improving the differentiation of muscle and fat tissues.

Academia can help to improve the quality of cell-cultivated products by identifying which genetic features can identify cells that will produce tasty end-products, according to Stout, the PhD student at Tufts University.

According to David Block, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Davis, another task for academia will be to ensure that cell-cultivated products are nutritionally equivalent to their conventional equivalents.

But the industry also has “an opportunity” to take more control over the nutritional quality and safety of its products than conventional agriculture, because cell-cultivated products are grown in much more controlled environments, Block said in a panel discussion at the event.


Moving toward semi-industrialization

The industry has begun to receive its first regulatory stamps of approval, and is “at the verge of getting regulatory approval in a lot of geographies,” according to Post.

In November, UPSIDE Foods became the first company to receive a “no questions” letter from the FDA – meaning the agency determined that the company’s cell-cultivated chicken is safe for consumers.

Eat Just, a San-Francisco startup, became the first company to receive regulatory approval for cell-cultivated meat when the Singapore Food Agency green-lit its cell-cultivated chicken in 2020.

With regulatory clearance in the works, and factories beginning to be built, “we are really getting to the level where [the industry] becomes sort of semi-industrial,” Post said.

But he added: “It will take a long time before [cell-cultivated products] will be a substantial part of markets where eventually we can make an impact on the environment, which is the root of all this.”

Uma Valeti, chief executive officer of UPSIDE Foods, said that it could be between 10 and 30 years before cultivated meat “takes off.”

Breaking: UPSIDE Becomes First Company to Get Greenlight From the U.S. FDA For Cultivated Meat

Today UPSIDE Foods announced it has become the first company in the world to receive a “No Questions” letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for cultivated meat, poultry, or seafood. This letter signals that the FDA believes UPSIDE’s cultivated chicken is safe for consumers.

This is big news for UPSIDE and the broader alt-protein industry since it’s the first time that the FDA has greenlit a cultivated meat product. The approval moves the U.S. market one step closer to seeing meat made via cellular agriculture sold to consumers.

“This is a watershed moment in the history of food,” said Dr. Uma Valeti, CEO and Founder of UPSIDE Foods. “We started UPSIDE amid a world full of skeptics, and today, we’ve made history again as the first company to receive a ‘No Questions’ letter from the FDA for cultivated meat. This milestone marks a major step towards a new era in meat production, and I’m thrilled that U.S. consumers will soon have the chance to eat delicious meat that’s grown directly from animal cells.”

Along with the FDA’s memo detailing the agency’s review of the data and information provided by UPSIDE Foods to establish the safety of its cultivated chicken filet, it’s also released a 104-page document prepared by UPSIDE Foods that details the safety of the cultivated chicken and its production process.

While this is a big step, don’t expect to see UPSIDE’s chicken on store shelves in the immediate future. According to the release, UPSIDE Foods still needs to secure the necessary approvals from USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) before UPSIDE Foods’ cultivated chicken can be sold to consumers. According to the company, details on the launch timing will follow.

Israel’s Profuse Technology Raises $2.5M for Technology That Lowers Cost of Cultured Meat

As the world awaits the arrival of cultured meat, manufacturers and their suppliers strategize to cope with the realities of this potentially mammoth market. Infrastructure and product scaling for growth remain a challenge from the supply side. Still, concerns over the pricing of lab-grown meat, poultry, and seafood might be the most significant roadblock to consumer acceptance.

Israeli-based Profuse Technology believes it has a solution to bring manufacturing costs down to a point where a pound of cultured beef could achieve price parity with meat from a live animal. A step forward, the company has announced the completion of a $2.5 million seed funding round (and a total of $3.75m since its establishment). The round is led by New York-based investment firm Green Circle and existing shareholders – OurCrowd, Tnuva, and Tempo. Other new investors include Siddhi Capital, a leader in investments in cultivated meat, and Kayma, the investment arm of De-Levie, a meat industry specialist.

