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Cultured Meat Hits ‘Pause’

May 3, 2024
One year after the first approval of cultured chicken in the U.S., no factory-grown meat product looks close to commercialization. So when?

Next month will mark the one-year anniversary of the first cultured meat products being approved for sale in the U.S. … and still there is no way for the average consumer to buy or try this novel food.

Both Upside Foods (originally known as Memphis Meats) and Eat Just (and its Good Meat subsidiary) received the last of a series of approvals from the FDA and USDA last June 21 for their chicken products, but neither appears close to getting their products on the market.

So when?

“It could be anywhere from two years to 10 years,” says Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, parent firm of Good Meat. “We could launch tomorrow in one or two stores, if we wanted to,” he adds, but he won’t, for reasons that will become apparent in the next 2,000 or so words.

Both firms have shown they can make chicken, both claim rave reviews from the few people who have tasted it and both have proven its safety to the regulatory agencies. But the seemingly straight path from concept to shelf has turned out to be more complicated than anyone expected. And in talking with both, it sounds like they believe they have just one shot – with no missteps allowed -- to make cultured meat a success, and that will require lower pricing, at least near-national distribution and the buzz that would accompany a huge rollout.

None of those things is ready yet. It’s not like debuting a new flavor of Coke. Convincing consumers cultured meat of any type is good and safe to eat will be a formidable task.

Tetrick says that timeline shouldn’t be a surprise. Seemingly also speaking for his competitor, “The industry is not in a place right now where it can produce at a large scale. Large scale for us is being able to produce tens of millions of pounds, and at a cost that is close to conventional animal protein. When you reach that, you can have national distribution across the United States.

“To achieve that, we have significant technology, engineering, capex (capital expenditures) barriers,” he continues. “Those are the most significant steps that the industry needs to check off. I don’t need any more data to tell me consumers really like it, are open to it.”

Tetrick admits there was some learning from nearly four years of samplings in Singapore and nearly one here in the States. “We knew the first version we launched was OK, wasn’t great. We knew what the deficiencies were in terms of flavor and texture, and there were many. So we worked to improve those deficiencies.

“Some of the insights we got from consumers that were maybe not obvious to me was that consumers were more interested in the technology than I would have thought. Young people are particularly captivated by this idea that you can make meat without slaughtering an animal, and the older you are the more skeptical you are. But I wouldn’t say there were any significant surprises, it was more validating what we already thought.”

So will getting down the cost, and that’s another reason not to start selling cultured chicken yet. Neither would say what is the current cost per pound, but Tetrick said it’s “significantly more than regular chicken – or beef or pork.” Although he added, “We see a path to bring it below the cost of chicken.”

 

A year of regression

2024 has not started well for these companies. Upside Foods in September 2023 announced with great fanfare it was building a production-quantity plant in Glenview, Ill., just north of Chicago; but that plant was put on hold at the start of this year. Eat Just has no active plans for a large-scale facility “at this time,” and suspended production in Singapore last year, although that’s expected to resume this year.

Upside explained its pause: “In the process of planning for Rubicon [the name of their Illinois facility], we identified a more efficient and cost-effective way to achieve a similar capacity and timeline of the initial phase of Rubicon by significantly expanding our operations at EPIC [the name of their Emeryville, Calif., Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center],” a spokesperson told us.

“This approach will allow us to scale and commercialize our next generation platform and products, currently under regulatory review, while extending our runway and resources. We still plan to move forward with building out our full-scale commercial facility in the future.”

Upside’s Emeryville facility, opened in November 2021, is 53,000 sq. ft., capable of producing any species of meat, poultry and seafood — in both ground and whole-cut formats — and currently can produce more than 50,000 lbs. of finished product, with a future capacity of over 400,000 lbs. per year. “Having our first commercial production co-located with our existing team will allow us to scale, learn and iterate more effectively,” Upside said on its website.

By comparison, an average chicken plant produces 230 million lbs. per year.

Eat Just is producing “very, very small volumes” at its Alameda, Calif., headquarters and R&D center, Tetrick says. In the past, it’s used a contract manufacturer to produce some chicken. Eat Just was making chicken in a Singapore plant but it shut down that production last year, although Tetrick said that will resume before the end of this year.

Both firms last year were offering limited-quantity restaurant tastings with the help of supportive celebrity chefs – but that has ended. Upside sampled its product at San Francisco’s Bar Crenn “through our partnership with three Michelin-starred chef, Dominique Crenn … The feedback has been amazing!” the company says. “After an incredible run, we’ve wrapped up our dinner series and are now offering our chicken through a variety of events, both on the road and at our own facility.”

Ditto for Eat Just, whose chicken was championed by Chef José Andrés at a restaurant of his in Washington, D.C. For now, the only sampling is done at Eat Just headquarters, with road trips being planned for later this year.

Other companies in this space also had tough years. New Age Eats shut down last year, citing an inability to attract enough investment interest to fund operations. The company put its nearly completed pilot plant in Alameda, Calif., up for sale.

Singapore was the first country to approve any cultured meat. In addition to Eat Just taking a pause there, two of Singapore’s own cultivated seafood companies merged. Shiok Meats Pte. Ltd., a portfolio company of Agronomics – a capital firm with several investments in the cultured meat business -- has been acquired by Umami Bioworks Pte. Ltd. Both said it was too tough going it alone.

“Most industry insiders expect a significant reduction in the number of companies working in this space over the next two years, as companies and investors face into the lengthened timelines and increased cost estimates,” says Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, a former executive with Cargill and OSI Group, who was CEO of Israeli cultured meat startup Believer Meats when it was called Future Meat Technologies.

