Cultured & Alternative Foods News and Discussions

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[wjfox]

Cultivated seafood company announces first U.S. retail partners

22nd December 2021

Wildtype, a startup creating sushi-grade cultivated salmon, has announced distribution agreements with SNOWFOX and Pokéworks.

[...]

Wildtype's cultivated seafood is grown in a brewery-like cellular agriculture system, without the need for fishing or fish farming. The company claims its artificial salmon is packed with omega-3 and omega-6 fats and has all the nutritional benefits of real, wild-caught fish – but without any microplastics, mercury, parasites, or other common toxins. Although a plant-based matrix is needed to give the cells the right structure and texture, DNA analysis of the cells themselves has found no difference between artificial and real salmon. Chefs who took part in hundreds of tasting tests were "blown away by how good it was," according to Kolbeck.

A pilot plant (illustrated below) is currently producing about 50,000 pounds (22,700 kg) of the fish per year. At maximum capacity, it will be able to grow nearly 200,000 pounds (90,700 kg) of lab-grown fish annually.

https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/202 ... nology.htm

[wjfox]

10 Wins for Cellular Agriculture in 2021

December 28, 2021

From record-breaking investment figures to innovative new products, here are some of the wins for cellular agriculture this year.

https://www.speciesunite.com/news-stori ... re-in-2021

[Yuli Ban]

Reza Ovissipour wants to make meat. Earth’s population is projected to reach 10 billion people by 2050. To feed everyone, “we have to increase our food production by one hundred percent and our meat production by seventy percent,” says Ovissipour, a food scientist at Virginia Tech. “Our current agricultural practices are not sustainable enough to provide that much food for people, so we need to find other ways to produce food.”
In September 2021, as part of efforts to address this challenge, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded a five-year, $10 million grant to a multi-institute team of researchers, including Ovissipour, for the creation of a National Institute of Cellular Agriculture—the first ever investment by the USDA in lab-based meat production. The project, led by David Kaplan of Tufts University, will focus on scaling up cultured meat, which has less of an environmental impact than traditional meat, to feed Earth’s growing population.

In addition to helping humanity cope with future food shortages, Ovissipour says, cellular agriculture—the generation of products from cells in a lab or industrial setting rather than from whole animals—could have other benefits, such as supplying alternative food for aquaculture (currently, large farmed fish eat other fish, either caught or farmed); reducing the risk of pathogens, such as Salmonella, found in livestock and farmed seafood; and improving the traceability of food products.

[funkervogt]

Is the fake meat industry overhyped and about to decline?

Recent reports suggest there's a growing realization among consumers, industry, investors, and others that overheated predictions of a meatless future—one in which steaks, bacon, chicken nuggets, and other foods made from dead animals will be supplanted by plant-based imitations of meat dishes and lab-grown meats made from animal cells (the latter of which is still exceedingly rare)—may have been based on wishful thinking.

As Food Dive reported this week, sales of imitation meat products are faltering. The website cites remarks and earning reports from Beyond Meat—a leader in the plant-based sector that counts among its fans none other than me—that combine a bleak present reality of "negative growth and high net losses" with fears over whether this market downturn could be permanent.

Currently trading at around $46 per share, Beyond Meat's stock price is a heck of a lot closer to its 52-week low (around $41) than it is to its peak during the same period (more than $160).

https://reason.com/2022/03/05/the-fake- ... s-stalled/

[raklian]

Is the fake meat industry overhyped and about to decline?

Recent reports suggest there's a growing realization among consumers, industry, investors, and others that overheated predictions of a meatless future—one in which steaks, bacon, chicken nuggets, and other foods made from dead animals will be supplanted by plant-based imitations of meat dishes and lab-grown meats made from animal cells (the latter of which is still exceedingly rare)—may have been based on wishful thinking.

