Israeli breakthrough in affordable production of cultivated meat

Israel is becoming a world powerhouse in finding ways to produce cultivated meat. Perhaps it’s due to the relatively large number of vegetarians and vegans, or the attraction of observant Jews to eating meatless meat with dairy food without prohibitions. A more-likely reason is that its scientists are brilliant and innovative, and regard such products as having great potential to reduce global warming, partially caused by gas from cows.

As global demand for animal protein is expected to double by  2050, cellular agriculture offers a solution to meet this demand, especially as resource-intensive livestock production reaches its peak capacity. Despite recent approvals by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for cultivated meat production, large-scale production of cultivated meat has not yet become a reality. Previous techno-economic analyses raised a variety of economic problems, including high costs of factories and raw materials and casting doubt about the viability of cultivated meat production.

Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, founder of a company called Believer Meats, and a multidisciplinary team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) have now divulged their study just published in the prestigious journal Nature Food under the title “Continuous manufacturing of cultivated meat: empirical economic analysis.”

The research is the first proof of the potential of cost-efficient manufacturing of cultivated meat and the first empirical economic analysis based on solid data. The project brought together engineers, biologists, and chemists at HU and Believer Meats, which is currently building the world’s first large-scale industrial production facility for cultivated chicken.

Nahmias’s team included Laura Pasitka and Muneef Ayyash of HU’s Grass Center for Bioengineering at the Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, and Guy Wissotsky, Nir Yarza, Gal Rosoff and Revital Kaminker of Believer Meats (Ayyash also works for the cultivated-meat company).

Breaking the cost-effective barrier 

THE BREAKTHROUGH, which the study described as “an extraordinary stride for cellular agriculture, offers a continuous manufacturing process for cultivated meat that overcomes the industry’s critical challenges of scalability and cost-effectiveness. The development could make cultivated meat accessible to consumers here and around the world on a daily basis and contribute to a more sustainable and ethical food system,” the authors wrote.

“We were inspired by how Henry Ford’s automated assembly line revolutionized the car industry 110 years ago,” Nahmias said in a press release. “Our findings show that continuous manufacturing enables cultivated meat production at a fraction of current costs without resorting to genetic modification or mega-factories. This technology brings us closer to making cultivated meat a viable and sustainable alternative to traditional animal farming.”

Cellular agriculture must meet the growing demand for animal products to be sold at low prices, the team wrote, but current production technologies result in low yields, leading to economic projections that prohibit cultivated meat scalability. Here we use tangential flow filtration for continuous manufacturing of cultivated meat to produce biomass of up to 130x106 cells per milliliter.

The use of tangential flow filtration (TFF) for the continuous manufacturing of cultivated meat makes possible the expansion of the biomass to 130 billion cells per liter, achieving yields of 43% weight per volume. The process was carried out continuously over 20 days, enabling daily biomass harvests.

In addition, the new culture medium is free of animal components and is priced at just $0.63 per liter, so the continuous manufacturing method could significantly minimize the cost and complexity of cultivated meat production, potentially bringing it closer to everyday consumers.

Benefitting the scientific field of cultivating meat

Bruce Friedrich, president of the Good Food Institute (GFI), enthusiastically supported the project. “We applaud the spirit of openness that continues to characterize cultivated meat researchers like Prof. Nahmias and his colleagues, who understand that showing the scientific potential of cultivated meat will benefit all scientists working in the field.”

Using empirical data, the team conducted a techno-economic analysis of a hypothetical 50,000-liter production facility. The analysis showed that the cost of production of cultivated chicken could theoretically be cut to only $6.20 per pound, aligning with the price of organic chicken.

Dr. Elliot Swartz, the principal scientist at the cultivated meat section at GFI, stressed the significance of the study’s findings. “This important study provides numerous data points that demonstrate the economic feasibility of cultivated meat. The study confirms early theoretical calculations that serum-free media can be produced at costs well below $1/L without forfeiting productivity, which is a key factor for cultivated meat achieving cost-competitiveness,” he said in a press release.

He added that “empirical data is the bedrock for any cost model of scaled cultivated meat production, and this study is the first to provide real-world empirical evidence for key factors that influence the cost of production, such as media cost, metabolic efficiency, and achievable yields in a scalable bioprocess design.”