According to the announcement, the company will use the funds to collaborate with cultivated meat producers, obtain FDA regulatory approval, and expand the research and development team and its laboratories. The funds will also position the company to source significant capital raising at the end of the second quarter of 2023 to commercialize its customer collaborations.

Profuse’s solution is based on what it calls “a cocktail” that is added during the period when a harvested animal stem cell begins its proliferation process. As founder and CTO Dr. Tamar Eigler-Hirsh told The Spoon: “You would start with a biopsy, and it could be directly from the muscle tissue or an embryonic stem cell harvested from an animal. The cultivated meat companies would take these cells, bank the most successful ones, and optimize them. They would grow them in bioreactors and expand and expand and proliferate these cells until they have hundreds of millions of cells per milliliter. And then, at some point, they have to differentiate the cells to become muscle tissue or muscle fibers. This is where our media supplement comes in.”

“What we’ve basically found a way was to target this natural biological mechanism of regeneration by understanding the biological pathway that that that’s responsible for that,” Dr. Eigler-Hirsh continues. “There’s one protocol to make muscle, and everybody follows it, and it’s very inefficient. Right now, we’re hearing numbers being reported about between 10% to 30% efficiency in converting stem cells into muscle. And using our technology, we can bump that number up from 30% well to over 90% efficiency in conversion of stem cell to muscle.”

Greater efficiency yields more muscle which in turn leads to cultured meat. The math is simple: a more significant and efficient supply can bring down manufacturing costs, which can be passed on to the consumer.

Profuse founder and CEO Guy Nevo Michrowski goes into further detail on the issue of price parity. . First, you won’t need as many cells to start with because your efficiency of using the cells will be 95%. So instead of going for 30 days, you’re going for only 25 days. And most important, the most expensive days are being saved. So, in the last ten days, where over 85% to 90% of the median cost is consumed, those days are cut by half because you don’t need as many cells. And then also, the differentiation and fusion maturation phase of creating them is now reduced to two days instead of ten. Your overall process is only 27 days versus 40 days, which means your factory can produce 33% more yearly.”

Using technology developed at the Weitzman Institute, the company started in 2021. In 2022 it began collaborating with cultivated meat companies and others who potentially would be our distribution partners. Michrowski said that Profuse is working with the major players in the cultured meat and poultry space” And I would say that of the ten leading companies worldwide, we are working with the vast majority together “to demonstrate and quantify the effects of our cocktail on their specific production environment. We operate with different customers to demonstrate our value in different viable development environments and methods.”

SuperMeat Believes An Open Source Approach to Cultivated Meat Will Benefit All

Lab-grown or cultured meat is a sexy topic that fulfills the dream of healthy eating while saving the planet’s precious resources. Most of the headlines focus on the companies in the four corners of the world waiting for regulators to wave the checkered flag. The more interesting story—at least for those who enjoy looking under the hood—is in the processes, supply chain, and partnerships vital to this promising industry.

To understand the drill-down of what it takes to go from harvesting animal cells to creating consumer-facing products, it’s valuable to speak with visionaries such as Ido Savir, CEO of Israel’s SuperMeat. In addition to his knowledge of cultivated meat, Savir’s background in IT provides him with a panoramic view of the infrastructure needed to build a successful B2B company.

While it might not qualify as an awe-inspiring announcement, SuperMeat recently received a grant from the Israeli Innovation Authority to establish an open-source high-throughput screening system for optimizing cultivated meat feed ingredients. As an analogy, think of it as a system that ensures cows or chickens receive only the best quality feed to produce larger quantities of high-grade meat or chicken. But there is a significant difference.

Savir explains that animals are inefficient producers of their products. “It’s just done more efficiently (in cultivated meat),” the SuperMeat CEO told The Spoon in a recent interview. “In traditional meat production, 70% to 80% of the cost comes from the feed, and animals are just not very efficient conversion machines.” To put it into perspective, the cost of animal component-free (ACF) feed can make or break those vying to play in this space.

