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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Shojinmeat

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.

Japanese Startup Integriculture Will Sell Cultured Foie Gras by 2021, and Teach You To Make It at Home

At SKS Japan this week, lots of speakers have been predicting what the future of food might look like: it might be cooked by robotic articulating arms, it might be carbon neutral, or it might be personalized to individuals’ specific tastes.

But the most futuristic vision of all might have come from Yuki Hanyu, CEO and founder of DIY cultured meat community Shojinmeat. He sketched out a time in which we’re all living on Mars, growing steak in bioreactors in much the same way we brew beer right now.

That reality is still a long way off. However, right now Hanyu is still working on quite a few projects pushing us towards a future in which everyone — yes, even you — can grow their own meat, and cultured meat is available in your corner supermarket.

Shojinmeat was the original enterprise, but in 2015 Hanyu spun out Integriculture, a startup creating full-stack cellular agriculture solutions. After his session at SKS Japan, Hanyu described his company’s projected timeline to me:

2019
By the end of this year Integriculture will start selling Space Salt, a dried version of cell culture media. For those who don’t nerd out on cellular agriculture, media is the liquid “food” that allows animal cells to rapidly proliferate to form meat. Space Salt is Integriculture’s (secret) proprietary blend of salt and food safe amino acids, which, when mixed with water, forms a DIY cell culture media. Hanyu wants to sell it to home enthusiasts who can use it to grow their own meat using Shojinmeat guide.

2020
While its focus is cultured meat, in 2020 Integriculture is also planning to sell its media for use in cosmetic applications, specifically as an anti-aging skincare product.

2021
In 2021, Integriculture will launch its first cell-based meat product: foie gras. Hanyu said that they decided to tackle foie gras as its first product because of its creamy texture, which means that they don’t have to emulate the texture and chew of meat. Since foie gras is already quite expensive, starting with that product will also presumably give consumers less of a sticker shock when they see its high price. Accordingly they plan to launch first in high-end restaurants in Japan.

“We’re not aiming for massive revenue at first,” Hanyu told me during SKS Japan. Instead, he’s expecting that the foie gras launch will be more of a proof of concept to show that cell-based meat is feasible and delicious. He also wants it to help establish regulatory guidelines for cultured animal products in Japan.

Which brings us back to the Space Salt. Presumably, when Integriculture starts selling its cell-based foie gras, Japanese food regulatory bodies will ask the company what’s in it in order to approve it for public consumption. At that time Hanyu and his team plan to show that the only two inputs are duck liver cells and Space Salt (plus water), the latter of which contains ingredients that are already sold on the market. He’s hoping that if they prove that duck liver and Space Salt are both already available for purchase, then by the transitive property their cell-based foie gras shouldn’t pose a problem.

If the 2021 restaurant launch goes as planned, Integriculture will start selling foie gras in supermarkets in 2023.

Photo: Integriculture

An ambitious timeline, to be sure — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The JST (Japan Science and Technology) Agency, part of the Japanese government, is investing part of its $20 million funding in Integriculture’s research for large-scale cell-based meat. The company is also working with JAXA (the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) on its Space Food X program, which is developing closed-loop food solutions for space travelers.

That’s a lot of balls to juggle for the startup, especially one with only 13 employees and ¥300 million (USD 2.7 million) in funding. There’s also relatively little local support: despite the fact that cultured meat will likely debut in Asia, Japan is still quite light on cellular agriculture startups.

Interestingly, there’s at least one other company openly working in the cell-based meat space — and it’s a big one. Nissin Foods, the instant ramen giant, is partnering with the University of Tokyo to develop their own small cultured meat cubes to include in their freeze-dried ramen packs.

However, as they’re a large company which would require billions of tiny cell-based meat cubes — and they need to make them cheaply to keep down the cost of their product — Hanyu said that they’re likely 10 years away from actually incorporating cultured pork or chicken into the ramen packs.

Maybe then highbrow consumers will be able to have instant noodles with lab-grown foie gras.

