by Marion Nestle

Currently browsing posts about: Cell-based

Sep 26 2024

The brave new world of cell-cultured—not just meat

Cell-culture isn’t just for beef anymore.  I’ve been collecting items…

FOIE GRAS:  ProVeg hails application for EU approval of cultivated foie gras: French company seeks approval for product made from cultivated duck cells.

EEL:  Cultivated eel that ‘melts in your mouth’? How Forsea mimics ‘tender, succulent’ texture of fish and seafood:  Eel meat is unlike any other: it is fatty, tender, and ‘almost melts in your mouth’, explains Roee Nir, co-founder and CEO of Forsea Foods. The start-up is working to mimic these attributes with stem cells in a lab…. Read more

COFFEE:  A cup of lab-grown Joe: researchers release proof of concept for cell-cultured coffee: Dr. Heiko Rischer and his team at VTT Technical Research of Finland published its cell-cultured coffee recipe, highlighting the opportunity to strengthen and reinforce the global coffee supply chain…. Read more

BREAST MILK: Cell-based breast milk in development to replace ‘suboptimal’ bovine infant formula: Can the complexities of breast milk be replicated by cows? France-based Nūmi doesn’t think so. The start-up is turning to cell culture to develop the ‘closest thing possible’ to breast milk…. Read more

PET FOOD: Cultivated meat pet food gains UK approval in world first:Meatly has announced that it has received regulatory clearance to sell cultivated meat for pet food in the UK…. Read more

PROTEIN: Beyond Meat launches ‘first of its kind’ protein to appeal to health-conscious consumers:  The company’s latest product is not intended to replicate beef, pork or chicken. It comes amid a sharp downturn in plant-based meat consumption.

MEAT AND SEAFOOD: Cultivated meat and seafood watch: What’s the latest in cultivated?  Cultivated meat, despite only being on the market in one country (Singapore), is on the rise…. Read more

AND THE POLITICS, OF COURSE: Nebraska governor says no to lab-grown meat: If Gov. Jim Pillen has his way, Nebraska legislators will pass a law banning the sale of “lab-grown meat” — the industry prefers the term cultivated meat — during its next session. Florida and Alabama enacted state bans on the alternative meat this year, and Iowa has barred school districts and publicly funded colleges from buying the meat.

Mar 14 2024

Foods of the future: Yum?

I’m constantly being asked what food will look like in the future, so I’ve been collecting items about new-and-unusual foods headed our way.

Do these bode well for the future of food?  You decide.

New Foods

Cultivated meat

Comment: It’s a brave new world out there.  Two issues:  (1) Is this stuff delicious?  (2) Will it make money?  Stay tuned.

Feb 15 2024

Does cell-cultured meat have a future? This is not the moment.

I subscribe to AgFunder News, not least because I so admire Elaine Watson’s reporting on the food industry.

I was particularly interested in her detailed account of investment in cultured meat and seafood startups: ​Preliminary AgFunder data point to 78% decline in cultivated meat funding in 2023; investors blame ‘general risk aversion.’

Here’s what’s happening:

Funding may have dropped, but investors put nearly $200 million into this technology in 2023.  That isn’t nothing.

Watson reviews the reasons for the funding decline:

  • High interest rates
  • Risk aversion
  • Too many companies seeking investment
  • Scalability of the product
  • Cost parity
  • Lack of government funding

Cultivated meat is not yet on the market.  It’s hard to assess it or predict its future without tasting it.  I’m trying to keep an open mind.

For a deep dive into what’s happening in this industry, see Joe Fassler’s excellent piece in the New York Times: Opinion | The Revolution That Died on Its Way to Dinner.

His point:  Cell-cultured meat is “an escape hatch for humankind’s excesses.”

For all its terrifying urgency, climate change is an invitation — to reinvent our economies, to rethink consumption, to redraw our relationships to nature and to one another. Cultivated meat was an excuse to shirk that hard, necessary work. The idea sounded futuristic, but its appeal was all about nostalgia, a way to pretend that things will go on as they always have, that nothing really needs to change. It was magical climate thinking, a delicious delusion.

In the course of his investigations, Fassler got to taste cell-cultured chicken.  This did not make him optimistic about its future.

As I said, I’m trying to stay open minded.  I suspect this story is not over yet.  Stay tuned.

Feb 1 2024

Cultured meat: of great interest, still not on market

Cell-Based or Cultured Meat continues to generate predictions, positive (new products, new approvals, growth) and negative (doom, bans).

