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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

lab-grown meat

Come Explore The Future of Meat at our May Food Tech Meetup

It’s time for the next event in our monthly food tech meetup series! We’ll be exploring a subject that’s been making a lot of headlines recently: the future of meat. Join us on Thursday, May 24th at Galvanize Seattle for drinks, snacks, and some rousing discussion. (Bonus: it’s free to attend, thanks to our sponsor ChefSteps!)

The Future of Meat

We’re at a crossroads: meat consumption is on the rise, but demand for meat alternatives has never been higher. And technology is changing the way we create, market, and eat animal products. From plant-based chicken nuggets to lab-grown burgers to transparent distribution channels for high-quality steak and pork, our panelists will discuss how technology is disrupting the meat industry — and what they think meat will look like in 5, 10, and 50 year’s time.

The panel will include:

–Christie Lagally, Seattle Food Tech

–Dr. Isaac Emery, the Good Food Institute

–Ethan Lowry, Crowd Cow

-Catherine Lamb, The Spoon

There will be drinks and snacks, so come hungry and ready to meet the Seattle food tech community — and bring a few business cards while you’re at it. Register here to reserve your spot!

A Peek Inside JUST’s Clean Meat Lab

Last June, JUST, the company formerly known as Hampton Creek, announced out of nowhere that they would bring lab-grown meat to market by 2018. If they succeed, they would be the first to do so; Finless Foods hopes their cultured fish will gain price parity with bluefin tuna by 2019, and Memphis Meats is aiming to premiere their cultured meat in 2021.

But it’ll be an uphill battle to get there. Soon after their announcement about lab-grown meat nearly all of JUST’s board resigned, leaving only Josh Tetrick, their very charismatic (and polarizing) CEO. Their former cellular agriculture director also left the company in early 2018 to start his own cultured animal product venture. (The new CTO who oversees the cellular agriculture team has been there since November.) At the same time, though, JUST has raised a total $310M in funding over the years, which is light years away from other clean meat startups (Memphis Meats has currently raised $20.1M). Can a company such high-profile turnover and drama, along with 125 employees and some pretty hefty capital, achieve its very ambitious vision of being the first to bring cultured meat to market?

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I was able to get a peek behind the heavily guarded doors of JUST (well, there was only one guard, but still) and take a tour of this buzzy startup — including their clean meat lab. I came in feeling skeptical and left much the same … but also oddly inspired.

A few of the plants in JUST’s library.

JUST is the prototypical millennial-heavy food tech startup, complete with geometric logos, repurposed factory workspaces, and lots of robots.  First I was led through the discovery platform, the part of JUST where scientists use custom-built robots to test plants from across the globe, determining their potential in vegan food products. Next, those plants go to the product development area; a fancified, high-tech kitchen staffed by chefs, many with Michelin stars.

During my tour I got to try a few flavors of JUST’s signature eggless mayo (really darn good) and their vegan cookies (tasted like normal cookies, though I suppose that was the point). But the coolest thing I sampled was their eggless scramble. Made of mung beans, the pale yellow liquid perfectly acted just like eggs, forming curds in the hot pan that were virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. The only giveaway was the beany flavor, though their VP of Product Development Ben Roche told me they’re working currently working on a new version that tastes more egg-like.

All the usual players, but vegan.

The fact that it cooks so much like regular scrambled eggs would make it an easy swap for foodservice — even easier than the real thing, since they don’t have to blend up the eggs first. Roche told me that they’re also working on pre-cooked eggless patties. I could see them putting those on the breakfast menu of a fast-food chain, following in the footsteps of partnerships like Impossible Foods and White Castle. For now, though, Just Scramble is only available in only a few restaurants in San Francisco and Hong Kong, though they’re hoping to expand it soon. 

No eggs, just mung beans!

The area of JUST I had the highest expectations for was their clean meat lab. It’s also the area where I learned the least — though I suppose I wasn’t really expecting JUST to give away all their secrets so easily. (Sorry, no photos allowed in here.)

For a company that claims they’ll produce enough cultured meat to bring to market by the end of this year, the lab was surprisingly small. The room was filled with incubators growing cells cultures, bioreactors, and a small area behind a plastic curtain where a scientist was pipetting something into wells. (I was not allowed behind the curtain.)