Rather than compete with consumer-facing brands such as Future Meat, Eat Just, and Mosa Meat (to name a few), SuperMeat is taking a B2B approach. Working with established meat and poultry providers to build production facilities where companies with existing supply chains can quickly enter the future of the alt-meat market. SuperMeat has announced deals with Germany’s PHW Group and Migros in Switzerland. The Israeli firm is in discussion with potential U.S. partners to reach the stateside market by the end of 2023.

The decision to build a platform for cultivated meat rather than build its own consumer brand directly results from Savir’s tech background, and it is also why the new feed screening system is in the open-source approach. “From my background, and I really believe in open source, and I really believe in sort of a platform approach that can help bring not just one company but the industry forward,” Savir stated.

Also, speaking to his tech background, it’s clear Savir has learned the relationship between capital expenditures and profit. It’s not about cost; it’s about having the right model.

“The way I look at this, and it doesn’t matter how much the infrastructure costs,” he said. “What matters is how efficient and the return you can get from that money. Right. And if you can get that return in a reasonable time, it makes sense, no matter what the cost is. We have our cost of goods models that demonstrate that that makes sense.”

A trip to SuperMeat’s facility in Israel will yield more than a view of lab equipment and many steel fermentation tanks. The facility includes a small restaurant-like space called “The Chicken,” where potential business partners, consumers, and others can taste the lab-grown animal protein. Savir says it’s more than just a pretty place to show off.

“We’re trying to do things a bit differently,” Savir said. “We thought it was important for us and our potential clients, which are food companies, to have that full transparency and traceability.”

See video of the makeshift eatery below:

World's First Cultivated Meat Blind Tasting Full Reel

SCiFi Foods Raises $22M With Andreessen Horowitz’s First Investment in Cultivated Meat

SCiFi Foods, a Bay Area-based food tech startup, announced that it has raised a $22 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), making it a16z’s first investment in the growing cultivated meat market. The company, formerly known as Artemys Foods, also announced that it will be adding a new board member, Myra Pasek, the General Counsel of IronOx, who will be utilizing her expertise from Tesla and Impossible Foods to help SCiFi Foods bring its novel plant-based and cultivated meat hybrid through regulatory approval to the market. 

The new funding raises SCiFi Foods’ total funding to $29 million and will primarily be used to scale R&D efforts, build out the leadership team, and market the company. 

The Spoon sat down with CEO and co-founder, Joshua March, to learn more about SCiFi Foods’ new name, a hybrid meat product, and what it looks like to raise funding from one of the most famous venture capital firms during a recession.

What’s the story behind the rebrand? 

The original company name had always been a holding name. Over the last year, we spent a lot of time doing research and thinking about our brand strategy and positioning. First, while I’m really excited about our strategy, and I think what we’re doing is pretty unique and will give us the ability to get to market, we know that we’re going to be launching a brand in a very noisy old meat market. We knew that if we wanted to be able to have a shot of building a truly defining brand, we needed to do something that was really distinctive, and very different to anything else that was out there today. 

We also knew that in the cultivated meat space, one of the biggest concerns that consumers will have is that it’s too scientific. The vast majority of average consumers are calling it lab grown meat. A lot of the attacks from the meat lobby, also go off on it for being lab grown meat. We think it’s really important to confront that head on, not by trying to hide the science, but by being really authentic, transparent, and bold about it. 

Besides the branding, how does the technology of SCiFi Foods stand out from other types of cultivated meats, alternative proteins, and other meat hybrids? 

It’s the combination of plant based and cultivated meat. What we found was that cultivated meat was having incredible effects on flavor, creating a much more beefy flavor and aroma than any plant based trial. Fundamentally, the most important thing is to create incredibly tasty products. And by taking a blended approach, it massively simplifies our ability to bring a product to market because we don’t need to do more tissue engineering, 3d printing scaffolding, and other complex technologies that are required if you’re trying to create 100% cultivated meat, which no one today actually knows how to do at scale cheaply. 

