The Month In Cultivated Meat: September
Diving into the dynamic world of cultivated meat through a monthly recap of the sectors biggest developments. The future is harm-free meat, join me on the journey.
More State Bans Proposed & A Big Name Readies For Mass Production
This month:
Illinois joined the battle to ban cultivated meat
The UK eyes food tech regulation
Believer Meats made a big partnership as it prepares to scale
New Zealand dipped its toes into cultivated seafood
All about the biggest cultivated meat conference
🍽️Small Bites
Juicy Marbles—which uses plant-based whole cuts of ‘meat’—teased they’re pursuing a hybrid approach. The team has seen “meaningful progress” and wants to add cultivated meat “as an aromatic or functional component” into its blend.
Pythag Tech unveiled The Clean Meat Terminal, a market intelligence platform for the cultivated meat industry.
Aleph Farms plans to launch later this year and is partnering with a Michelin star Chef to bring their first products to diner's plates.
Steakholder Foods opened its first full-scale Demonstration Center at its headquarters in Rehovot, Israel.
💲 Raises
Meat Tomorrow [Denmark] raised $607K to accelerate the development of cultivated meat.
Opo Bio [New Zealand] received funding from WNT Ventures to expand its supply of curated cells to cultivated meat producers.
New Zealand will invest $6M into cultivated seafood through a five-year, government-backed scheme.
Meatable [Netherlands] received $8.42M in funding from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency to accelerate its cultivated pork production.
Cellva Ingredients [Brazil] raised $1.5M to build out its cultivated fat products.
⚡Large Bites
🛑 Illinois joins a growing list of US states seeking to ban cultivated meat
Illinois House Representative Chris Miller introduced a bill to make selling, manufacturing, or distributing cultivated meat a Class C misdemeanor. The core reason? Farmer welfare.
“Agriculture is big business in Illinois, and we don’t need fake meat laboratories creating a highly expensive product that tries to replicate real meat…Illinois farmers know what they’re doing, and they do it well.” — Chris Miller.
It’s unclear whether it will pass or not.
It comes off the back of bans in Florida and Nebraska and follows in the steps of a Michigan lawmaker who introduced a similar bill in June.
👏UK regulator to reform approval process for cultivated meat & precision fermentation
Next year, the UK’s food safety regulator—The Food Standards Agency (FSA)—will introduce changes to its regulatory framework to “modernise” how new foods like cultivated meat are brought to market.
💪 Believer Meats teams up with German engineering firm ahead of 2025 launch
Believer Meats partnered with German engineering firm GEA to scale up the production of cultivated meat. Believer Meats boasts the world's largest manufacturing facility for cultivated meat—the partnership will help prepare for its opening next year, helping to drive down associated costs and emissions.
🏆Awards
Marbled cultivated meat by TissenBioFarm won the “Cultured Meat Product of the Year” in the 2024 AgTech Breakthrough Awards.
“We aim to produce products that are competitive in every way with conventional prime cuts” — TissenBioFarm
They’re using an in-house platform to produce whole-cut marbled steaks leveraging light to eliminate the use of expensive proteins to cut production costs.
🤝Stronger Together
Meatable joined the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture.
Japan’s IntegriCulture announced five additions to its ‘CulNet’ cultivated meat alliance.
Alt-seafood association Future Ocean Foods welcomed 17 new members.
The industry came together last month in Silicon Valley for the 2024 Cultured Meat Symposium. I wrote an article summing up my five takeaways, check it out below! 👇
🎧Cultivated Listens
Michael Wolf from The Spoon interviewed Deniz Kent from Prolific Machines. Their novel approach of using light as an energy input to grow cultivated meat could be the breakthrough necessary to significantly lower the cost of production.
With the interview lasting less than 30 minutes, have a listen on your next walk!
📑Cultivated Reads
Organic Authority did a nice little write-up on Memphis Meats following their milestone moment earlier in the year creating chicken and duck products.
For those wanting a deeper dive, I came across a study that predicted cultivated meat could slash the social costs of animal meat by half.
“A recent study by the Dutch project PPP True Price: from Insight to Action reveals that by 2030, the overall social costs of cultivated meat from RESPECTfarms could be 2 to 3.5 times lower than conventional meat from dairy cows, chicken, and pork produced in the Netherlands.” — Vegconomist
It’s a big claim and one that isn’t taken lightly.
The industry is facing increasing criticism to prove more substantive claims.
Cellular Agriculture Australia has called for clearer impact metrics and last month the BBC Science Focus put cultivated meat under the microscope.
Their findings? A yet-to-be peer-reviewed study concluded the carbon footprint of lab-grown beef could be higher than beef farmed from an animal.
From my humble position as an industry novice, it seems difficult to make any real conclusion when the industry is still in its infancy and yet to scale.
📅Looking Ahead
Alabama’s ban on cultivated meat starts October 1.
A US federal judge set an October 7 date for a hearing on Florida’s cultivated meat ban.
AltProteins 24 is on in Melbourne on October 10.
That’s a wrap for this month’s bite. Stay curious, stay cultivated!
Another good month for cultivated meat!