Top stories in Cultivated Meat – April 2024

April 2024 was quite exciting for the cultivated meat industry with the annoncement that Mosa Meat had secured €40 million to prepare for its entry into the Singapore market. Berlin-based Cultimate Foods has raised €2.3 million to expand and innovate in delivering meaty flavors without traditional farming. On another front, Meatable, a Dutch firm, hosted the first legally approved cultivated meat tasting session in the EU. The taste test has demonstrated that cultivated meats can now rival traditional meats in flavor, even potentially deceiving top chefs. However, Omeat, a cultivated meat startup, faced significant setbacks with staff cuts and leadership changes, signaling the volatility within the sector.

Meanwhile, Asia is positioning itself as a leader in the cultivated meat industry, outpacing both Europe and the U.S. in embracing and investing in this innovative technology. The UK is paving the way for a regulated future for cultivated meat and precision fermentation technologies. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the UK emphasized its commitment to thorough assessments of these new products’ safety and nutritional value before they hit the market, ensuring that innovations meet stringent health standards.

Research in the cultivated meat sector is rapidly evolving, with new studies exploring the use of probiotic bacteria in cultivated meat production. This approach not only promises to enhance food safety through renewable antimicrobials but also aims to reduce production costs, making cultivated meat more accessible and sustainable.

See you next month!

News

I tasted Europe’s first lab-grown sausage – and I’d challenge the top Michelin-star chefs to be able to tell the difference between the real-deal! April 27, 2024
Although the texture was more fibrous than bratwurst I’m used to, Meatable’s offering felt like a natural, normal eating experience – and I don’t think foodies or top chefs could tell there was no slaughtered pig involved. Source: I tasted Europe’s first lab-grown sausage – and I’d challenge the top… Read more: I tasted Europe’s first lab-grown sausage – and I’d challenge the top Michelin-star chefs to be able to tell the difference between the real-deal!

A Deep Dive into the Role of 3D Scaffolds as the Building Blocks for Cultivated Meat April 26, 2024
In addition to scaling and cost hurdles, cultivated meat production faces the unique challenge of developing final products that meet the consumer’s expectations of conventional animal-based meat, including larger pieces akin to whole cuts. However, most prototypes are made from ground meat and do not look exactly like whole cuts.… Read more: A Deep Dive into the Role of 3D Scaffolds as the Building Blocks for Cultivated Meat

Asia’s embrace of cultivated meat will bring industry leadership April 8, 2024
So while Europe remains mired in internal debates about cultivated meat and the U.S. takes baby steps on public funding for alternative protein R&D, the Asia-Pacific region is sprinting toward a more secure and sustainable food future. Governments here are guided by the firm belief that scientific innovation is not… Read more: Asia’s embrace of cultivated meat will bring industry leadership

Compagnies and key players

Berlin-based Cultimate Foods raises €2.3 million to deliver meaty flavors while cutting down on intensive farming April 29, 2024
Cultimate Foods, a biotech startup based in Berlin’s Biocube and Hannover (Institut für Technische Chemie, Leibniz Universität Hannover), successfully closes its €2.3 million seed round to scale up production processes, expand commercial collaborations and operation. Founded in 2022, Cultimate Foods creates a game-changing alternative fat ingredient to bring the authentic… Read more: Berlin-based Cultimate Foods raises €2.3 million to deliver meaty flavors while cutting down on intensive farming

Large-scale, lab-grown meat: Step inside a cultivated meat factory April 28, 2024
Lab-grown meat, cultivated meat, cell-based meat, slaughter-free meat: All of these terms refer to the process of creating real meat from animal cells, despite names that may allude to a vegan product. Come with us as we step inside a lab-grown meat facility, and become some of the first to… Read more: Large-scale, lab-grown meat: Step inside a cultivated meat factory

Staff cuts & leadership shake-up at cultivated meat startup Omeat April 24, 2024
Less than a year after emerging from stealth with an “elegant solution” to scaling cultivated meat by harvesting nutrients from “healthy cows” for its cell culture media, California-based Omeat is operating with a skeleton crew following a turbulent few months during which the founder stepped down as CEO after being… Read more: Staff cuts & leadership shake-up at cultivated meat startup Omeat

