Jerusalem – Schnitzel From A Petri Dish? Israeli Start-up To Grow Chicken Meat In Labs

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    Jerusalem – It’s a bird! It’s a fake! It’s Supermeat!

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    Israeli start-up Supermeat has ambitions to transform the way we eat meat, starting with Chicken, by growing chicken meat in a lab.

    “We intend to create cultured meat in a very special way that will make it very cost effective,” Supermeat co-CEO and co-founder Koby Barak told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

    Though researchers such as Mark Post of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands have been developing cultured beef for several years (and reportedly brought the price down from $325,000 to $11 for a burger’s worth), 8-month-old Supermeat is the first to foray into chicken.

    Chicken, said Barak, is the second-most consumed meat in the world after fish, with some 60 billion chickens consumed globally each year. That, he said, makes the field ripe for disruption.

    The company’s R&D plan revolves around pioneering work by Hebrew University professor and biomedical engineer Yaakov Nahmias, who co-founded the company along with Barak and Ido Savir.

    Though they’re not willing to discuss the secret sauce they think can make lab-grown chicken a reality, Barak offered a few insights into how it’ll be done and how it will be cost effective.

    First comes the meat growing.

    It begins with a one-time biopsy from the animal, in this case the chicken. They separate out the different kinds of cells from the tissue, such as muscle and fat, and grow them in machines that mimic the natural environment of the chicken’s body. Part of the challenge will be figuring out the right combination of cell types that will produce the texture and flavor of chicken that people are used to.

    But cells can’t simply grow in a vacuum. Like real chickens, they need food.

    “It’ll be a milkshake of a lot of minerals, fats, sugars and nutrients, and the source will be vegetables and non-animal derived materials,” said Barak, though the exact process remains unknown.

    Within two years, he predicts, the company will be able to make lab-grown ground chicken. It’ll take another two years to develop technology to grow more complex chicken parts, such as chicken breasts.

    Mass production will take five years, by which point Barak believes the cost will come down to a very affordable price of $1 to $5 per kilogram.

    But the distribution is also part of the model. Rather than building a giant factory to produce huge quantities of meat in, say, Israel’s north, the company plans on building machines so that local supermarkets, restaurants, and eventually even households can simply grow their own meat.

    When it comes to chicken meat, transport costs (which include refrigeration costs) weigh in substantially, and can account for as much as 18% of the greenhouse gas emissions.

    Indeed, the dream of lab-grown meat promised many social benefits. With the world population expected to increase by 1 billion people in the next 12 years, and a growing global middle class demanding more meat in their diet, the challenge of feeding the world is immense. Raising animals for food also requires more resources such as water and crops, and produces negative environmental byproducts including greenhouse gases.

    And, of course, it doesn’t require killing animals. The company claims that cultured meat requires 99% less land, uses 96% less water, and produces 96% less green house gases than traditional meat-growing.

    Not everyone is confident that cultures meat is a worthwhile economic venture, though.

    Gil Ronen, CEO of Israel genetics company NRGene, thinks that the technology makes more sense for growing, say, transplant organs than dinner.

    “Even if you’re talking about growing meat, agriculture is still 10,000-fold cheaper,” he said. “It’s a gimmick, about the environment and not sacrificing animals, but economically I don’t see anyone actually producing food in the next 20 years in the lab. That’s the way I see it.”

    But Barak says their company’s technology and R&D plan suggest otherwise. They are seeking to raise $2.5 million, some of which they are raising through crowd-sourcing on IndieGogo [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/supermeat-real-meat-without-harming-animals#/].

    “It’s a high-risk, high-gain project. We don’t have proof that it works, but we have a very promising R&D plan from a leader in the field,” said Barak. “It’s not just a theoretical idea, it’s based on technology that he already developed. We’re not starting from scratch.”


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    4 Comments
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    yaakov doe
    Member
    yaakov doe
    7 years ago

    Pareve?

    start
    start
    7 years ago

    A few halachic shailos
    will the lab grown chicken be fleishig?
    Will it be considered “bosor shenisaliem min hoayin?
    will we be “yotzei” with these chickens kaporos?

    7 years ago

    Sounds like ‘Ever min Hachai’ if the original cells come from a living animal.
    That’s forbidden even for a ben-noach.
    Better ask a Rov.

    chicagomaven
    chicagomaven
    7 years ago

    This presents a very serious problem. What will everyone do if they can’t argue about who’s shechita it is?