Israel’s Ministry of Health has issued a “no questions” letter granting the company pre-approval for its cultivated beef steaks.
UK-based Higher Steaks has rebranded as Uncommon and raised $30m in a series A round to scale production of cultivated pork using technology it claims gives it a competitive edge by speeding up the cell differentiation process.
Five or six years ago the press coverage around cultivated meat was almost universally positive. Today, we’re seeing headlines about cancerous cells, ‘vaporware,’ and business failures. So where does the industry go from here?
Some commentators argue that cultivated meat is a food tech fantasy. So are they right? It all depends on your approach, says Joshua March, cofounder and CEO at San Leandro-based startup SciFi Foods.
Alt protein investor Lever VC has released its internal playbook for assessing the scientific progress of early-stage cultivated meat companies to help investors place more informed bets in a “complex and nascent industry” and help avoid a “Theranos-style outcome.”
Cocoon Bioscience will grow its high-value proteins business, which includes developing recombinant growth factors for cultivated meat.
“You can’t change how meat eaters eat by making the same thing they already consume,” says cultivated meat startup Vow’s founder George Peppou.
Roughly 94% of agrifood corporates’ total emissions lie in their supply chain; 33% of those are linked to animal agriculture.
Israel’s overall culture shows how the country has built its agrifoodtech with collaboration, support and a sense of belonging you may not find elsewhere.
The letter grants GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status to Upside’s cultivated chicken product, paving the way for a market launch in the US.
PeakBridge and others participated in the Series A round, which Vow says will enable it to bring its cultivated quail to Singapore soon.
BioBetter says it can bring down the cost of growth factors from the normal range of $50,000 – $500,000 per gram to a mere one dollar per gram.
The Factory 1 cultivated meat facility will handle commercial production for Vow’s “extremely delicious” first product it aims to launch this year.
The longtime entrepreneur describes the realities of founding a cultivated meat company, and offers insights for other founders and CEOs in the space.
The San Francisco startup says it has found a way to bring down the cost of cultivated meat manufacturing with biotechnology and machine learning.
As part of the announcement, John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, announced he was an investor in the company.
Eat Just will sell its cell-cultured chicken meat via takeaway orders in Singapore thanks to a partnership with delivery app Foodpanda.
The Netherlands-based startup is culturing meat in the lab using a technique that can change pluripotent stem cells from a newborn animal into any desired cell type.
Eat Just made history when it became the first company in the world to get regulatory approval to serve a cell-cultured meat product last November.
Zurich’s Mirai is initially working on non-GMO cultured beef and is “laser-focussed on developing a healthy nutritional profile” for the product, says its CEO.