Our approach allows us to create really transformational products, but also allows us to actually get to market from an equal timeframe with costs that are actually closer to conventional meat. Taste and cost define the market size for meat alternatives. 

Besides taste and cost, another challenge can be regulatory approval. How does having a hybrid product help you navigate the uncertain regulatory landscape today? 

If anything, it helps. The FDA and the USDA have a pretty clear regulatory framework on how to bring cultivated meat to market. Because our approach means that we don’t have scaffolding and tissue engineering, that reduces the amount of things that we need to take through regulatory approval. 

What are your plans to scale your product and bring it to market? 

Over the next couple of years, we’re planning on building out a pilot facility and going through the regulatory approval process. Once we’ve gone through that process, and we’ve had the facility approved, then the plan will be to do a small scale commercial launch.

Do you think consumer willingness will change between now and when you’re ready for commercial launch? 

The major trends of more people, recognizing the huge environmental cost, especially with beef, is only getting bigger. People are also getting more comfortable with technology being used in the development of food. Younger generation of consumers feel those things even more strongly. 

Even with transparency around technology, there’s still questions about the development and environmental impacts of cultivated meat. How is SciFi Foods targeting those questions? 

We’ve done a lot of work, understanding those impacts. We’re very confident that the climate impacts of our products is a fraction of the climate impacts of eating conventionally. 

Beef is the least efficient of all meats in terms of calories in calories out is 3-10% efficiency, it’s a small percentage; fundamentally growing cells in a bioreactor in terms of energy in and energy out is 97% efficiency, so drastically different. And with beef, up to 80% of deforestation in the Amazon, can be traced back to the cattle industry, either pasture land or as to grow crops, that animal feed. All the methane emissions that come up like 30% of methane emissions in the US come from cattle, one of the most potent greenhouse gas emissions. 

And when you look at the emissions of complicated means, it’s basically no land use changes, minimal water, no methane emissions, you do have energy usage for powering the bioreactors. That’s less than the emissions from a cow. And, if you count that for renewable energy, then the climate impact becomes zero.

Is there a reason why SciFi Foods is targeting cultivated beef first, rather than dairy, chicken, or other meat products? 

There’s a number of reasons for focusing on beef. It does have the biggest climate impacts. It’s also one of the biggest markets. It’s also the most expensive. The highest demand for meat alternatives is also beef. And yet, in the cultivated meat space, most cultivated meat companies are going after chicken, which is complex. And the reason for doing so is basically that it’s scientifically easier to manufacture chicken cells.

What makes a16z a great partner for funding at this stage? 

a16z is one of the best investors in the world and a key part of their model is that they’re not just financial investors, but they also bring a lot of support, in terms of, help with HR, recruiting, the best practices, introductions to other investors, and various different areas. I’ve worked with a lot of VCs over my career, and they definitely have the best set of support functions and ways of helping founders and entrepreneurs that I’ve ever seen.

A lot of a16z’s track record has been with technology and they just announced a new crypto fund. What specifically are you looking for in terms of help with foodtech? 

It’s worth noting that they have a very substantial bio fund, which led our investments. And that fund is completely focused on the intersection of biotech and synthetic biology. In many ways we combine those things. Yes, we do consumer food and food tech, but we’re also doing synthetic biology and biotech and sitting at that intersection. They have a huge amount of experience, and connections with VCs, and executives, scientists, and advisers in a lot of the real scientific work that we need to do to bring our product to market.

A lot of private funding lately hasn’t been very active and it’s been hard for startup founders to raise. What has navigating that landscape and raising a round been like for you? 

The market is very volatile right now. There’s always capital looking for really great companies that have a very differentiated approach and the ability to drive a significant IP advantage and who can have a defensible advantage. Fundamentally, that’s what an investor needs in order to be able to pack a company that can have a big impact on the world, but also have a great financial return.

Cultivated Meat Has a Production Capacity Problem. Yossi Quint Has a Plan to Fix It.

Yossi Quint wants the cultivated meat industry to succeed. However, to reach its potential, he thinks the nascent industry has one major hurdle to overcome: a severe lack of production capacity.

