Cultured Meat

• Cultured meat is made by growing animal cells in an artificial environment, with the aim of producing meat resembling the texture, flavour and nutritional value of conventional meat, without the ethical and environmental costs of traditional farming.
• It is predicated that the use of this new technology could reduce the environmental impact of meat consumption by around 90% (Sinke et al., 2023).
• The sustainability benefits of cultured meat include the potential reduction in air pollution, deforestation, water use, water contamination, biodiversity loss, antibiotic resistance and foodborne illnesses.
• The overall goal is to mass produce cultured meat products to supply the increasing global demand for meat, whilst reducing the impact of meat production on the environment.

Cultured meat manufacturing starts with identifying a suitable source of cells that can differentiate into muscle and fat cells. Most commonly this is through using primary cells (multipotent) isolated from tissues of livestock animals but alternatively pluripotent stem cells can be differentiated into muscle/fat specific cell types. A cell line (e.g. myogenic cells) is established and the cells are proliferated in a bioreactor to generate a large source of starting material. The cells can then be differentiated to form mature muscle cell types and subsequent processing can produce unstructured meat products e.g. beef mince. Alternatively, the cells can be co-cultured with other cell types (e.g. adipose stem cells) in an edible scaffold to enable differentiation and formation of structured meat products e.g. steak. Formation of structured meat products can also be achieved by bio-printing of muscle and fat cells to resemble more complex tissue structures.

• AMSBIO offers vital products for pioneering cultured meat research, including iMatrix-511 Laminin ECM, cryopreservation media and skeletal muscle differentiation kits.
• We also offer a vast biorepository containing animal DNA, RNA and tissue to act as positive control to compare samples, along with ELISA kits for quantification of specific proteins, such as collagen.
  

1. Cell culture: iMatrix-511 Recombinant Laminin E8 Fragments, MAPTrix^™ Recombinant Animal Free ECM, Skeletal muscle differentiation kit, Recombinant proteins and Lentiviral particles
2. Cryopreservation media to store cells for reference or future use: CELLBANKER, STEM-CELLBANKER, CELLOTION
3. Standards and kits to test cell identity and maturity compared to in vivo: Biorepository, Assay kits

• 2023 was a milestone year for the advancement of cultivated meat with the approval of two companies, GOOD Meat and Upside foods, to sell lab-grown meat to restaurants in the United States. In July 2023, the Netherlands became the first European country to allow cultivated meat and seafood tasting. As of January 2024, Israel became the third country to advance the approval of cultivated meat sales.
• Cultivated meat and seafood companies have raised $3.1 billion since 2013 with significant growth in investments (83%) in the last 3 years.
• Many new cultured meat ventures have emerged all over the world in recent years! Start-up companies are not only developing cultured meat products, but also the materials and equipment necessary for commercialisation.
• Despite this growth, difficulties with scaling up for global manufacturing, and spread of misinformation remain obstacles for the commercialisation of cultivated meat. Consumer education, understanding, and adoption are still in the early stages. And the work to secure increased government support for the industry continues.