As Food Dive reported this week, sales of imitation meat products are faltering. The website cites remarks and earning reports from Beyond Meat—a leader in the plant-based sector that counts among its fans none other than me—that combine a bleak present reality of "negative growth and high net losses" with fears over whether this market downturn could be permanent.

Currently trading at around $46 per share, Beyond Meat's stock price is a heck of a lot closer to its 52-week low (around $41) than it is to its peak during the same period (more than $160).

https://reason.com/2022/03/05/the-fake- ... s-stalled/

[caltrek]

The Bloody Secret Behind Lab-Grown Meat
by Tom Philbot

https://www.motherjones.com/environment ... -cultured/

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) Lab meat—flesh grown in massive tanks instead of in the bodies of sentient animals—offers the promise of having our steak and eating it guilt-free, too. No vast amounts of water-polluting chemicals to grow feed crops; no low-paid, oft-injured slaughterhouse workers; no climate-warming gases from cow burps or manure lagoons, and no billions of animals slaughtered each year to satisfy our carnivory.

Once a staple only of science fiction, the stuff is poised to land on your dinner plate this year, at least according to boosters of the cultivated-meat industry (to use its preferred name). In Singapore—the only nation to approve lab meat for sale—you can already go to the JW Marriott South Beach hotel and order steamed chicken dumplings made with “real meat without slaughter” in the form of chicken cells grown by a US-based company called Eat Just. And other cell-meat startups vow to bring product to market in 2022, pending regulatory approval.

Yet several obstacles hold back a new era of widely available animal-free burgers, nuggets, and carnitas. The biggest involves something much less appetizing than chicken dumplings: the blood of unborn cow fetuses, extracted from their mothers after slaughter.

The use of fetal bovine serum (FBS) in labs isn’t new. Scientists have had the ability to biopsy animal cells and keep them alive outside the body since the 1950s. These test-tube cells need food to flourish, and researchers found that fetal bovine serum provided the special sauce—the right combination of hormones to make cells hum. In the 1980s, FBS technology gave rise to tissue engineering—growing cells in vitro to replace small amounts of damaged or diseased tissue in people. Extending the same techniques into a new realm, today’s cell-based meat companies have relied largely on FBS to develop their products.

But a substance that works great for medical purposes (it’s also widely used in vaccine development) creates two huge problems for an industry seeking to mass-produce slaughter-free meat. The first is expense. FBS sells for upward of $1,000 per liter—a major reason why, to break even on expenses, companies would have to sell their cultured meat for about $200,000 per pound, a 2020 analysis from University of California, Davis, researchers found.

[Yuli Ban]

In 2013, the world’s first lab-grown burger was served at a London news conference, and it cost $330,000 to create. Funding came from the co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, but the burger’s creator, Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University, was quick to point out that this was only the start of making meat from animal cells.

Meat Grown in a Lab Instead of on a Farm
Lab-grown meat, also called cell-cultured or cultivated meat, is made by taking cells from a living animal without killing it. Usually, these starter cells receive a growth medium and grow inside a bioreactor, so they develop fat and muscle in a laboratory setting.

Growing meat in a lab eliminates the need to slaughter animals. It also reduces the amount of land, water and other resources that you need to produce meat. If done correctly, it can even lower carbon dioxide emissions. The other potential environmental benefits include reducing water pollution, biodiversity losses and deforestation.

[Beene1967]

I rejoice at such news and look forward to when we can finally eat artificially grown meat and will no longer kill animals for this. I am sure that the company that is the first to come to this will become famous all over the world. So, I learned on https://phdessay.com/nestle-distribution-channel/ about how the Nestle distribution channel is developing, and this is a very good achievement, given how highly competitive the world is now. It was clearly not easy to achieve such a result, but I am glad that Nestlé has become so popular.

[weatheriscool]

Seaweed and 3D printers: Chile's innovative approach to feeding kids
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-06-sea ... roach.html
by Alberto Peña
Food engineering student Alonso Vasquez cuts cochayuyo seaweed to process it before putting it into a 3D printer at the lab of Chile's University in Santiago, on June 17, 2022.