SKS Japan: Excitement, Growth & a Rapidly Maturing Food Tech Ecosystem

Last week I was in Tokyo for Smart Kitchen Summit Japan. It was the second edition of our Japanese event, and while it’s only been twelve short months since that first gathering, the amount of progress I witnessed in the Japan food tech scene over the course of the two days in Tokyo was amazing.

Here are some of the trends, products and innovators that stood out to me last week:

In Japan, Much of the Innovation Comes From Big Companies

For those familiar with Japan, you’ll know it’s not surprising that much of the innovation comes from within established companies. These “intreprenuers” often work in R&D or as part of new business units specifically to innovate new product concepts.

One of these innovation units is Panasonic’s GameChanger Catapult. We’ve written about Catapult as they’ve been showing off innovative product concepts like a food softener for the elderly or home fermentation system.  As it turns out, the innovation unit from Panasonic is still working on those ideas as well as a few new ones.

One of Catapult’s product concepts is Tottemeal, which first showed up at SXSW in Austin in March 2017 as a product concept called Bento@YourOffice. It was comprised of an IoT-powered smart fridge and app system, which is similar in concept to Byte Fridge in that both offer fresh food for sale. Since SXSW last year the company has approached partners and refined the concept to work with any fridge.  The company is now testing out the service in Panasonic’s event/innovation hub, Kura-Think, in Tokyo.

Another large company that’s been busy working on future-forward food tech concepts since last year’s SKS Japan is CookPad. The digital cooking site, which boasts 100 million users worldwide, introduced a smart kitchen platform a couple months ago called OiCy that connects their recipes with appliances to create a guided cooking platform. At SKS Japan, the company outlined the future vision for OiCy in the form of a six-level roadmap for the smart kitchen platform. They also announced an updated partner list which includes hardware manufacturers such as Sharp and Hitachi.

Japan’s Startup Ecosystem Is Gaining Momentum

While much of Japan’s innovation comes from within large organizations, there are also signs of a rapidly maturing food tech startup ecosystem.  Part of the growth is being driven by Japan’s bigger companies like Kirin (who launched their own accelerator). However, there were also a number of young and innovative entrepreneurs that spoke at SKS Japan such as Integriculture’s Yuki Hanyu and Open Meals’ Ryosuke Sakaki.

We’ve written about both companies before in the Spoon. Chris Albrecht was the first to write about Integriculture’s impending $2.7 million funding round when he covered Shojinmeat, the open source project from Hanyu. As Northeast Asia’s only lab-grown meat startup, CEO Hanyu has big plans to jumpstart alternative meat production in the Asia market, and discussed his plans for doing just that.

Open Meals made a big splash this March at SXSW with their sushi teleportation demo. While true food teleportation may be a ways off, the Open Meals vision of creating a food digitization and printing framework is pretty fascinating. Company CEO Sasaki presented an ambitious 100-year look into the future for the idea around food digitization that spanned from digitized food restaurants in Tokyo in just two years and eventually sees space colonies where we’re sharing food experiences in real time with people on earth.

Dinner time in space

Japan’s Smart Kitchen Community Embraces Ideas From US & Europe

The Japan smart kitchen/food tech community is also really interested in innovation happening from the West. One of the speakers at SKS Japan this year was Jon Jenkins, the head of product for the guided cooking group within Meyer, Hestan Cue. Jenkins, who goes by JJ, gave a talk about the role of technology and software in the kitchen and later gave a hands-on demo of the product to a capacity crowd:

It wasn’t just cooking demos. A highly engaged audience packed the room to hear conversations with innovators from the US and Europe such as Jason Cohen of Analytical Flavor Systems talk about the impact on AI on food personalization and flavor. They also heard from Suvie’s Robin Liss as she discuss her company’s four-chamber cooking robot and how today’s appliance companies need to start innovating around food services. The Future Food Institute’s Sara Roversi talked about taking her food innovation platform, which she started in Europe, across the globe. They also listened to Amar Krishna of Chefling and Kevin Yu of SideChef discuss the differences between the smart kitchen platform market in the US with CookPad’s Tad Yoshioka.