Current status: The FDA and USDA have approved sales of cell-cultured chicken but the only place selling it is Bar Crenn in San Francisco (where I have not been).

While waiting for it to get scaled up (if this ever will be possible), here are a few items I’ve collected recently.

THE POSITIVES

THE NEGATIVES

THE QUESTIONS

Nov 9 2023

The latest developments on the cultivated meat front

I’m trying to keep up with what’s happening with cultivated meat.  So far, the FDA has approved a couple of cultivated chicken cell companies, and these are selling “chicken” in a couple of restaurants, one in San Francisco and the other in Washington DC.

The big issue: scaling cell production up enough to have product to sell.  It takes lots of cells–billions? trillions?—to make a portion big enough to eat.

Here’s what’s going on in this area in the U.S. and U.K.

Sep 21 2023

Cell-cultured meat recognized as Kosher (!)

In the Brave New World we now live in, food technology has scored a big win.  Food Navigator has the story: How does a cultivated chicken cell line meet kosher standards?

In a world first, OU Kosher [The kosher certification division of the Orthodox Union] has determined that the chicken cell line of Israeli start-up SuperMeat meets kosher standards.

In another world first, the OU has recognised cultivated meat as kosher and meat.

How is this even possible?

The OU’s recognition comes after a series of halachic discussions (concerning Jewish religious laws) and scientific reviews. The latter focused on avian embryogenesis and stem cells, including the observation of the excision of embryonic stem cells from a fertilised chicken egg prior to the appearance of blood spots.

SuperMeat worked closely with the OU and eminent rabbis to identify the vital elements of the sourcing and process to make sure that it holds to the highest standards of Kashrut [dietary laws]….

SuperMeat obtains the stem cells from very early after fertilisation of the egg at a precise time before the emergence of blood spots eliminating the necessity for slaughter and ensuring there is no blood involved in the process….SuperMeat does not use FBS [fetal bovine serum] or any other animal components in its media or process.

In my book about pet food with Malden Nesheim, Feed Your Pet Right, we wrote a chapter on Kosher pet food (one of my favorites).

The kosher laws are based on biblical injunctions against eating two kinds of animals, those that do not ruminate and do not have completely cloven hooves (Leviticus 11:26), and young animals cooked in their mother’s milk (Deuteronomy 14:21).   Thus, they forbid such things as eating pork or mixing meat and dairy foods at the same meal.

The Passover celebration requires one additional restriction.   Jews are not allowed to have in the house or to consume any foods containing chametz—wheat, wheat starch, wheat gluten, barley, oats, oat fiber, and other grains—precisely the ingredients in many pet foods.

Given the multiple and not always identifiable sources of ingredients in pet foods, it is difficult to imagine how pet foods can conform to Jewish dietary laws at any time, let alone at Passover.

Can pet foods be kosher?  Is it acceptable to hold Passover seders for dogs and cats, as some do?  And must pet owners who observe Jewish dietary laws feed their animals according to such laws?  The answers are typically Talmudic: yes, and no.

Super Meat is not on the market yet.  But aren’t you relieved to know that when it is, the Orthodox Union has given its blessing to cell-cultured meat.

Brave New World indeed.

Mar 2 2023

Keeping up with cell-based cultured meat

I don’t know about you but I’m riveted by what’s in the pipeline for cell cultured meat alternatives.   Here are some recent items I’ve been collecting.

Products under development

State of the industry

State of the techno-food scene

Comment

Cell-based meat, meat-plus-algae, and pet food are not yet on the US market so it’s too early to see what they taste like and how well they will do.  I see these products as mostly about mergers, acquisitions, and generating lots of money for investors, which is why I included the Soylent event (Soylent is a nutrient supplement drink, but I put it in the same category of “techno-food”).

Jan 6 2023

Weekend reading: the politics of protein

The International Political Economy Society (IPES) food section has just issued this report.

Its major thesis: alternative plant- or cell-based alternative meats are not the solution to world food problems.

As the report’s author, Phil Howard, explains in his Civil Eats editorial:

The hype around alternative proteins also diverts our attention away from solutions that are already working on the ground: shifting to diversified agroecological production systems, strengthening territorial food chains and markets, and building “food environments” which increase access to healthy and sustainable diets. These pathways respond holistically to challenges whose breadth and depth have been well-evidenced. They entail transformative behavioral and structural shifts. They require sustainable food system transitions, not merely a protein transition. Yet without a consolidated set of claims and claim-makers behind them, these pathways are systematically sidelined.

Don’t feel like reading the report?  Watch the video.

Other resources:

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