In the corner of the room was a machine filled with shaking bottles. Vitor Espirito Santo, the Senior Scientist of Cellular Agriculture at JUST, explained to me that the bottles contained proliferating muscle cells; in order to scale up their meat production to a marketable scale, they have to grow them in suspension. Espirito Santo told me that the plan was to transfer the cells into larger and larger bioreactors (the vessels where cultured meat is grown) as their technology improved. The largest one they had in the lab was 2 liters — which is pretty small, though JUST says they want to scale up to pilot plant facilities in the near future.

What JUST’s lab-grown burger will look like.

Despite my skepticism, Espirito Santo was adamant that JUST’s lab-grown meat would be available by the end of 2018 as promised. When I pressed him for details but all I got was “It will be something avian.” The technology required to grow meat with the texture of a chicken breast isn’t evolved enough for mass production, so I’m predicting that their first product will be some sort of ground turkey or chicken. JUST’s press office also clarified with me that they were aiming to make the first commercial sale of clean meat by the end of 2018, subject to regulatory considerations — which, as we’ve written about before, could slow things down considerably. 

Though they’re planning to be the first to bring clean meat to market, JUST’s chief focus seemed to be developing plant-based media. If they’re successful it would be a huge boon for the cultured meat industry. Many clean meat labs use fetal bovine serum (FBS) as the media in which to grow their muscle cells. FBS, however, is very expensive and also (duh) not vegan. If JUST can succeed in developing a plant-based media as effective and versatile as FBS, they have a real shot at making clean meat affordable, scalable, and 100% animal-free.

They’re not the first company to work on developing an alternative to animal-based media. In fact, Shojinmeat, a resource for people growing cultured meat at home, has found a way to do away with FBS altogether, using yeast extract as their media. Yeast extract isn’t a perfect solution — it only works with certain types of cells and doesn’t catalyze as much growth as FBS — but it is an exciting step towards inexpensive, plant-based media.

To me, the most provocative part of the clean meat lab wasn’t what Espirito Santo and his team were doing (or not doing), but what they hoped to do someday. Two drawings on the wall of the clean meat lab laid out their vision for the future of meat: a utopian architectural plan of a vertically integrated cultured meat production facility.

On one end of the property is a farm where they grow the plants for their cell media. On the other are the giant vats where the meat is grown, which lead to a factory where the meat is “assembled” on conveyor belts with 3D printing technology. The only humans involved in the process were walking between the belts doing quality control. The factory has glass walls, so the whole affair is transparent – literally and metaphorically. Consumers could come to the facility, watch their meat being printed out, and select cuts for their dinner. Sort of like a visit to one of those places you can watch cheese being made before buying a wheel, but with cultured meat. 

Espirito Santo said they want that setup to be the same size as the largest slaughterhouse in the U.S. If he and his team can make plant-based media, and if 3D printing technology improves to allow for those production speeds, their goal could actually be attainable. 

I couldn’t help but wonder if it might be more productive, from a price and efficiency point of view, for JUST to simply put their resources into developing plant-based meats that taste the same as the “real” thing. For example, Seattle Food Tech is developing vegan chicken nuggets — and manufacturing technology to make them scalable — which seems like a much more feasible way to take a bite out of the meat industry. Omnipork and Beyond Meat are developing plant-based pork and beef burgers, respectively. Which begs the question: If people can’t taste the difference, will they really care if their pork chop is made of muscle cells grown in a bioreactor, or plants made to have the same taste and texture as meat? This question seems especially relevant since, outside of the clean meat lab, all of JUST’s resources are focused on making plant-based versions of animal products, such as their eggless scramble.

While I think that JUST’s claim that they’ll bring lab-grown meat to market by 2018 is definitely a stretch, you have to respect their self-assuredness. The word “disrupt” gets thrown around a lot in the field of food innovation, but JUST really is trying to radically shake up the way we eat. They want to replace some of our most beloved foods — scrambled eggs, mayonnaise, and hamburgers — with vegan taste-alikes, and so far they’ve been pretty successful. We’ll have to see if their vision for cultured meat comes to pass, or if it’s just a drawing on the wall. 

