“Growing” meat in a cell bank: The story of Upside Foods, a lab-grown chicken quintessence

Imagine being able to produce meat and not have to slaughter animals. Instead of raising livestock on farms, Uma Valeti, a cardiologist, and co-founder of Upside Foods, dreamt of a way to “grow” meat in a production facility, by culturing animal cells.

It has taken years of experimentation by a crew of biologists, biochemists and engineers to turn that concept into a product ready to eat. The company is waiting on the FDA to greenlight its first cultivated meat products, including a chicken fillet.

The sector experienced a huge breakthrough last month when the FDA backed the safety findings of Upside Foods, a startup in California making lab-grown chicken. Consumers could get it for sale after additional US Department of Agriculture inspections.

We wore the safety gear to maintain our food safety protocols and walked past shiny, brewery-style, sterilizable tanks that reached from floor to ceiling.

But these tanks – called cultivators in this industry – “brew” meat, not beer. We were able to see the cells that were stored in the cell bank, the pipes that pumped water into tanks, and the raw meat that emerged from the production facility.

The Impact of Cultivated Meat on Climate Change and Diseases in Cattle Production Facilities, according to Valeti, a Harvard Medical School student

The facility’s glass walls look out into a busy upscale neighborhood, filled with restaurants, apartments and offices. The glass walls are meant to be transparent. He says people should be able to see and believe a paradigm change.

The meat industry will use electricity and contribute to the CO2 emissions. The researchers conclude that the relative impact will be determined by whether – or how quickly — the energy used to power the cultivated meat production facilities comes from clean-energy, or decarbonized energy.

The exact climate impact of cultivated meat is unknown. Researchers at the University of Oxford modeled the potential climate change impact of cattle compared to cultivated meat. One advantage of cultivated meat is that it will not produce methane emissions, which is a potent greenhouse gas produced by cattle.

Furthermore, concentrated animal feeding operations are a risk factor for the emergence of diseases that spread between animals and people, as a UN report from 2020, Preventing the Next Pandemic, warned.

He was in the dining hall at medical school. Hundreds of chickens were hanging on a production line when he arrived at the slaughter house. “They were literally moving past at blazing speed, they’d be upside down with blood everywhere,” Valeti recalls. “That was an image that just stayed in my head.”

What is the goal of an animal-based food market? The test kitchen of Upside Foods and the FDA’s Food Standards Authority, which is not the case for cell-cultured meat

He became a vegetarian, but he knew many people are resolute carnivores. Despite calls from climate change scientists to eat less meat, the globe is demanding more of it. Americans eat more meat every year than they did in the early 1980s.

While awaiting regulatory approval, he’s moving forward to bring the product to people’s plates. He has signed a partnership with Dominique Crenn, the co-owner and chef of the three-Michelin-starred restaurant Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, who’s agreed to provide culinary consulting and recipe development, and once approved for marked, to serve Upside’s cultivated chicken at her restaurant.

He’s won over plenty of investors along the way, including Bill Gates and venture capitalist John Doerr, and the company is now valued at more than a billion dollars. Some of the largest companies involved in traditional meat production, including Tyson and Cargill have also invested.

A third of UK consumers would eat cultivated meat according to a survey done by the Food Standards Agency. I was initially concerned about the taste test but the FDA did a great job of making me feel better. Many plant-based products are on the market, which is why half of them would try them.

“Most of the world’s consumers love meat,” said Rich Dillon, the CEO of Ivy Farm. The transition towards a plant-based diet is not being done fast enough. If we do not make meat in a different way, we will be running out of resources on the planet.”

Friedrich says climate conscious consumers would most likely use the products early in their lives, but for the market to really take off they have to taste great and be cost competitive. “Until they get there, they’re going to stay niche,” Friedrich predicts. People make their food decisions based on price and taste.

When I asked Valeti about price parity with conventional meat he said the goal is to be price-competitive. “It will take time to build,” Valeti acknowledged. He says his team is ready to wow consumers with taste.

