Researchers at Hebrew University of Jerusalem – one of whom is the founder of a cultured meat company – are calling “groundbreaking” their development of a continuous manufacturing process for producing cultivated meat. They say it could reduce the cost of cultivated chicken to $6.20 per pound.
In the study, published in monthly academic journal Nature Food, Professor Yaakov Nahmias, founder of Believer Meats and founding director of the Hebrew University Alexander Grass Center for Bioengineering, highlights the use of tangential flow filtration (TFF) for the continuous manufacturing of cultivated meat.
The new bioreactor assembly permits biomass expansion to 130 billion cells per liter, achieving yields of 43% weight per volume. The process was carried out continuously over 20 days, enabling daily biomass harvests.
Utilizing this empirical data, the team conducted a techno-economic analysis of a hypothetical 50,000-liter (13,208-gallon) production facility. The analysis indicates that the cost of production of cultivated chicken could theoretically be reduced to $6.20 per pound, approximately the price of USDA organic chicken, the paper said.
The research introduces an animal component-free culture medium at just 63 cents per liter, which supports the long-term, high-density culture of chicken cells.
"We were inspired by how Ford’s automated assembly line revolutionized the car industry 110 years ago,” says Nahmias. "Our findings show that continuous manufacturing enables cultivated meat production at a fraction of current costs without resorting to genetic modification or mega-factories. This technology brings us closer to making cultivated meat a viable and sustainable alternative to traditional animal farming."
The researchers came from Hebrew University’s Grass Center for Bioengineering and the university’s Silberman Institute of Life Sciences plus Believer Meats in nearby Rehovot, Israel.
Believer Meats, which is partly funded by ADM, is currently building what it claims is the world's first large-scale industrial production facility for cultivated chicken in North Carolina.
The research paper titled “Empirical economic analysis shows cost-effective continuous manufacturing of cultivated chicken using animal-free medium” can be read at www.nature.com/articles/s43016-024-01022-w.
