Although Singapore is the only country in the world that has granted approval for the sale of laboratory-grown cultured meat, a major player Israeli-based Future Meat Technologies has already set its eye on the US and Asia as a major market for its products with China and India as key target markets. The company is expecting other countries to follow shortly within a year or two in granting regulatory approval for cell-based lab meat.
With all the optimism, Future Meat has recently opened the world’s 1st industrial cultured meat facility with the capability to produce 500kg, equivalent to 5,000 burger patties daily. This facility finally makes cultured meat scalable for industrial production.
The plant can now produce cultured chicken, pork and lamb, without the use of animal serum or genetic modification (non-GMO) with the production of beef coming soon. Future Meat Technologies’ unique platform enables fast production cycles, about 20-times faster than traditional animal agriculture.
Earlier this year, the company successfully reduced the cost of producing 110g cultured chicken breast from US$7.50 to about US$4 in April, all thanks to its proprietary technology.
Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Future Meat Technologies said, “This facility demonstrates our proprietary media rejuvenation technology in scale, allowing us to reach production densities 10-times higher than the industrial standard. Our goal is to make cultured meat affordable for everyone, while ensuring we produce delicious food that is both healthy and sustainable, helping to secure the future of coming generations.”
Despite Singapore being the first country to grant market approval, Future Meat is targeting other countries as Singapore is a small market, if compared to countries like China and India where demand for meat is growing rapidly with rising disposable incomes. Prof. Nahmias expects regulatory approval to come first for cultured chicken meat followed by lamb and pork.
Cost savings – combination of Biological, Chemical and Engineering Technologies
According to Prof Nahmias, Future Meat work on 3 technological spheres to save production costs.
From a biological perspective, the company does not use stem cells which are unstable and costly, instead it uses connective tissue cells which are GMO-free, more cost effective and grow faster. This is critical when penetrating developed markets like EU and Japan where GMO is an entry barrier. Prof Nahmias also added that the company has developed a process to grow the meat biomass via a single-cell suspension resulting in better cost-efficiency.
On the chemical perspective, Future Meat also does not use regular serum proteins, instead these are replaced with plant proteins that do the same work. For example, albumin alone usually contributes up to 2/3 of the cost of what cells eat, and the industry usually needs US$150 per litre of medium, but Future Meat uses less than US$5 per litre. This is an additional 5 to 10 times more in cost efficiency.
On the engineering technology sphere, Future Meat is able to remove waste such as ammonia excreted by cells, allowing it to reuse the medium again and again, adding another two to 3 times in cost efficiency.
This combination of biological, chemical and engineering technologies allow Future Meat to reduce its ‘meat’ to as low as US$4 for chicken.