Quint arrived at this conclusion while working at McKinsey, where he often worked on projects for clients in the food and beverage industry. During one deep dive into the cultivated meat market, he became convinced that this new form of food production had the potential to be a multibillion-dollar industry, but would never fulfill its potential unless it can increase production by orders of magnitude over its current capacity.

To get there, Quint believed that equipment used to make cell-cultivated meat – giant metal vats called bioreactors – needed to be built specifically for the market. That’s because bioreactors used by today’s cultivated meat producers are usually modified versions of hardware made for the pharmaceutical industry, an industry with completely different unit cost economics than that of food.

Out of this challenge, the idea for his company was born. Ark Biotech is building next-generation, high-volume bioreactors for the cultivated meat industry. I sat down with Quint to discuss the challenges of developing hardware for the cultivated meat industry and where he sees the infrastructure market going in the future. The answers have been lightly edited for brevity.

Why did you decide to start the company?

I was working at McKinsey had the opportunity to work with many different companies. And I had a chance to dig pretty deep into the cultivated meat space and think in-depth about what was needed in this industry to succeed over time—doing everything from consumer insights work to thinking about how to reduce unit economics and scale up. But, as I dug into scale-up, I quickly realized that biomanufacturing will be the bottleneck for this industry to grow. And that there are very few, perhaps no players, out there that are offering sensible solutions for industrial-scale cultivated meat production.

Today we’re seeing lots of companies building their pilot production plants. Over the next few years, as the industry figures it out and moves towards industrial scale, how big do you see cultivated meat bioreactors getting?

In pharma, there’s this trend towards smaller, single-use bioreactors. Single-use bioreactors are bioreactors with a bag inside that you switch out. They are very high OPEX (operating expense), but it reduces the contamination risk. But for the blockbuster drugs, you still have 10,000 to 25,000-liter bioreactor tanks. There’s no reason cultivated meat can’t be produced at that size or even larger.

What are the challenges that need to be overcome to move to bigger bioreactors?

There aren’t necessarily intrinsic issues. There are challenges when you reach a bigger scale; A contamination event has a larger cost because you’d have to throw out the batch, so that’s one reason to think about minimizing the size or guidance or ceiling. But to us, it’s a very simple optimization equation of ‘every batch is worth X dollars, the chance of contamination is y, where along the curve do you want to play’?

There are some thermodynamics, more physics and chemistry elements, such as where can you get the uniformity of the cell culture in the bigger size bioreactor. And that’s uniformity of oxygen, of making sure that mixing works correctly. It’s also making sure that the temperature can be uniform throughout.

A lot of what we’re working on is, how do you design bioreactors in ways that are different than what you’d see off the shelf today or from a specialized company, that could operate at bigger sizes?

Why are bigger bioreactors so important?

We care about size because it’s just a major cost lever. As a CAPEX (capital expense) cost lever and an OPEX (operating expense) cost lever.

Explain what you mean by that.

As a CAPEX lever, you get economies of scale. A lot of the cost of bioreactors is the manufacturing, and just you don’t need twice as many people producing twice the size. Most bioreactors have their own seed train (ed note: seed trains are used to generate an adequate number of cells for the inoculation of the production bioreactor). If you double the size of the bigger bioreactor, you only need half as many seed trains to get the same volume.

On the OPEX side, every seed train has laborers that are working, often 24/7, running experiments, changing parameters. And so, if you are able to double the size or triple or ten times the size, you don’t need ten times the laborers, you might need the exact same number of laborers.

Will all bioreactors be the same?

The bioreactors we’re designing are widely applicable to a very large swath of the industry. There are corner cases, but we’re trying to have bioreactors that will fit 95% of companies.

But there are a few bioreactor designs that we’re working on because if you’re doing a scaffolding system, that likely looks very different and you’ll need a very different looking bioreactor if you’re doing suspension cells. And so we are designing different bioreactors to fit those different use cases. Things like media or animal type. are heavily impactful to the parameters of the bioreactor, but we don’t think that changes the core bioreactor design.

