Israeli biotech firm Aleph Farms Ltd. will unveil a prototype of its commercial product, thin-cut beef steaks, at the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit Nov. 20 in Singapore. The reveal will be part of a virtual cooking demonstration hosted by Aleph Farms’ resident chef and one of its investors, VisVires New Protein VC.
The steaks, grown directly from non-GMO cells of a living cow, boast nutritional, culinary and sensory attributes of meat in terms of texture, flavor and aroma, the company promises. Aleph has developed five proprietary modules for its mass production platform, set to bring the product to cost parity with conventional meat at scale.
The company beefed-up its proof-of-concept released in 2018, increased the size of its slaughter-free product and adapted it to fit controlled, automated bioprocesses to ensure economic viability in large-scale production.
[We have a video of an Aleph steak being cooked and eaten here. And a story of its beef being grown on the International Space Station here.]
The move marks a leap in Aleph Farms’ goal of making cultivated meat widely available in the global community. The company is currently transitioning its commercial products to a pilot plant. The pilot launch is planned for the end of 2022.
“One of the big challenges of cultivated meat is the ability to produce large quantities efficiently at a cost that can compete with conventional meat industry pricing, without compromising on quality,” says Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms. “We have developed five technological building blocks unique to Aleph Farms that are put into a large-scale production process, all patented by the company.”
Aleph Farms’ platform for cultivating steaks mirrors the natural process of tissue regeneration processes that occur in the animal’s body, but outside of it and under controlled conditions. The process is designed to use a fraction of the resources required for raising an entire animal for meat, and without antibiotics.
Aleph Farms is backed by companies such as Cargill, Migros and the Strauss Group.
