Ness-Ziona based MeaTech 3D, considered one of the leaders in the lab-grown cultured meat technology field, announced last week that it had begun research and development of porcine cell lines that could one day lead to the mass production of cultivated pork.
That move could make MeaTech, the world's only publicly traded cultured meat company, a front-runner in the race to create a slaughter-free, sustainable version of the most consumed meat worldwide.
That eventuality is still many years away, however, explained Simon Fried, MeaTech's head of business development. "The technology for the cultured meat industry has only developed over the past ten years or so, and there are now just about 30-40 companies around the world working in this field," Fried said."Israel is one of the leaders in the field, along with the US and the Netherlands. Israel has four companies developing meat products, and two, or three working on cultured meat products as well."
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 ramping up their operations.
The commercialization of cultured meats is in its infancy but it is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years. "We are at the point where regulators are beginning to think about how to work with industry," Fried said. "One restaurant in Singapore recently become the first in the world to serve lab-grown chicken. We are working toward preparing our own products for the market in the coming years."
In the early stages, cultured meat products won't be cheap, though. "In the beginning, lab-grown meats will probably cost about 2-3 times the price of traditional meats, but we have the goal of reaching cost parity soon," Fried said. After that, cultivated meat could comprise half of the total meat market by 2040, according to global consultancy firm AT Kearney."
An increasing number of people around the world are turned off by the $11 trillion commercial livestock industry, which is often portrayed as being cruel, wasteful, and environmentally unsustainable. The market for meat-substitute products like Israel's Beyond Meat plant-based products is expected to grow nearly 20% a year to some $14 billion by 2027, according to some estimates.
Meanwhile, Israel has emerged as one of the world's leading vegan hotspots, with a strong activist movement and a growing number of the country's trendiest chefs turning toward plant-based ethnic dishes. High-profile investigations into the inhumane conditions at meat and poultry plants have harmed consumer perceptions. Some 5% of the "vegan nation" now identifies as vegan and about 15% adheres to a vegetarian diet, and the number of vegans in the IDF has increased 20-fold from 2015-2018.
"There's clearly a huge appetite for new ways of consuming and producing protein, and we believe that the cultured meat space will be able to deliver on that as we develop better flavors and richer, more authentic mouthfeel," said Omri Schanin, MeaTech co-founder and deputy CEO.
Producing cultured meats involves creating in vitro cultures of animal cells, growing the muscles used for meat in production facilities using techniques similar to those used in regenerative medicines. Developing meats on a commercial scale with similar flavors, textures, and mouthfeel is one of the main challenges engineers face in bringing new products to market.
There are three main classes of meats under development, Schanin explained. Hybrid food products made from plant and cultured meat products will be the first to market and are the easiest to develop, because the taste or texture of the meat can be augmented by the other ingredients.
Then, there are the lab-grown meats themselves, which can essentially be sold as steaks or other meat cuts. And finally, 3D-printed meats will allow the lab-grown biomass to be manufactured in more factory-like settings, molding the meats into different shapes or adjusting for other factors like different fat content levels.
MeaTech is dedicated to offering a broad 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 in its field to acquire a competitor when it bought Belgium's Peace of Meat for 15 million euros. In May, MeaTech announced that the Belgium plant would produce cultured chicken fat at scale by next year.
“Cultured chicken fat has the potential to significantly enhance the flavor, mouthfeel, and texture of plant-based alternative meat products whilst reducing the total number of ingredients," the company said at the time. "The resulting hybrid food products, composed of plant and cultured meat ingredients, have the potential to offer a meatier product to consumers as compared to purely plant-based meat alternatives.”
Will lab-grown pork and other meats be kosher? "This is not a technology that our forefathers would have foreseen," Fried noted. "There is a breadth of opinions in the Orthodox community over whether this can be considered meat in the halachic sense. On one hand, this is a lab-engineered product with no animal involved and no need for ritual slaughter or other requirements. On the other, some are concerned about the social ramifications of people freely eating what looks like non-kosher meat. It will be interesting to see how rabbinic thought about this evolves in the coming years."
"Cultured meats will help address some of the underlying challenges of a growing world population, and big meat companies are beginning to invest in the field because they see it is the future," Fried said. "This is an important chapter in the story of the startup nation."