And We've Got Lab-Grown Chicken Sammiches!

Tuckerfan · Nov 10, 2020

In Israel.

At the first lab-grown meat restaurant, you can eat a ‘cultured chicken’ sandwich

At a new restaurant in Tel Aviv called The Chicken, the chicken on the menu is grown from cells in a bioreactor in an adjacent pilot plant visible through a glass window. Diners don’t pay for their meals; instead, SuperMeat, the startup making the “cultured chicken” meat, is asking for feedback on its products, as it prepares for large-scale production of food that it thinks can transform the industry.

The main item on the menu, the Chicken Burger—a crispy cultured chicken fillet served on a brioche bun with toppings—looks and tastes like conventionally-produced chicken. “The burger has a juicy chicken flavor, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside,” says Ido Savir, CEO of the startup. “Feedback from multiple tasting panels was consistent that it was indistinguishable from conventionally manufactured chicken, and simply a great-tasting chicken burger.”

The company has spent three years developing a manufacturing process that can be scaled up. Like other companies in the cellular agriculture space, it’s been working to create the optimal conditions for cells taken from animals to grow without the animals themselves. “Our production platform is based on avian stem cells that possess the innate ability to multiply indefinitely, eliminating the need to go back to the animal to produce more meat, essentially removing animals from the equation,” says Savir.

As they’ve tweaked the process to make it possible to produce the food in large volumes, the team is relying in part on existing tech from the pharmaceutical industry. “One of the incredible benefits of cultured-based meat production is the ability to leverage the advanced technologies that were already developed for medicinal purposes to create a better food system,” he says. Right now, the pilot plant has the capacity to produce several hundred pounds of SuperMeat chicken per week.
If it becomes widespread, cellular agriculture could have several advantages over traditional animal agriculture. Instead of having chickens stuffed in overcrowded buildings—a scenario that’s cruel to chickens, leads to the overuse of antibiotics, and could lead to the next deadly pandemic by spreading a virus from animals to humans—no chickens would be involved at all.

The process is far faster and more efficient than raising animals. “Once the desired animal mass is achieved, it allows harvesting approximately half the meat every day,” says Savir. “It is metaphorically the equivalent of having a farm of 1,000 mature chickens, and harvesting 500 mature chickens out of that farm every day endlessly.” The “meat” is produced directly, without the intervening step of slaughtering and butchering. Done right, with renewable energy, the process can also cut the environmental footprint of meat, since it uses fewer resources.

The food doesn’t yet have regulatory approval, as governments are still developing frameworks to deal with the new category of cultured meat. (In the U.S., the USDA and FDA are working together on how to regulate the products.) But the company is able to serve the meat to get feedback while it’s still in development. Within one to two years, it hopes to launch in restaurants. In five years, it plans to launch commercial-scale plants, and it expects to reach cost parity with traditional meat shortly afterward.
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Paladin · Nov 10, 2020

Wake me when there's a lab-grown New York steak.

steve2^4 · Nov 10, 2020

Wake me when there's lab grown human flesh.

Oh, damn, wrong persona.

Bickendan · Nov 13, 2020

Next: Food replicators are real.

Tuckerfan · Nov 14, 2020

Paladin said: ↑

Wake me when there's a lab-grown New York steak.
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You'll have to go to space to eat it.

Aleph Zero program plans to grow slaughter-free meat in space

One of the many problems with living in outer space is that there’s not much to eat there. Israel-based Aleph Farms plans to fix that by growing cell-based, slaughter-free meat on other planets. On a serious note, the company hopes this can help alleviate food insecurity, regardless of how climate change continues to impact the Earth.

“Aleph Zero represents the mathematical symbol of the smallest infinite number, and how Aleph Farms brings space infinity closer by supporting deep-space exploration and colonization of new planets,” said Didier Toubia, Aleph Farms co-founder and CEO. “The term also represents the company’s vision for producing meat with near-zero natural resources.”

Last October, the cellular agricultural startup grew its first space steak on the International Space Station, using cells taken from a cow. Not only can astronauts and future space tourists enjoy cosmic carne, people in remote places like Antarctica and the Sahara Desert could reap meaty benefits from this new technology.

Aleph Farms has formed partnerships with space agencies and tech companies to pool knowledge about cellular biology, tissue engineering and food science. The company plans to establish large-scale BioFarms, with a pilot commercial launch of the space-grown meat by the end of 2022.

Toubia was trained as a food engineer and a biologist. Despite promoting slaughter-free meat, he’s not trying to turn the world vegan. “Our goal is to walk hand-in-hand with the meat industry to find ways to combine, integrate new methodologies for the industry to thrive,” he said in an interview published on Medium. “We don’t believe that we will replace animal farming. We’re actually keen on working together with the meat industry.”

Beef is the company’s main focus right now, as it’s more complex to grow than fish or poultry, according to Toubia; it is also the most resource-intensive meat. Aleph Farms is hoping to help an increasingly meat-hungry global public decease its carbon footprint. “I think that in order to be able to maintain the world as it is, we need to make sure that we balance all economic activity with more sustainable practices,” Toubia said. “I believe that the food industry we do have, as a whole, really overuses natural resources.”
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Tuckerfan · Dec 4, 2020

A review of the chicken burger and a few more details of the process: https://apple.news/AvAYrkGZwR6CQX3RmlhIYDw

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And We've Got Lab-Grown Chicken Sammiches!

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