——

This article has been updated to reflect that JUST plans to be the first to make a commercial sale of cultured meat, not bring it to mass market, barring regulatory considerations. We also clarified that the CTO overseeing the cellular agriculture program has been at JUST since November. 

Food Tech News Roundup: DIY Food Printers, Salad Analytics, Ramen Robots

It’s time for your weekly dose of food tech news! This is when we take a look at some of the stories from the week which intrigued us and put them all in one convenient place.

This week we’ve got stories about lab-grown meat, DIY 3D bioprinter building, and sushi-serving robots. Get yourself a big mug of coffee and settle in for a read.

Lab-grown meat company Wild Type gets a funding boost

Cultured meat company Wild Type raised $3.5 million this week in a seed round led by firm Spark Capital with participation by Root Ventures, Mission Bay Capital, and other investors.

Wild Type is yet another player in the growing field of clean meat, along with startups like Memphis Meats, Mosa Meats, and Supermeat. Startup Finless Foods is also using cellular agriculture to culture fish in a lab, though they’re focused on bluefin tuna while Wild Type is working on salmon.

Wild Type hopes to use its new capital to speed up the development of its cultured salmon, increasing manufacturing capabilities while lowering costs. Their first product will be minced salmon meat intended for use in sushi, but they hope to eventually develop an animal-free lox and salmon filets.

 

 

Image: Adam Feinberg, HardwareX

Carnegie Mellon bioprinter could democratize 3D printing

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) recently developed a low-cost 3D bioprinter and are publishing the designs as open source so that anyone can build their own.

The researchers were able to cut costs by applying a syringe-based large volume extruder onto a standard desktop 3D printer (you have one at home, right?), essentially DIY-ing a 3D bioprinter. Bioprinters typically start at $10K to $20K and can cost up to $200K, but this MacGuyvered one can be built for under $500. It’s also easier to modify than a traditional 3D bioprinter.

Though the CMU team’s original research centers around organ tissue printing for transplants, their instructional abstract notes that these homemade bioprinters can perform “a wide range of 3D printing applications, including bioprinting, embedded printing, and food printing.” As we’ve covered on The Spoon before, 3D food printing is a massively underexplored area of food tech. Maybe these (relatively) affordable bioprinters will change that and make 3D food printing more accessible.

 

Image: Yoshikazu Tsuno, AFP via Mashable

Ramen-serving robots invade Seattle

Plenty USA will launch the new version of their AI-powered, Japan-made robot, dubbed ‘SOTA,’ in Seattle next month. The robot will premiere at JUNKICHI, a robota izakaya restaurant scheduled to open on April 15th in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

SOTA sits atop restaurant tables and uses AI to recognize diners’ faces. It is meant to facilitate communication between customers and servers, though it seems like having a table-bound robot as the middleman would make communication more confusing, if anything. Users can also use the SOTA app to make the robot speak, having guided conversations while they snack on hot pots and grilled meats.

This will be the North American launch for SOTA, but the robot is already a regular fixture at an izakaya restaurant in Japan. (They’e begun their integration into restaurants in America, as well.) According to Market Insider, the restaurant reported a 10% jump in sales since it started using SOTA, and the robot is a popular attraction for dinners. We’ll have to wait and see if it has the same success in an American market.

P.S. Keep an eye out for The Spoon team to make a field trip and interact with these robots ourselves! And eat some sushi, of course.

 

Beer gets high

For those who hate to choose between their vices, there’s a new product for you. Keith Villa, the inventor of Blue Moon beer has partnered with Ebbu, a company that works with marijuana compounds, to launch a THC-infused, non-alcoholic beer in Colorado this fall. The brew is designed to have the marijuana hit the drinker at the same rate as if they were consuming a beer.

The team plans to develop a wheat beer, a light beer, and a stout. The product will launch in Colorado, but producers want to eventually sell it in all states where marijuana is legal.

Other brewers, such as Lagunitas, have infused beer with CBD, a cannabanoid which does not produce any hallucinatory effects. However, this Colorado-based brew will be the first to incorporate THC, which is what gives marijuana users the trademark “high.” Its success (or lack thereof) will speak to how flexible Americans are willing to get with their cannabis consumption.