We tasted Upside Foods’ chicken in the company’s state-of-the-art test kitchen. I was asked to sign a waiver before tasting it, because it’s not yet legal to sell cell-cultured meat in the U.S.

I was offered a piece of chicken in a pan-fried version of their sauce. My reaction was, “It’s delicious.” (Is everything in wine-butter sauce?) The texture was similar to chicken breast, with bones and hard bits or grizzle. I said it tasted like chicken, but Valeti quickly said it was chicken.

It took Valeti and his team years to develop the technology behind these tasty bites. A key challenge was creating the feed for the cells. Cells need a mix of proteins, carbohydrates and fats (just as animals do) but, designing the exact formulation was part alchemy, and a lot of trial and error.

The feed needed to maximize growth, but also produce a good taste, texture and nutritional value. He quickly realized no single scientist had the skills to figure this out alone.

A muscle biologist can focus on growth, but he brought in nutritional biochemists and engineers to tackle the competing challenges linked to taste and growth. “We had to develop a multidisciplinary team of scientists,” Valeti says.

The FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are trying to come up with a regulatory framework that will help move these innovative products into the US market.

Each submission will be reviewed by the FDA separately, and can’t say when or if it will be completed. An FDA spokesman said in an email that the FDA encourages firms to talk to them often and early in their product development phase.

Can We Become Better at Life? How to Move from the Meat Industry to the Produced Meat Sector: A Commentary on the Cases of Dr. K. Hunnes

According to Hunnes cultivated meat may not appeal to vegetarians or vegan. She points to the healthfulness of plant-based diets, which is the diet she follows, and says some people don’t want to eat meat, no matter how it’s produced. Also, the cultivated meat industry has relied on fetal bovine serum from cows as a growth medium for the cells, though Upside Foods has developed an animal component-free alternative.

“It is possible to create a so-called healthier version of the meat,” Hunnes says, though much of this has not yet been explored since the industry is so new.

In a cultivated meat production facility, salmonella would not be present due to the fact that it lives in animal feces. “From a food safety standpoint, it probably has a one up,” on the traditional meat industry, Hunnes says.

Because this is a new industry, there are potential unknowns. Some scientists think it is possible that unforeseen biological mechanisms, such as cell multiplication, could occur. As the industry heads towards commercialization, there’s still a need for research.

His lab received a $10 million grant from USDA to develop cultured meat. “We need more and more,” immortalized cell lines, Kaplan says, as the industry looks to expand to different types of meat, poultry and fish.

He says he could have helped a lot of people in his career as a doctor. But, by moving from meat to cultivated meat, he can have a bigger impact. This could save trillions of animal lives and potentially affect billions of human lives.

Say “processed food” and most of us picture unhealthy, cheap junk. Good fresh food is from the garden or the field. Once we’ve put it through a processing plant or a laboratory, we’ve removed its halo qualities and added a bunch of bad ones. That’s true that meat replacements are not better than junk food.

But this perspective is short-sighted. We’re not going to feed billions a nutritious diet sustainably without food processing. The growing backlash against processing is one that neither people nor the planet can afford.

We quickly forget the many benefits of processed foods. Iodized salt is just one example; iodine deficiencies used to be common across the world, leading to increased risks of stillbirths and miscarriages, significant reductions in IQ, and reduced cognitive development. Most of the world now consumes salt with iodine added, and many countries have eliminated this deficiency. A number of other micro nutrients deficiencies can be addressed by adding them to the food.

Reducing food waste has been possible because we have been able to preserve food. We’ve reduced the spread of food-borne diseases. Those with food allergies and intolerances can now eat a balanced diet. We don’t need to spend the day preparing food—this has been particularly important for the educational and career development of women. It’s the last thing and it’s taste. Our shelves are now lined with great-tasting foods.

Of course, when people talk about “processed” food they’re often talking about ultra-processed food (UPF). The snacks and prepared meals are more convenient and have a longer shelf life. Corporations use sugar and fat to make their food as delicious as possible. Many describe these finely tuned combinations as addictive.