The models will depend on their production methods. And it could be that you actually have two models, you have one model, where their cells are still growing in suspension, then you might want to then get a formed product and move into a second bioreactor. So there’s a number of companies that will have two production bioreactors today.

In the future, what does the cultivated meat industry production look like? Is it highly centralized, or does each city have its own ‘meat brewing’ center?

If I were to say 10 years, it’s still gonna be highly centralized. We’re gonna have megaplants. There’s just so many efficiencies that you get at scale.

Will they be regional?

It could be regional. It just depends on how big we want to go. I don’t think there’s gonna be one plant that supplies the US. It could be two or three plants in California that are very big the same way AB InBev has just a handful of massive plants.

Can you explain why bigger production plants are better?

One of the reasons that I think bigger plants make sense, at least as an interim step, is that we really think about the COGS (cost of goods sold) in a very deep way, a lot of which is like how do you get really cheap access to whatever the basal medium is. And to get really cheap access, you probably want to be located near where corn is shipped in, or whatever your other big ingredients are. You want to be near rail lines. You just want to get those economies of scale on the upstream. You also want to be co-located near cheap energy and preferably renewable energy. And so when you think about some of the inputs that you want, and just OPEX, and also where there is available labor, it’s harder to see a world in which you have a small production plant that’s in a skyscraper in New York.

Thank you for your time.

You’re welcome.

MeaTech Achieves Cultured Meat Milestone by Developing Muscle Fibers from Stem Cells

MeaTech3D, an Israel-based cultured meat startup, announced this week that it had demonstrated progress in the differentiation process from stem cells to muscle fibers.

According to the announcement, MeaTech has achieved the formation of living muscle fibers to a point where they “mirror key characteristics of farm-raised meat.” To achieve the results, MeaTech isolated bovine stem cells, which were then proliferated in the lab. From there, they were able to differentiate these cells into matured muscle cells with improved muscle fiber density, thickness, and length.

This news from MeaTech is just the latest from the startup as they assemble a toolbox of technologies to replicate whole cut animal meat using cell-cultured processes. In September of last year, they announced they had developed a new stem cell manipulation technology that uses plant inputs to transform embryonic mesenchymal stem cells (or eMSCs) into fat cells. That process could be used to replicate intramuscular fat, the fat structures that ribbon through a sophisticated cut of meat such as a ribeye steak. Before that, the company filed for a patent for its technology that 3D prints cell-cultured meat products.

MeaTech isn’t the only group working on developing technology to create muscle fibers via cellular agriculture. Last year, a group of researchers at the University of Tokyo in Japan were able to replicate muscle fibers via cell culture process. The Japanese group achieved a level of elasticity, as the strands contracted in the same way muscle fibers contract.

Eric Jenkusky of Matrix Meats Calls for Transparency in the Cultivated Meat Space

In September, the USDA opened a public comment period to solicit input about the labeling of cultivated meat products. The move was widely seen as an important step forward in the regulatory approval process for the commercial sale of cultivated meat products in the United States, which many anticipate will happen soon.

When cultivated meat finally does make it to market, it’s important that consumers know exactly what’s in the product, at least according to Eric Jenkusky. Jenkusky is the CEO of Matrix Meats, a company that makes plant-based scaffolding for alternative protein and cultivated meat products. I caught up with Jenkusky last week to talk about the cultivated meat market, the regulatory approval process, and the role he saw his company playing in all of it.

In the past year, Matrix has had contact with 50 plus companies in the cultivated meat industry, and is currently engaged with 22. It is also now offering companies a wet lab research contract, where it will assist interested cultivated meat companies with the feeding and scaffold protocols.

After a busy 2021, next year will be even busier for Matrix; according to Jenkusky, “We are looking at assisting a few companies in achieving a product, a cultivated food product with at least 50 percent cultivated cells in the paid product by quarter two of 2022.”

