Nutreco partnership accelerates commercial launch of Mosa Meat’s lab-grown burgers

10 Jan 2020 --- What once was deemed science fiction is quickly showing signs of mainstream applicability: cellular agriculture is racing to market to meet “the enormous demand” for lab-grown meat products. Mosa Meat, the Dutch company behind industry’s first cultivated hamburger, has entered a new strategic partnership with Nutreco, a specialist in animal nutrition, alongside Lowercarbon Capital, a new US-based venture capital fund investing in “planet healing technologies.” The partnership aims to accelerate the market introduction of Mosa Meat’s lab-grown meat products which could be on the market within the next few years.

“To really introduce cultured meat on a global scale, at the right cost level, we need a supplier of nutrients to feed our lab-grown cells – a company that can supply us with a steady and cost-competitive stream of such raw materials. That is where Nutreco fits in. The partnership consists of two elements – one is investment and the other one is collaborative, exploratory work to enable us to establish that part of the future value chain together,” Sarah Lucas, Head of Operations at Mosa Meat tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

“The team behind Lowercarbon Capital brings deep and varied experience accelerating companies from the start-up stage to having global impact. Chris Sacca, who leads the fund, was an early backer of game-changing companies such as Twitter, Uber and Instagram,” she adds.

Thousands of individual muscle fibers combine to form a humble hamburger.The process of making cultured meat (also referred to as “clean meat”) is similar to making livestock meat, except the cells grow outside of the animal’s body. Mosa Meat’s process begins with the extraction of cells from the muscle tissue of a cow, which is done using a small biopsy while the animal is under anaesthesia.

The cells that are taken are called “myosatellite” cells, which are the stem cells of muscles. The function of these stem cells within the animal is to create new muscle tissue when the muscle is injured. It is this inherent talent of the stem cells that is utilized in making cultured meat.

“The biggest challenge at the moment is scaling up from lab scale to industrial volume. In our meat making process, we go through two stages in bioreactors (large vessels which simulate the conditions inside the cow). In the first stage we proliferate the cells from a small amount to trillions of cells. This step has already been done on a large scale for applications in the medical field, so these bioreactors are relatively easy to source. The second phase is the process of differentiation, when these cells go from being loose cells, to joining up into muscle tissue,” explains Lucas.

“The bioreactors for this phase simply don’t exist at large scale, so this is one of the very interesting challenges our team is working on. We're making great progress and we think we can scale up enough to do a small market introduction in the next few years,” she adds.

While Mosa Meat has yet to bring its products to market, Lucas underscores an “enormous demand.” “We receive emails every week from members of the public asking where and when they can taste it. Consumer surveys also show that the majority of consumers (most surveys show around 50 to 60 percent) are eager to try cultivated meat. Even if 10 percent of the public adopted it, that would be an enormous base of first adopters.”

Nutreco and Lowercarbon are joining M Ventures, Bell Food Group, and other mission-based investors and advisors who have helped Mosa Meat achieve crucial technical milestones in 2018 and 2019.

“As the global population continues to grow, the increased demand for protein will place more pressure on our food production system. If we are serious about feeding the future in a sustainable way we will need to produce protein from a variety of sources, including animal agriculture as well as alternative proteins,” says Nutreco CEO, Rob Koremans.

“As the global meat-eating population grows, they'll have the choice to eat real steak without concern for methane emissions, deforestation, antibiotics, or even having to slaughter an animal,” concludes Chris Sacca, chairman of Lowercarbon Capital. 

Clean meat production is attracting mass investment across industry.Clean proteins attract big investments
While lab-grown meat products have yet to hit markets, awaiting regulatory approval, the new era of cultured meat production is well and truly underway and a world without slaughter is on the horizon.

New Age Meats, a Berkeley, California-based cultivated meat company, has announced the closing of US$2.7 million in seed round funding. The company was founded in 2018 and is a graduate of IndieBio's accelerator program. New Age Meats aims to develop technology to make meat from animal cells instead of animal slaughter by using automation and data science in stem cell research and bioreactor optimization.

“This funding enables us to grow our team, invest in automation equipment, and iterate our unique cultivators we design in house. We can’t wait to share tasty, sustainable cultivated meat with avid meat eaters,” says Brian Spears, CEO and Founder.

“As a firm we focus on transformative technologies and visionary founders. We are confident cultivated meat will be part of the food economy long term,” adds AJ Plotkin, Partner at ff Venture Capital.

The clean meat space has attracted mass investment recently and headline-grabbing technologies show no sign of slowing down. From growing meat in space and from volcanic microbes, to cultivated shrimp biomass and the creation of meat by harnessing the air’s natural elements – pioneering technologies are breaching new realms of possibility.

By Benjamin Ferrer