On
the menu soon: lab-grown steak for eco-conscious diners
Send a link to a friend
[July 16, 2019]
By Lianne Back and Tova Cohen
REHOVOT, Israel (Reuters) - Diners in some
upmarket restaurants will soon be able to tuck into laboratory-grown
steak, thanks to an Israeli startup that seeks to tap into consumer
concerns about health, the environment and animal welfare.
|
While lab-grown hamburgers and chicken are already in development
around the world, Israel's Aleph Farms claims to be the first
company to have developed steak in a laboratory and is in talks with
some high-end restaurants in the United States, Europe and Asia to
have it on the market in 2021.
It plans initially to offer minute steak developed from a small
number of cells taken from a cow, avoiding the need to slaughter the
animal in the process or use antibiotics which can be harmful to
meat eaters.
Aleph Farms hopes to have its product on a limited number of
restaurant menus from 2021 in a trial phase, aiming for an official
launch in 2023, first in restaurants and then in stores.
Its next product will be a thick steak with "the properties that we
like and we all know," said Neta Lavon, vice president for research
and development.
A serving of its minute steak - a thin slice of meat that cooks very
fast - currently costs around $50 but Aleph Farms says it hopes to
bring that down by 2021 to only a slight premium to current prices
of steak offered in restaurants.
Eventually it aims for mass production, bringing the price down
further and making its steaks viable for sale in lower-priced steak
houses.
Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms, said the company
has ambitions to be one of the world's top three meat producers
within 20 years, challenging market leaders like Tyson Foods, which
has invested in another Israeli start-up developing cultured meat,
Future Meat Technologies.
[to top of second column] |
Toubia, however, did not give a revenue target for its product.
He set up the company in 2017 in partnership with Technion - the
Israel Institute of Technology and foodmaker Strauss Group's
incubator The Kitchen. In May it raised $12 million from investors
including Cargill [CARG.UL], and has now raised $14 million to date.
Demand for traditional meat substitutes is growing and analysts
estimate the U.S. plant-based meat market, for example, could be
worth $100 billion by 2035.
The number of start-ups producing laboratory-developed meat has
risen from four at the end of 2016 to more than two dozen by last
year, according to market researcher the Good Food Institute.
Dutch start-up Mosa Meat projects the cost of producing a hamburger
will be about 9 euros ($10) once production scales up.
(Editing by Susan Fenton)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|