Cultivated meat: meat grown in space and the chicken nuggetPosted by Agronomics Limited on January 27th, 2020 Since my last post, the cultivated meat sector has acquired a fair bit of hot press – Aleph Farms announced bovine cells grew into muscle tissue 248 miles away from natural resources in space on 26 September. This alone helps support the narrative and truth that cultivated meat requires substantially less water and energy to grow compared to raising a whole animal for slaughter in a two-year process. The Life Cycle Analysis results from Hanna Tuomisto support this. Tuomisto concluded cultured meat requires approximately 36% less energy input and produces 53% less greenhouse gas emissions than beef. I had the pleasure of listening to Hanna’s talk on ‘sensitivity of different parameters on the environmental impacts of large-scale cultured meat production’ at the 5th International Cultured Meat Conference in Maastricht last month (debrief to follow). Richard Branson also gave a word of support for Memphis Meat, one of the leaders in the field, based in San Francisco and working on chicken and beef so far. The British tycoon, having experienced Memphis Meats lab-grown chicken, described it as ‘a delicious dinner’. Branson invested in Memphis Meats’ million Series A alongside some other big names like Bill Gates, Tyson and Cargill. There is speculation SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 also wants a bite of clean meat – for an unconfirmed 0 million. More money has already flooded into the sector, with two companies having completed their Series A fundraising rounds last month. Future Meat Technologies raised million to fund construction of a production plant to initially produce blended products of lab-grown meat and plant-based protein. Wild Type also completed their Series A round – raising the substantial sum of .5 million to support the development of its lab-grown fish platform. Wild Type performed a taste testing in June of its lab-grown salmon. With this additional funding, the total money raised in the whole sector is approximately 0 million – seemingly small, especially in comparison to the total fundraising for Beyond Meat, which amounts to nearly 4x this figure at 1 million of funding. This represents an important distinction between the plant-based and cultivated meat sector: the plant-based space has had a massive head start; Beyond Meat was founded in 2009, whereas the worlds first cultivated meat company came to existence in 2013 (Mosa Meat). By my count, there are just 31 cultivated companies in the sector to date, whereas companies that can classify themselves as producing plant-based products exceeds 300. There is a definite distinction between plant-based proteins – which are produced by a simple extrusion process of extracting the protein from a crop with water – compared to the capability of producing biologically identical meat from growing cells extracted from an animal and feeding them with a reliable source of nutrients. 2023 also gives regulation enough time to complete necessary approval of novel food products. However, if cultivated meat is proven to be biologically identical on a molecular level, the pathway could be shortened. Once approved, a 2.5 mL cell sample could produce 3700kg worth of meat in just 40 days: the efficiency of exponential cell growth and a simplified supply chain. Back to 2019 – the dwindling pork supply of China is down 45% since August 2018, when African Swine Fever – a virus that can cause death of pigs within a week after infection – first hit the country. Brazilian, European and American exports have heightened as a counter effect, but Chinese meat consumption may shift to chicken and alternative proteins in 2020 – Impossible Foods has its eye on providing plant-based pork for China, according to Bloomberg. Chicken meat production is set to increase 15% in the next year due to a jump from one meat to the next as meat demand in China increases. I attended, the International Cultivated Meat Conference in Maastricht last month, which was held by Mosa Meat and Mark Post, the scientist responsible for the world’s first hamburger made by growing bovine cells rather than slaughtering an animal, in 2013. The conference, more scientific focussed than commercial, provided some useful insights. There are several different components to producing cultured meat that must be considered: developing a stable cell line; media development to multiply the cells; bioreactor design for scale up; and scaffolding approaches to create dense tissue – these are probably the most important. The costliest, media development (the nutrient source for the cells), does not require any major technical breakthroughs to reduce the cost. Liz Specht, Senior Scientist at The Good Food Institute, conducted an analysis of culture medium costs (found here) that concluded that the two most expensive components, the growth factors TGF-β and FGF-2, which cost .9 million and .01 million a gram respectively, make up 96% of the total cost of a 20,000 L batch of Essential 8 medium, an off-the-counter media source. Insulin, also a growth factor, and a larger and more complex protein, is well-known to be expressed recombinantly from E. coli, and costs just 0 per gram – 0.0004% of the cost of TGF- β. The reason TGF-beta and FGF-2 are so expensive is because there has not been the demand to produce them on a large-scale in large quantities – but perhaps now there is. Interestingly Thermo Fisher Scientific said it was investing million in its biologics site in Scotland to boost its capabilities to manufacture cell culture media. This could be to the cultured meat sector’s benefit. claims its chicken nuggets cost , still far too expensive for mass market, but a definite price drop. The only obstacle from this slaughter-free meat reaching our mouths is regulation. The Good Food Institute is building its team in Europe, with managing director Richard Parr running operations, having previously been a SpAd for David Cameron. Richard also spoke at the conference. The conclusion? There needs to be action to boost public research and development funding for cultivated meat. In 2017, UK funding for R&D in general was just £2.2 billion. Public funding from the government should not necessitate a shift in government priorities, as cultivated meat already addresses priority topics including climate change, antibiotic resistance and food security. Recognising that cultivated meat could capture the projected .3 trillion meat, poultry and seafood market in 2025 and that global meat demand expected to double by 2050, the opportunity for cultivated meat to excel is huge. Meanwhile at AgronomicsReverting back to my day job at Agronomics, we have announced three exciting additions to our portfolio since my last update. Rebellyous Foods is a plant-based chicken manufacturing company based in Seattle, founded by CEO Christie Lagally in 2017, a former engineer at Boeing who holds five patents to her name. Lagally is eager to reduce the price of plant-based protein through high-tech, automated manufacturing technology, initially targeting B2B revenues. There are nearly three times as many chicken as humans on the planet – Rebellyous is aiming to challenge the big chicken industry.
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