There is a problem with most UPFs being higher in calories, sugar, and fat. And they’re lower in protein and fiber, the nutrients that keep us full.

The smell of a science experiment: A case study on a UK-scale bioreactor that sells cultivated meat in the U.S.

It’s a bit dense and on the smaller side — not exactly the classic version you imagine melting in your mouth at an Italian restaurant with red-checkered tablecloths and a parmesan wheel. But it’s well browned on the outside, and the flavor is full and savory. The kitchen smells like pork.

A short drive from University of Oxford, we’re studying the experience of eating meatballs as part of a science experiment. The bioreactor located in the next room, operated by a British startup called Ivy Farm Technologies, is the center of my lunch.

Right now, enjoying a juicy steak or a crispy chicken sandwich requires turning a blind eye to the ways in which our food system harms animals and powers the climate crisis. But these startups claim that by reproducing animal cells in a lab, we can eliminate this trade-off — protecting our diets without compromising our ethics and destroying the Earth.

In the past 2 years the sector has seen a surge of funding. Ivy Farm claims to have the biggest pilot plant in Europe, with a 159-gallon bioreactor and a shiny new test kitchen. There’s ample space for its 50-person staff to work, perched on beanbags or meeting tables beside slogans like “We are forking fearless.”

Regulators are also getting on board. The FDA said that lab-grown meat is safe to eat, a milestone for the sector. Right now, Singapore is alone in allowing the sale of cultivated meat to consumers, having issued a green light in late 2020.

Ivy Farm is considering the U.S. as its first market since it wanted to launch sausages in Britain in 2023. The organization is working hard to submit its paperwork to the US Food and Drug Administration.

Despite the investment boom, the industry hasn’t figured out how to rapidly scale up production to meet demand and drive down costs. The lab-grown burger cost more than $300,000 to develop. It could produce a similar product for less than $50, but it would still be 10 times the price of a Big Mac.

“Like anything new, some people will gravitate toward the novelty and excitement and other people will wait,” said Vijay Pande of Andreessen Horowitz, who led the venture capital giant’s first cultivated meat investment earlier this year. The taste and cost will go a long way in this case.

Demand for meat is increasing as the global population marches past 8 billion and the middle class expands in countries like China. But there’s a problem: Meeting that demand could jeopardize hopes of keeping global warming in check.

It is simple to do the way it works. Scientists isolated the high quality cells from different areas of the animal’s tissue with a small biopsy. They then feed the cells with nutrients so they can grow efficiently under controlled conditions. The steel bioreactors are where they grow until they can be eaten and made into meatballs.

Ivy Farm is interested in testing the process in the United States, but there is no guarantee that it can be replicated with bigger tanks. Some components used in the pharmaceutical industry are used in nutrition solutions for feeding cells. They can be expensive if supplies are limited.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/19/business-food/lab-grown-meat-ivy-farm-climate/index.html

Innovation in the era of medical research: The Case of Ivy Farm in the USA and its Implications for high-end consumer products

Most of the industry is having to use materials priced for medical research, according to a University of Bath professor.

Innovation is possible, but requires money. startups are facing an increasingly tough economic climate that may limit funding Over the past two years, venture capitalists have poured more than $3 billion into meat startups. Companies that won’t be profitable for a long time are under fire because of global recession fears.

Ivy Farm isn’t stopping from plowing ahead. The company is working with Dennis Group, which has built plants for companies like Danone, to scope its options in the United States.

From Japan to Israel and Australia, start ups are making sushi-grade salmon and lab-grown beef. Even cultivated fois gras is in the works, a sign high-end consumers will be the first to try these innovations.

The lab-grown products sold at restaurants and high-end grocery stores may not be the whole thing. The meatballs I was served consisted only of 65% cultivated pork. It was mixed with plant-based meat, as well as breadcrumbs and seasoning.