December 2023 brought one positive development. The Israeli government approved the sale of cultured beef made by Aleph Farms, making Israel just the third country to approve any cultured meat product and the first to approve beef. Aleph still faces a bureaucratic process before its products are available for purchase, the Times of Israel noted, but it hopes to roll out its Black Angus Petit Steak later this year.

Yoav Reisler, senior marketing and communications manager at Aleph Farms, told the Green Queen website that the plan is to introduce Aleph Cuts to diners “offering exclusive tasting experiences curated in collaboration with select partners.”

Israel has been a hotbed of development on the technology; in addition to Aleph Farms, Super Meat and Believer Meats call that country home. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tasted a cultured steak from Aleph Farms in December 2020, and that company also grew meat in a test on the International Space Station in 2019.

 

Other companies, other forms

Eat Just and Upside Foods have their USDA and FDA approvals. There apparently are other companies in the pipeline that starts with the FDA, but a spokesperson for that agency wouldn’t name any. But she noted, “FDA plans to issue guidance to assist firms that intend to produce human foods from cultured animal cells to prepare for pre-market consultations. The publication of this draft guidance will provide a formal opportunity for the public to comment.”

Believer Meats appears to also focus on chicken, although its current website never specifies the species. The company broke ground in December 2022 on what it promised would be “the largest cultivated meat production center in the world,” in Wilson, N.C. With an initial investment of $123 million, the 200,000-sq.-ft. facility will have the capacity to produce at least 10,000 metric tons of cultivated meat.

We asked if that was still on track, but no response.

Also pursuing beef, at least primarily, is Israel’s Super Meat. Fork & Good is creating pork and beef.

Blue Nalu, which has been around since 2018, is developing seafood, especially sushi-quality tuna. Although the company is based in San Diego, most of its business deals have been in Asia. It has relationships of various sorts – some involving cash investments, some relating to sales – with Thai Union, Mitsubishi Corp., Pulmuone, Sumitomo Corp. and aforementioned Agronomics.

“There will be a supply chain gap representing 28 million metric tons of seafood in 2030 – just [six] years from now,” Blue Nalu CEO Lou Cooperhouse wrote in a January 2023 letter to USDA. “While seafood can provide people with healthy and delicious protein, our seafood supply chain simply cannot keep up, and there are not enough ‘fish in the sea’ and resources to feed our growing population.”

Wildtype Foods is focusing on Pacific salmon. Tyson is among its investors. Finless Foods is developing bluefin tuna.

German startup Bluu Seafood this year inaugurated its first pilot plant in Hamburg-Altona. It’s creating Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout and predicts price parity with fish within three years.

Netherlands also is fertile ground for these companies, especially since the first cultured meat, a hamburger, was created there in 2013 (at a cost of about $300,000) by university researchers. In July of last year, the Dutch government allowed cultivated meat and seafood to be taste-tested under limited conditions.

Meatable and Mosa Meat, two Dutch companies in this sector, will follow a “code of practice” that would make tastings possible in controlled environments. That will make the Netherlands the first country in the European Union to make pre-approval tastings of food grown from animal cells possible, even before an EU novel food approval.

A month later, Meatable said it expects to launch its pork product “in selected restaurants and retailers” in Singapore this year. “The company is also making solid progress on expanding to the United States and beyond, boosted by recent regulatory developments.” Meatable has produced samples of pork sausages and ground pork in dumplings.

Australian cultivated meat company Vow just last month said it secured regulatory approval from the Singapore Food Agency to produce and sell the world’s first cultivated quail product. There are companies with at least proof of concepts in Belgium (Steakholder Foods), China (Avant and CellX) Czech Republic (Bene Meat Technologies) and India (Clear Meat). A dozen more countries have companies that are in preliminary stages.

Some of the biggest traditional-meat companies are making investments in many of these companies to keep informed of the technology. Tyson has investments in Upside Foods and Future Meat Technologies. Cargill has stakes in Wildtype Foods, Aleph Farms and Upside Foods.

JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, last year bought BioTech Foods, a Spanish pioneer in cultivated protein, and agreed to build a new production plant for it in Spain. BioTech expected to begin commercial production in the middle of this year. In addition, JBS announced plans to build a research and development center of its own for cultivated protein in Brazil, where it is headquartered. It will include a pilot plant of up to 107,000 sq. ft. and will employ about 25 researchers.

 

Some places may ban it

As if the cultured meat category didn’t have enough problems, a number of geographies are considering banning it before the first steak or chicken nugget is introduced.

Last year, Florida State Rep. Tyler Sirois introduced House Bill 435, which proposes making it illegal to manufacture, sell, hold or distribute cultivated meat in the state.

Texas did not ban these meats but did include them in a 2023 labeling law. Senate Bill 664, which went into effect last September, requires all alternative protein sources, including plant-based analogues, to clearly label what they’re made of. In the case of cultivated products, the label would need to prominently say “cell-cultured,” “lab-grown” or a similar qualifying term or disclaimer.

In a rare show of bipartisanship, U.S. Senators Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in January introduced legislation that would ban cultivated meat products from being served in federally subsidized school lunches. Their School Lunch Integrity Act of 2024 would prohibit the use of cell-cultured meats under the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program (SBP).

Italy’s parliament in November voted to ban the production, sale or import of cultivated meat or animal feed. The minister called it a defense of Italian tradition and its food culture.

About the Author

Dave Fusaro | Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.

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