Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE, 5/2/18

Jerusalem-based Future Meat Technologies announced today a $2.2 million seed investment round co-led by Tyson Foods’ venture capital arm Tyson Ventures to advance a distributive manufacturing platform to create food products directly from animal cells, without the need to raise or harvest animals.

Also today, Tel Aviv, Israel-based Aleph Farms announced two significant advances in its production of lab-generated food products from animal cells — one in expanding the composition of the food product and one in growing it in a more structured way.

At the same time, Food Navigator  reported that Tel Aviv-based SuperMeat has raised nearly $4 million in seed money for its process of producing food products by growing cells that have been extracted from a chicken.

Tyson, Future Meat Technologies
Future Meat Technologies focuses on developing a new generation of manufacturing processes that enable the cost-efficient production of fat and muscle cells, the core building blocks of meat.

“It is difficult to imagine cultured meat becoming a reality with a current production price of about $10,000 per kilogram,” said Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, the company’s founder and chief scientist. “We redesigned the manufacturing process until we brought it down to $800 per kilogram today, with a clear roadmap to $5-10 per kg by 2020.”

Nahmias said Future Meat Technologies is now the only company that can produce animal fat without harvesting animals and without any genetic modification. The company expects to use the funds to establish its engineering activities and increase its biological research. It is currently recruiting engineers, chefs and scientists.

“This is our first investment in an Israel-based company and we’re excited about this opportunity to broaden our exposure to innovative, new ways of producing protein,” said Justin Whitmore, chief sustainability officer of Tyson Foods. “We continue to invest significantly in our traditional meat business but also believe in exploring additional opportunities for growth that give consumers more choices.” 

In addition to Tyson Ventures, the Neto Group, one of the largest food conglomerates in Israel; S2G Ventures, a Chicago-based venture capital fund; BitsXBites, China’s first food technology venture capital fund; and Agrinnovation, an Israeli investment fund founded by Yissum, the technology transfer company of Hebrew University, participated in the funding round. New York based HB Ventures also joined the round.

Aleph Farms
Aleph Farms is using 3D technology in its process of creating food products from animal cells.

In a news release, the company explained that until now, animal-cell food products have mostly been simple structures of one or two types of cell tissue, limiting applications to ground meat.

"It has been a major hurdle to mimic meat's many properties, such as texture, shape, juiciness and flavor," states Prof. Shulamit Levenberg, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Aleph Farms. "Our use of the four cell types found in conventional cuts of meat, including vascular and connective tissues, is the key to a product that will be closer to the beef that people crave."

The company said it is then able to grow these cells on an intricate, proprietary three-dimensional platform, to mimic traditional cuts of beef in both structure and texture.

Aleph Farms (previously Meat-the-Future) was co-founded in 2017 by Israeli food-tech incubator The Kitchen, a part of the Strauss Group Ltd., and the Technion. The company is supported by US and European venture capital firms.

Labeling concerns
All these advances have the meat industry pushing back on labeling these products as “meat.” 
USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service recently extended the comment period on a petition submitted by the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association requesting that FSIS exclude these lab-grown food products from the definitions of “beef” and “meat.”

The petition is supported by other industry groups, including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Farmers Union.

The Missouri House of Representatives last week passed a bill that would require makers of plant-based and lab-grown products to clearly label those products as not originating from livestock. The legislation has yet to be passed by the Missouri

Senate or signed into law by the governor.

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