Meatable hosts first EU cultivated meat tasting session April 20, 2024
Dutch food technology firm Meatable has successfully hosted the first-ever legally approved cultivated meat tasting in the EU. The trial represents the first in a series of sessions set to take place in the Netherlands, after the Dutch Government granted permission to cultivated meat firms in January 2024. Source: Meatable… Read more: Meatable hosts first EU cultivated meat tasting session

Mosa Meat Raises €40M Ahead of Cultivated Meat Launch in Singapore April 18, 2024
The company that proved the concept for cultivated meat all those years ago is now gearing up for public tastings and market entry with a new €40M ($42.4M) round of financing. It takes Mosa Meat’s total raised to more than $135M, following its previous $85M Series B and $8M Series… Read more: Mosa Meat Raises €40M Ahead of Cultivated Meat Launch in Singapore

BLUU Seafood Opens New Headquarters in Hamburg April 17, 2024
BLUU Seafood, a European food biotech company in the production of cultivated fish, officially opened the doors to its first pilot plant in Europe. By relocating from Lübeck to Hamburg-Altona, the startup company says it has left laboratory scale behind and exchanged it for 2,000 square meters of customized research,… Read more: BLUU Seafood Opens New Headquarters in Hamburg

Vow Receives Regulatory Approval to Launch “World-First” Cultivated Quail Product in Singapore April 15, 2024
Australian cultivated meat company Vow announces that it has secured regulatory approval from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) to produce and sell the world’s first cultivated quail product. Vow’s product originates from cells of the rare Japanese quail, Coturnix japonica, grown without animal-derived serum and antibiotics to provide a slaughter-free alternative.… Read more: Vow Receives Regulatory Approval to Launch “World-First” Cultivated Quail Product in Singapore

Meatable slashes production times for cultivated meat April 13, 2024
“I think what we’re seeing is a natural cycle for all innovation, where you see hype, then stagnation, then consolidation, and then redirection,” said Luining, a biologist who cofounded Meatable in 2018 with stem cell biologist Dr. Mark Kotter and McKinsey exec Krijn de Nood. “But the companies with something… Read more: Meatable slashes production times for cultivated meat

Hong Kong cultivated seafood start-up Avant Meats seeks funds to expand Singapore pilot plant to grow groupers, snappers, eel meat from cells April 11, 2024
Avant Meats, a cultivated seafood company that started life in Hong Kong, is planning a 30-fold expansion in its capacity to make sustainable seafood for global markets after positive response from consumers at a recent tasting event. Source: Hong Kong cultivated seafood start-up Avant Meats seeks funds to expand Singapore… Read more: Hong Kong cultivated seafood start-up Avant Meats seeks funds to expand Singapore pilot plant to grow groupers, snappers, eel meat from cells

Chinese cultivated meat producer CellX expands to fermentation, eyeing boom in global demand for alternative proteins April 9, 2024
“We see cultivated meat as having a huge potential over the next 10 to 30 years,” CellX’s co-founder and CEO Yang Ziliang told the Post on the sidelines of the One Earth Summit in Hong Kong last week. But he added, “a fermentation platform enables us to go to the… Read more: Chinese cultivated meat producer CellX expands to fermentation, eyeing boom in global demand for alternative proteins

Quest receives funding from Innovate UK April 7, 2024
Quest Meat’s CEO and co-founder, Ivan Wall, said: “We are delighted to have been awarded funding to advance our innovative technology to create next-generation scalable cell lines. Engineering biology is a powerful tool for unlocking the power of scale up to create tasty, cultivated meat whilst maintaining regulatory control and… Read more: Quest receives funding from Innovate UK

Leading Sweden’s transition to sustainable food through the upscaling of cultivated meat production April 5, 2024
To realize their ambition to help save the planet by redefining how meat is produced, the team at Re:meat is building a community of industry stakeholders with the aim of mobilizing, connecting and collaborating at all stages of the value chain to attract the right expertise and support to this… Read more: Leading Sweden’s transition to sustainable food through the upscaling of cultivated meat production

Innocent Meat raised EUR 3 million April 4, 2024
Innocent Meat has succeeded in realising EUR 3 million in financing in a challenging market environment. The investors include the anchor investor Venture Capital Fonds MV, which invested EUR 500 thousand, and a new private investor, which invested EUR 2.5 million. The fresh capital will enable the company to further… Read more: Innocent Meat raised EUR 3 million