When cultivated meat products are unveiled by various companies, Jenkusky said an important question is never asked, “How much of this product is cultivated cells, and what type of cultivated cells are those?” For the sake of the industry’s reputation and the consumers who care about what they’re eating, transparency will be crucial. We are often shown photos are videos of different whole cuts of cultivated meat products, but the composition of these products is rarely disclosed.

As Matrix Meats works with companies to achieve a cultivated meat product, Jenkusky said, “One of the things that we plan on doing is when our product comes, is we’re going to be completely transparent to the world as to what and who we’re working with.” Although the USDA and FDA will be regulating the labeling and overseeing the production of cultivated meat products, it is currently unclear what level of transparency they will demand of these products.

About 40 percent of surveyed consumers expressed that they were afraid of lab-produced products such as cultivated meat. Fear like this often stems from not knowing or understanding what a product is made of and how it was produced. In the plant-based space, alternative meat sales may be dropping to the lack of ingredient transparency. For consumers to adopt cultivated meat, it will be critical to disclose ingredients, cell composition, and the production process.

What Does a Cultivated Meat Plant Look Like? Take a Video Tour of UPSIDE Foods’ New Production Facility to Find Out

According to the Good Food Institute, there are approximately 70+ companies working on cultivated meat services, inputs, and end products. At this time, Singapore has been the only country to offer regulatory approval for the commercial sale of cultivated meat, and Qatar is expected to be next to do so. Despite this, several companies in the cultured meat space have opened up state-of-the-art facilities to develop their alternative meat products in anticipation of receiving regulatory approval sooner than later.

One of these companies is UPSIDE Foods (formerly Memphis Meats). Last week, UPSIDE Foods hosted a ceremony to celebrate the unveiling of its 53,000 square foot Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center (EPIC for short). The center will be used for the production of cultivated meat and the development of new types of meat and product formats.

It’s easy enough to find Youtube videos about how plant-based meat or real hamburger is made, but because the cultivated meat industry is so nascent, behind-the-scenes looks at this industry have been harder to come by. Until now. UPSIDE Foods shared a video tour of the inside of its EPIC facility. Take a look:

UPSIDE Foods Grand Opening

The front of the facility hosts a kitchen for hosting tastings of cultivated meat. There are areas dedicated to the milling and mixing of cell feed, as well as areas for packaging and testing products. Products will be tested for safety and quality in EPIC’s quality assurance facilities. UPSIDE has also provided an office for federal inspectors to oversee every process, which is required in all meat and poultry processing facilities in the U.S

UPSIDE’s innovation center will employ about 50 people throughout different departments, including maintenance, production, quality & food safety, engineering, and plant management.

Less than half, or only about 40 percent, of Americans are willing to try cultivated meat. Hopefully, allowing consumers to get a glance into cultivated meat facilities might help them warm up to the idea of this alternative protein.

Want to see a cultivated meat facility in action for yourself? UPSIDE will begin offering in-person tours at its Emeryville, California facilities in January 2022.

The Counter Asks If Cultivated Meat is a Billion Dollar Boondoggle. It’s a Question Worth Asking.

Last week, The Counter’s Deputy Editor Joe Fassler wrote an article asking whether cultivated meat is the future of meat or just a billion-dollar boondoggle?

It’s a question worth asking. While many believe this new way of producing meat will radically change the food industry over the next decade, the reality is the technology required for scaling cultivated meat production to where it creates enough food to make a dent in the conventional meat market has yet to be invented.

Fassler starts his story with Paul Wood, who doubts the viability of cultivated meat as a traditional meat replacement. According to Fassler, Wood, the one time the executive director of global discovery for Pfizer Animal Health, couldn’t understand “how costly biomanufacturing techniques could ever be used to produce cheap, abundant human food.”