Some dehydrated "cochayuyo" seaweed, some instant mashed potatoes and hot water: these are the ingredients for a nutritious menu of 3D printed food that nutritional experts in Chile hope will revolutionize the food market, particularly for children.

With a 3D food printer and a modern twist on the traditional use of cochayuyo, an algae typically found in Chile, New Zealand and the South Atlantic, Roberto Lemus, a professor at the University of Chile and several students, have managed to create nutritious and edible figures that they hope kids will love to eat.

Pokemon figures, or any type of animal imaginable, are all fed into the 3D printer, together with the gelatinous mixture, and the food is "printed" out seven minutes later.

"We looking for different figures, fun figures...visual, colors, taste, flavors, smells," Lemus told AFP.

But, he stressed, the main focus is on nutritional content. "The product has to be highly nutritious for people, but it also has to be tasty," he said.

[wjfox]

Cultivated meat will inevitably be drawn into the culture war

Jon Hochschartner
Jun 19

Last month, the fascist Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was trending on Twitter. I try to stay off Twitter as much as I can for the sake of mental health, but it’s often hard to avoid when following the news. I was surprised to see Greene was trending for comments she made about cultivated meat, something I’ve tried to advance in recent activism.

“You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life,” she said. “They want to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish [sic].” The fascist went on, saying the government would punish those who didn’t comply.

[...]

This reminded me of comradely criticism I’ve received from some in the cultivated-meat space. In short, they worry that my activism will help draw this new protein into the culture war. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I believe that — if cultivated meat truly threatens animal agriculture — this is inevitable.

You can’t hope for significant change without expecting resistance. Surely, we should do what we can so as not to needlessly inflame resistance, but resistance will come.

https://slaughterfreeamerica.substack.c ... vitably-be

[Time_Traveller]

Ukrainian borscht recognised by Unesco with entry on to safeguarding list

Fri 1 Jul 2022

More than four months after Russian tanks rolled into their country, Ukraine has proclaimed a victory of sorts – albeit one steeped in beetroot and backed by Unesco.

On Friday the UN cultural body said it had added the culture of Ukrainian borscht-making to its list of intangible culture heritage in need of urgent safeguarding.

“Whether as part of a wedding meal, the focus of food-related competitions or as a driver of tourism, borscht is considered part of the fabric of Ukrainian society, cultural heritage, identity and tradition,” Unesco said in a statement.

It was careful to describe Ukrainian borscht as a national take on a dish consumed in several countries of the region.

Even so, the decision to add Ukrainian borscht to a list that includes Neapolitan pizza-slinging and Georgian winemaking was swiftly slammed by Moscow, with foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accusing Kyiv of trying to appropriate the soup for one nationality. “This is xenophobia,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... rding-list

[wjfox]

Wow. Impressive figures.

-----

Plant-based meat by far the best climate investment, report finds

July 09, 2022

One of the largest consulting organizations in the world claims that investments in meat substitutes made from plants have a much bigger impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions than other green initiatives.

According to a report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), investing in developing and expanding the production of meat and dairy substitutes reduced greenhouse gas emissions by three times as much per dollar as investing in green cement technology, seven times as much as investing in green buildings, and eleven times as much as investing in zero-emission vehicles.

Due to the significant difference in greenhouse gas emissions between the production of conventional meat and dairy products and the growth of plants, investments in plant-based meat substitutes have a strong influence on emissions. For instance, compared to tofu, beef produces six to thirty times higher emissions.

According to BCG, spending on alternative proteins—which also includes fermented foods and meat made from cells—will increase from $1 billion (£830 million) in 2019 to $5 billion in 2021. Currently, just 2% of meat, eggs, and dairy products are substitutes; however, the analysis projects that this percentage will increase to 11% by 2035. This would lower emissions by a quantity that is approximately equal to the production of all aviation worldwide. However, according to BCG, the market for meat substitutes might expand considerably more quickly as a consequence of improved goods, more manufacturing, and legal reforms that facilitate marketing and sales.

