Ness-Ziona based Meetek 3D, considered one of the leaders developed in the laboratory The cultured meat technology sector announced last week that it has begun research and development of pig cell lines that could one day lead to mass production of farmed pigs.
The move could make MeaTech, the world’s only publicly traded cultured meat company, at the forefront of the race to create the most consumed slaughter-free, sustainable versions. Meat Whole world.
That event is still several years away, however, explained Simon Fried, Meetek’s head of business development. “The technology for the cultured meat industry has only evolved in the last ten years, and there are now about 30-40 companies around the world operating in this area,” Fried said. “Israel is one of the leaders in this area along with the US and the Netherlands. There are four companies developing meat products in Israel, and two or three are also working on cultured meat products.”
Last week, Rehovot-based Aleph Farms said it raised $105 million for large-scale global commercialization ahead of the company’s initial market launch next year. Others are also speeding up their work.
Commercialization of cultured meat is in its infancy but it is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years. “We are at the point where regulators are starting to think about working with the industry,” Fried said. “A restaurant in Singapore recently became the first restaurant in the world to serve lab-grown chicken. We are working towards getting our products ready for the market in the coming years.”
In the early stages, cultured meat products won’t be cheap, though. “Initially, lab-grown meats will cost about 2-3 times the price of conventional meats, but we aim to reach cost parity soon,” Fried said. After that, farmed meat could account for half of the total meat market by 2040, according to global consultancy firm AT Kearney.
An increasing number of people around the world have been turned off by the $11 trillion commercial livestock industry, which is often portrayed as being cruel, wasteful and environmentally unsustainable. By some estimates, the market for meat substitute products such as Israel’s Beyond Meat plant-based products is expected to grow to around $14 billion by 2027.
Meanwhile, Israel has emerged as one of the world’s leading vegetarian hotspots, with a strong activist movement and a growing number of the country’s most trendy chefs turning to plant-based ethnic cuisine. High-profile investigations into inhumane conditions at meat and poultry plants have hurt consumer perceptions. Some 5% of the “vegetarian nation” now identify as vegetarian and about 15% adhere to a vegetarian diet, and the number of vegetarians in the IDF has increased 20-fold from 2015–2018.
“There is clearly a huge appetite for new ways of consuming and producing protein, and we believe the cultured meat space will be able to deliver on that as we develop better flavors and a richer, more authentic mouthfeel,” says Omari. Shanin, MeaTech Co-Founder and Deputy Chief Executive Officer.
The production of cultured meat involves the creation of in vitro cultures of animal cells, growing the muscles used for meat in production facilities using techniques similar to those used in regenerative medicine. Developing meats with similar flavour, texture and mouthfeel on a commercial scale is one of the main challenges engineers face in bringing new products to market.
There are three main classes of meat under development, Shanin explained. Hybrid food products made from plant and cultured meat products will be the first to market and the easiest to develop, as the flavor or texture of the meat can be enhanced by other ingredients.
Then, there’s the lab-grown meat itself, which can essentially be sold as steak or other meat cuts. And finally, 3D-printed meats will allow lab-grown biomass to be manufactured in more factory-like settings, sculpting meats into different shapes or adjusting for other factors such as different fat content levels.
MeaTech is dedicated to offering a wide and innovative variety of cultured meat options, and its new foray into pork is another addition to its portfolio. Last year, the company became the first to acquire a competitor in its field when it bought Belgium’s Piece of Meat for 15 million euros. In May, MeaTech announced that the Belgian plant would mass-produce cultured chicken fat by next year..
“Cultured chicken fat has the potential to enhance the flavor, mouthfeel and texture of plant-based alternative meat products, while reducing the overall ingredients,” the company said at the time. “The resulting hybrid food products, which are made from plant and cultured meat ingredients, have the potential to offer consumers a non-vegetarian product compared to purely plant-based meat alternatives.”
Will lab-grown pork and other meats be kosher? “It’s not the kind of technology our ancestors would have imagined,” Fried said. “There is a breadth of opinion in the Orthodox community on whether it can be considered meat in the halachik sense. On the one hand, it is a laboratory-engineered product with no animals involved and no need for ritual slaughter or other requirements But others, some are concerned about the social implications of freely eating what looks like non-kosher meat. It will be interesting to see how rabbinic ideas about this develop in the years to come.”
“Cultured meat will help address some of the inherent challenges of a growing world population, and large meat companies are starting to invest in this area as they see this is the future,” Fried said. “This is an important chapter in the story of the startup nation.”