 

SweetGreen harnesses analytics to inform its new menu

Earlier this week, fast-casual salad chain SweetGreen made a major menu chance. At first glance, it seemed that all they had done was tweak their offerings — but it’s the why, not the what, that’s so interesting.

SweetGreen’s menu changes were apparently a direct result of tech-driven insights. The company recently told Bloomberg that they now use blockchain to track their produce, and also to inform their app (which they launched in 2013). Through the app they collect customer analytics to determine which salads to keep, which to introduce, and which to take off their menu, all of which led to their new menu — the first major menu change in 10 years.

This change is an indicator of how fast casual joints, like Eatsa, are integrating tech into their service models to distinguish themselves from the competition. They’re also harnessing platforms like Toast and Ingest.ai to help run restaurant operations for efficiently and increase revenue. Which all goes to say that this restaurant market is one that will likely see a lot of growth and change — in salad toppings and beyond.

 

What’s in a Name (for Lab-grown Meat)?

A classic Portlandia sketch is one about the organic chicken served in a restaurant. In it, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein ask a server increasingly specific questions about the origins of the poultry they are about to order.

If you thought choosing between organic, grass-fed, free-range, GMO, and locally sourced animal proteins was tough, just wait a few years, because the rise of lab-grown meats is going to add an entirely new layer of complexity to what and how we label our meat choices.

Portlandia - In the restaurant

Lab grown meats aren’t even widely available yet, but they’re enough of a concern that the United States Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) filed a petition with the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, asking for new beef labeling requirements.

From the USCA’s petition:

USCA requests that FSIS limit the definition of beef to product from cattle born, raised, and harvested in the traditional manner. Specifically, FSIS should require that any product labeled as “beef” come from cattle that have been born, raised, and harvested in the traditional manner, rather than coming from alternative sources such as a synthetic product from plant, insects, or other non-animal components and any product grown in labs from animal cells.

The USCA wants to make sure that anything labeled “beef” or “meat” in your grocery store or restaurant comes straight from a once-living cow, without a stopover in a lab.

But you can understand why the USCA might have a, well, beef with these newcomers, as lab-grown meat has received a lot of investor interest recently. Just last week, Tyson Foods announced it had invested an undisclosed sum of money into Memphis Meats, which also counts Cargill and Bill Gates among its investors. Then there’s SuperMeat, the Israeli company that raised $3 million last month for its lab-grown chicken. And lest we forget, Leonardo DiCaprio invested in Beyond Meat last summer.

Before we go any further, let’s pause to accept--and then set aside--the larger moral and philosophical issues that we will have to wrestle with as lab-grown meats become more mainstream. Those are very real, and deserve their own blog post. But before we can even start to have a serious discussion about those issues, we need to solve the basic question about what names we’ll even use.

First, there’s the big question of what we call the entire category. “Lab meat” or “cultured meat” or “clean meat” are options, and each come with their own set of implications. For example, does “clean meat” mean everything else is “dirty?”

From there, things get more complex. Even among just Memphis Meats and SuperMeat, there will different labeling issues. Both currently use animal serum to grow their lab-cultured meat, but both are also working on methods that don’t require any animal byproduct. Each version will require their own label to give conscientious consumers more informed decisions (and to provide a marketing hook). Then there’s Beyond Meat, which isn’t meat at all but made from pea-protein—but is sold in the meat aisle at the grocery stores.

Now imagine going to the store to buy a burger in a couple of years. Your options will be ground beef from once-alive cows, animal serum-based lab meat, non-animal-serum lab meat, and plant-based patties that “bleed.” One can only imagine how new sub-categories will pop up to match existing labels such as “organic,” “non-GMO,” and “local.”

And that doesn’t even touch on the animal proteins being grown from other animals such as SuperMeat’s chicken and Finless Foods’ lab grown fish.

It’s a lot to think about, and we won’t solve it all here. In fact, it’s a topic I’m sure we’ll be discussing a lot here as new products come to market, names are tested and customers begin to show their preferences.

Personally, I’m excited for the expanded options and can’t wait to try them all. But what do you think? How should new lab-grown meats be labeled? Does the USCA have a legitimate point? Leave a comment below and let us know.