Malte Clausen, a partner at BCG, stated that "widespread adoption of alternative proteins can play a crucial role in mitigating climate change." We refer to this as the "untapped climate potential" since investing in alternative proteins has a greater economic impact than investing in any other area of the economy.

https://www.tech-paper.com/2022/07/plan ... imate.html

[Vakanai]

I like the concept of plant-meat, but for me it needs to be both indistinguishable from and at least as cheap as real meat. I tried an Impossible Whopper, and it was okay but tasted inferior to an actual meat Whopper.

But I will gladly eat all the plant-meat over bugs. I don't want to eat bugs and the "bugs are the future of food" push creeps me out.

[wjfox]

But I will gladly eat all the plant-meat over bugs. I don't want to eat bugs and the "bugs are the future of food" push creeps me out.

I've tried bugs and they were delicious.

[Vakanai]

But I will gladly eat all the plant-meat over bugs. I don't want to eat bugs and the "bugs are the future of food" push creeps me out.

I've tried bugs and they were delicious.

Fair enough - you can have all the ants and crickets, because I'm really not interested in trying that personally. I might have to move on from animal meat one day, but I don't think I'll ever move onto insects.

[funkervogt]

I ate some Beyond Meat Jerky, and it was excellent. It tasted exactly like real beef jerky and even had the same chewy texture. Best of all, it's cheaper than real beef jerky. Try it!

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Beyond-Meat- ... /732575645

[Time_Traveller]

Synthetic Milk Is Coming, And It Could Radically Shake Up Dairy

29 August 2022

The global dairy industry is changing. Among the disruptions is competition from food alternatives not produced using animals – including potential challenges posed by synthetic milk.

Synthetic milk does not require cows or other animals. It can have the same biochemical make up as animal milk, but is grown using an emerging biotechnology technique know as "precision fermentation" that produces biomass cultured from cells.

More than 80 percent of the world's population regularly consume dairy products. There have been increasing calls to move beyond animal-based food systems to more sustainable forms of food production.

Synthetic milks offer dairy milk without concerns such as methane emissions or animal welfare. But it must overcome many challenges and pitfalls to become a fair, sustainable, and viable alternative to animal-based milk.

https://www.sciencealert.com/synthetic- ... e-up-dairy

[caltrek]

How Magnets Could Improve Cell Based Meat
October 18, 2022

Introduction:

(Futurity) Cultured meat is an alternative to animal farming with advantages such as reducing carbon footprint and the risk of transmitting diseases in animals. However, the current method of producing cultured meat involves using other animal products, which largely defeats the purpose, or drugs to stimulate the growth of the meat.

Conclusion:

The new technique uses a delicately tuned pulsed magnetic field developed by the team to culture myogenic stem cells, which are found in skeletal muscle and bone marrow tissue.

Franco-Obregón explains, “In response to a short 10-minute exposure to the magnetic fields, the cells release a myriad of molecules that have regenerative, metabolic, anti-inflammatory, and immunity-boosting properties. These substances are part of what is known as the muscle ‘secretome’ (for secreted factors) and are necessary for the growth, survival, and development of cells into tissues. We are very excited about the possibility that magnetically-stimulated secretome release may one day replace the need for FBS in the production of cultured meat.”

He adds, “The muscle knows how to produce what it needs to grow and develop—it simply needs a little bit of encouragement when it is outside its owner. This is what our magnetic fields can provide.”

The research team reports their findings in the journal Biomaterials. A patent has also been filed for this novel technology and the team is currently in active discussions with potential industry partners to commercialize the technology.

Read more of the Futurity article here: https://www.futurity.org/cell-based-me ... 816162-2/

For the technical Biomaterials article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ ... ia%3Dihub