Collaboration, Innovation & Community

The biggest takeaway for me from this year’s SKS Japan was there a growing sense of collaboration, innovation, and community in Japan’s food tech market.  Part of it was the hard work of our partners for SKS Japan, SigmaXYZ, who have done a great job over the past year fostering the SKS community. But, just as with the US and Europe, it’s clear now that the Japanese market was ready for an event to catalyze innovation and to bring it together, and I couldn’t be more thrilled that event is SKS.

I’m excited to see how our event in Japan has just done that and has become the go-to food tech event in the Japan market and for much of Asia and I can’t wait to go back next year. I hope I’ll see you there.

If you’re interested in being a part of our global community, don’t miss SKS in Seattle in less than two months!  Robin Liss, Jon Jenkins, Jason Cohen and many more will be there, so you will not want to miss out. You can check it out here and don’t forget to use discount code SPOON for 25% off tickets!

Shojinmeat Scores Grant for Open Source Clean Meat Initiative

Last week Shojinmeat announced on Twitter that it had received a flash grant from the Shuttleworth Foundation. Shojinmeat was nominated for the $5,000 grant by Isha Datar, a Shuttleworth Fellow and the Executive Director of cellular agriculture non-profit New Harvest.

If you’re not familiar, Chris Albrecht covered Tokyo-based Shojinmeat a few months ago for the Spoon:

“Shojinmeat is now an active Slack channel that connects roughly 30 DIY citizen scientists from across Japan. They gather to talk about their homegrown meat experiments and related topics such as tissue engineering, animal welfare, and regenerative medicine. Shojinmeat has also put out ‘zines with articles and pictures about their work, and recently made a move to the West by creating an English-speaking Slack channel.”

Essentially, Shojinmeat is an informational platform for DIY clean meat enthusiasts — more like a club than an actual company. So it’s easy to see why the Shuttleworth Foundation, who supports open knowledge resources, would want to support them.

Shojinmeat isn’t founder Yuki Hanyu’s only project. He also created Integriculture; a startup which is making clean meat infrastructure for B2B sale. On our call Hanyu said that Integriculture is gearing up for their first product launch this fall: a food-grade culture media, which is the “food” which clean meat needs to grow. This plant-based media is composed of sugars, amino acids, and vitamins, and Hanyu said he anticipates customers will range from companies to biohackers.

Clearly, Hanyu and his team have their fingers in quite a few pies. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. (Apologies for the mixed metaphors.) Shojinmeat is also developing incubators for their members to “grow” their own cultured meats. He’s planning to launch these incubators, which will market for roughly $100, at COMITIA125, a manga event in Tokyo, on August 18th. (See top image for a look at the incubator, which will be distributed with a clean meat ‘zine detailing how it can be used to grow animal tissue.) Afterwards, he’ll make them available online and put the blueprint on open source development platform GitHub.

Hanyu told me that they would use the money to buy new equipment for DIY clean meat research and fund travel to biohacking conferences, so they could share their message to a wider audience.

Interestingly, he also mentioned that Shojinmeat would also use the grant to support a project they’re working on with local high schools. Hanyu is collaborating with a group of government officials (among others) to launch a high school class focused entirely on cell cultures.

Clean meat has sparked quite a bit of controversy as of late. With the government and groups like the National Beef Cattleman’s Association attempting to exert influence over and regulate the clean meat space, a virtual army of people working on affordable, attainable solutions around the world (or at least in Japan) is pretty cool. It’s also a sign that the steady march towards cultured meat can’t be stopped.

The Shuttleworth Foundation website says it awards Flash Grants to companies that are “social change agents.” There’s no question that Shojinmeat — with its mission to make cultured meat open and accessible — is exactly that.

Shojinmeat is Growing a DIY Clean Meat Community

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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