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Meat industry
World’s largest vats for
growing ‘no3kill’ meat to be
built in US
Commitment to building four4storey
bioreactors is gamechanger for cultivated
meat industry, says expert

Damian Carrington Environment editor

@dpcarrington
Wed 25 May 2022 10.00 EDT

The building of the world’s largest

bioreactors to produce cultivated meat has
been announced, with the potential to
supply tens of thousands of shops and
restaurants. Experts said the move could be
a “gamechanger” for the nascent industry.

The US company Good Meat said the

bioreactors would grow more than 13,000
tonnes of chicken and beef a year. It will use
cells taken from cell banks or eggs, so the
meat will not require the slaughter of any
livestock.

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There are about 170 companies around the

world working on cultured meat, but Good
Meat is the only company to have gained
regulatory approval to sell its product to the
public. It began serving cultivated chicken
in Singapore in December 2020.

Cattle, chicken and other livestock have a

huge environmental impact due to methane
emissions, the destruction of forests and
water use. The consumption of
conventional meat in rich nations must fall
dramatically to beat the climate crisis,
scientists say. Proponents of cultivated
meat say it can provide the same taste and
feel as conventional meat but with a far
smaller environmental impact.

The creation of Good Meat’s 10 new

bioreactors is under way, the company says,
each of which has a capacity of 250,000
litres and will stand four storeys tall, far
bigger than any constructed to date. The US
site for the facility is due to be finalised
within three months and operational in late
2024, reaching 11,800 tonnes a year by 2026
and 13,700 tonnes by 2030.

The bioreactors are being manufactured as

part of an agreement with ABEC, a leading
bioprocess equipment manufacturer, which
is also making a 6,000-litre bioreactor for
Good Meat’s Singapore site – this is
scheduled to begin production in early 2023
and will itself be the biggest cultured meat
bioreactor installed to date.

“I think our grandchildren are going to ask

us about why we ate meat from slaughtered
animals back in 2022,” said Josh Tetrick, the
chief executive of Good Meat’s parent
company, Eat Just.

“Cultivated meat matters because it will

enable us to eat meat without all the harm,
without bulldozing forests, without the
need to slaughter an animal, without the
need to use antibiotics, without
accelerating zoonotic diseases.

“The bioreactors will be far and away the

largest, not only in the cultivated meat
industry, but in the biopharma industry too.
So the design and engineering challenges
are significant, the capital investments are
significant and the potential to take another
step toward shifting society away from
slaughtered meat is significant.”

One issue will be to ensure that the meat

cells grow as well in large reactors as they
do in the smaller ones used so far.

Cultivated meat has not

yet been approved for
sale by the US Food and
Drug Administration.
World’s first lab3
grown steak “We’ve submitted our
revealed ; but the
taste needs work
application,” said
Tetrick. “We’ve found
Read more
the agency to be fully
engaged, asking all the
questions you’d expect, from cell
identification to final product. We’d prefer
not to try to predict if and when [approval]
will occur.” Tetrick also said the company
had produced a cell growth serum that does
not require the use of bovine foetuses,
which were previously widely used.

Another cultivated meat company, Upside

Foods, raised $400m in April, in part to
fund a commercial-scale facility to produce
thousands of tonnes of meat a year. It has
not yet chosen the size of the bioreactors.
“We honestly don’t even know what the
limits are,” said Amy Chen, the chief
operating officer at Upside Foods. “But we
will make some final decisions around the
size of the cultivators as it gets closer to the
construction date.”

The taste of the cultivated meat has been

key in raising investment, Chen said.
“Before I agreed to come on, I had to try the
meat. I had that first bite and realised that it
was simultaneously one of the most
unremarkable things and one of the most
remarkable things I’ve ever eaten. It’s just
meat.”

Other companies with facilities for

cultivated meat include SuperMeat, Mosa
Meat, Future Meat Technologies and the
seafood producers Wildtype and Shiok
Meats. There are also many companies
making plant-based meat replacements.

Caroline Bushnell, a vice-president at the

non-profit Good Food Institute, said: “The
scale of [Good Meat’s] facility represents
real and growing confidence from
companies in the commercial potential of
cultivated meat. This plant, with its
potential to decrease production costs,
could be a gamechanger in the race to bring
meat grown from cells to restaurants,
supermarkets and dining tables.”.

Rosie Wardle, a partner and co-founder at

Synthesis Capital, said: “This
announcement is another example of the
cultivated meat industry reaching an
inflection point and moving from ‘proof of
concept’ to commercial scale. As investors,
we are excited about the potential for this
part of the alternative protein industry to
play an important role in the future of
food.” Synthesis Capital announced a
$300m fund on Wednesday to invest in
alternative proteins and food technology,
the largest dedicated fund raised in the
sector to date.

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Most of the meat people eat in 2040 will not

come from slaughtered animals, according
to a 2019 report from the consultancy
Kearney that predicts 60% will be either
grown in vats or replaced with plant-based
alternatives.

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Topics
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Food / Meat / Climate crisis / news

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