Technological milestone in the new food industry: GEA presents perfusion as key process at Anuga FoodTec April 3, 2024
For GEA, perfusion is a key innovation focus for the entire upstream and downstream process. As it enables both the bioreactors and the material flow to run continuously throughout the process chain, it also improves capacity utilization.At the same time, the technology holds out major potential for media reprocessing –… Read more

Market, investment, prospective

State of the Industry Report 2023 : Cultivated meat and seafood from GFI April 23, 2024
In the history of food and agriculture, 2023 was a milestone year—the year that real animal meat made without animals was first approved for sale in the world’s largest economy. For the first time, U.S. consumers ordered cultivated meat at two restaurants helmed by world-renowned chefs. Additionally, cultivated meat broadened… Read more: State of the Industry Report 2023 : Cultivated meat and seafood from GFI

Challenges and breakthroughs: contextualizing alternative protein progress – The Good Food Institute April 19, 2024
The alternative protein industry has made significant progress over the last decade-plus as products have increasingly approached the taste and texture of conventional meat, bringing a new population of meat-eating consumers to the market. A complex picture of the alternative protein industry emerged in 2023, one in which growth and… Read more: Challenges and breakthroughs: contextualizing alternative protein progress – The Good Food Institute

Cultivated Meat Struggles to Gain Traction Among Consumers, Survey Finds April 10, 2024
The survey, which included 2,000 to 10,000 adults aged 18 to 64 per country from January to December 2023, shows a varying willingness to try cultivated meat. According to the findings, in India, for example, one in five respondents expressed interest in trying cultivated meat, while only 9% of those… Read more: Cultivated Meat Struggles to Gain Traction Among Consumers, Survey Finds

Vinod Khosla on cultivated meat, ‘silly money’ to AI, me too startups April 6, 2024
“I think there are a lot of diamonds in the rough that will go public. What I would say is the negative perceptions come from a lot of followers who do undifferentiated things.” He added: “Look at cell-based meats. We probably looked at two dozen business plans and not one… Read more

Laws, ethics and lobbies

UK maps path ahead for precision fermentation and cultivated meat April 16, 2024
The FSA said it would still conduct a through and evidence-based assessment of new products’ safety and nutritional value before they can be sold in the UK and ministers will still make the final decisions. Source: UK maps path ahead for precision fermentation and cultivated meat – All About Feed

Research

Probiotic cultivated meat: bacterial-based scaffolds and products to improve cultivated meat: Trends in Biotechnology April 30, 2024
Here, we address opportunities for introducing probiotic bacteria into the cultivated meat industry, including using them to produce renewable antimicrobials and scaffolding materials. We also offer solutions to challenges, including the growth of bacteria and mammalian cells, the effect of probiotic bacteria on production costs, and the effect of bacteria… Read more: Probiotic cultivated meat: bacterial-based scaffolds and products to improve cultivated meat: Trends in Biotechnology

Advancing our understanding of bioreactors for industrial-sized cell culture: health care and cellular agriculture implications April 25, 2024
This review article aims to provide an overview of the current state of bioreactor technology in both cell therapy and cultured meat production. It will examine the various bioreactor types and their applications in these fields, highlighting their advantages and limitations. In addition, it will explore the future prospects and… Read more: Advancing our understanding of bioreactors for industrial-sized cell culture: health care and cellular agriculture implications

The cultural construction of cellular agriculture food: through the lens of the whole-parts framework for meat April 14, 2024
Cultured meat requires a complete bottom-up process in producing objects, indicating that the concept of cultured meat is not necessarily aligned with the concept of existing meat, as previously suggested from the perspective of producing conventional meat. In this perspective, we proceed to further investigation the meaning of meat in… Read more: The cultural construction of cellular agriculture food: through the lens of the whole-parts framework for meat

Persistent preference for meat and dairy, and a sluggish transition to a more plant-based diet April 2, 2024
As a whole, consumer diets in the Netherlands are made up of 39% plant-based proteins and 61% animal proteins. “We’re seeing a cautious shift towards more plant-based protein consumption,” says Marleen Onwezen, expertise leader in Consumer Behaviour at Wageningen University & Research. “But it’s not happening quickly enough.” Source: Persistent… Read more