Believer Meats has become the fifth cultivated meat startup to secure a coveted FDA ‘no questions’ letter confirming the safety of its products and has completed construction of a large-scale production facility in North Carolina.
The company—which has operations in Israel, Chicago, North Carolina and Dubai—is yet to release an official statement and the letter and accompanying scientific memo have not yet posted on the FDA’s website.
However, in a LinkedIn post penned Thursday, CEO Gustavo Burger revealed that: “We’ve received the FDA’s ‘no questions’ letter confirming the agency’s acceptance of our safety conclusion. We’ve completed construction of our North Carolina facility, the first and only large-scale cultivated meat production site in the world [a claim with which Australian cultivated meat startup Vow took issue, with CEO George Peppou telling us that “We have had 40,000-L of production capacity and have been producing at 20,000L for sales in Singapore and Australia.”].
He added: “This is more than just progress, it’s a defining moment, a bold leap forward in our vision to lead food innovation that cares for the planet. As we move forward, our focus remains on execution, advancing cultivated meat from promise to product and contributing to a more resilient, sustainable food system.”
To access the US market, it will also need to secure a grant of inspection from USDA and label approval, said the company, which added in a LinkedIn post that “commissioning of the factory is underway.”
Non GMO technology
Believer Meats (formerly Future Meat Technologies) is one of the top-funded players in the nascent cultivated meat space, raising $347m in its series B round in 2021 to help commercialize its Non-GMO technology.
The tech, originally developed by founder Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, enables it to achieve higher-density cell cultures and more efficient use of media than rivals in the space, claims the firm, which published a peer-reviewed paper last year citing media costs of $0.63/liter “that supports the long-term, high density culture of chicken cells.”
According to the paper, a techno-economic analysis for a theoretical production facility of 50,000-L scale showed that the cost of cultivated chicken “can drop to within the range of organic chicken at $6.20/lb by using perfusion technology.”
According to published literature, Believer Meats is using spontaneously immortalized, Non GMO chicken fibroblast cells which are then trans-differentiated into adipocyte‑like (fat) cells that can be combined with plant proteins to make chicken products.
Other cultivated meat startups that have secured the FDA green light in the US are Good Meat (Eat Just), UPSIDE Foods, Mission Barns, and Wildtype.
More to follow…
Further reading:
Mission Barns secures USDA green light for cultivated fat, plans Q3 launches
Clever Carnivore’s pragmatic path to cultivated meat profitability, starting with $0.07/liter media
GFI: There are ‘no silver bullets to fill funding gaps in cultivated meat’