After years of wondering, Wood thought he’d get his answer early this year when the Good Food Institute (GFI) released a techno-economic analysis (TEA) about cultivated meat. The TEA from GFI broke down how the cultivated meat industry would tackle a series of technical challenges that they believed would eventually transform this early-stage technology into a volume producer of high-protein calories for the masses. The report, Fassler writes, “showed how addressing a series of technical and economic barriers could lower the production price from over $10,000 per pound today to about $2.50 per pound over the next nine years—an astonishing 4,000-fold reduction.”

Wood didn’t buy it. He thought GFI’s report trafficked in wishful thinking when it came to how the industry would address the hard technical challenges that needed to be overcome.

There’s some back and forth about the economics of cultivated meat production as Fassler wonders whether investors understand what advancements are needed for them to make their money back eventually, but perhaps the most interesting part of the story is when he looks at whether the science of cellular agriculture will support cell reproduction at the scale needed to make cultivated meat viable. New facilities are needed, and those facilities – called bioreactors – will need to be optimized to the point where contamination and bacteria growth do not ruin whole production runs and make cell-cultured meat production way too costly in the process. It hasn’t been done yet, and yet the entire industry is betting it can be.

I won’t recite the entire Counter article; you should read it yourself, since, after all, it’s an important and well-written piece of in-depth journalism. Instead, I’ll just say it makes a convincing case that viability of scaling cultivated meat production is the central existential question facing this industry, and it’s really THE only question that should be keeping investors in this space up at night.

In some ways, it reminds me of the decades-long debate about the feasibility of using nuclear fusion as a way to produce cheap, environmentally friendly energy for the masses. However, unlike nuclear fusion, investors are acting as if the science for cultivated meat is largely a solved problem. Because of this, money is pouring in, and aggressive timelines are being set.

Eventually, these same investors will insist they make a return on their investments, which means, more than likely, we won’t have to wait decades to find out if they are making a wise -or foolish – bet.

With Series of Partnerships, Givaudan Positions Itself for an Alt Protein Future

Swiss flavor manufacturer Givaudan recently announced plans to open a new Cultured Food Innovation Hub by 2022. This is the latest in a flurry of new initiatives that suggest the company is positioning itself as a major player in the alternative protein industry.

Givaudan and its partners hope to support cell-cultured protein startups as they perform research and development and bring new products to market. At the Innovation Hub, startups will have access to cell-culture and bio-fermentation equipment, as well as a product development laboratory.

With many countries awaiting regulatory decisions for cell-cultured products, Givaudan appears to be anticipating a growing demand for business-to-business services in the industry. The company already partners with plant-based meat and dairy startups to develop, prototype, and test products. This foray into cultivated protein territory means they’ll stay on the cutting edge as cell-culture products make their debuts.

The facility will be built outside of Zurich, and will be owned in partnership with plant equipment manufacturer Bühler and retail food giant Migros—a partnership that’s interesting in its own right. Pooling their ranges of expertise, the companies should be able to offer comprehensive, turnkey services to would-be cell-cultured meat manufacturers. Fabio Campanile, Givaudan’s Global Head of Science and Technology, Taste & Wellbeing, commented on the partnership in a recent press release:

“Bühler contributes with industry-leading solutions that are used in the scale-up and production of thousands of food products around the world; Givaudan brings in centuries of experience and knowledge in every aspect of taste, including all kinds of meat alternatives, and deep expertise in biotechnology, to product development; Migros is known for its competence in customer interaction and market cultivation.”

Givaudan has also been keeping busy with its own research and development efforts, working on producing sustainable flavor ingredients for alternative meats and other products. Last month, The Spoon reported on Givaudan and Ginkgo Bioworks’ joint effort to develop new flavor and fragrance ingredients through bio-fermentation. More recently, the company announced another partnership with Danish biotech company Biosyntia—this one focused on transforming natural sugars into flavoring agents.

We may see more companies from outside of the alternative protein industry take an interest in cell-cultured meat. German life sciences and electronics manufacturer Merck KGaA is now offering technology solutions (from process design to growth medium formulation) for cell-cultured manufacturers. These big-name partners should help smaller startups to bring their products to market more quickly.