California’s SciFi Foods Announces Successful Commercial-Scale Production of Cultivated Beef
The startup’s technological breakthrough can produce thousands of cultivated beef burgers each month - which could be for sale in the US very soon.
Credit: SciFi Foods
Cultivated meat - meat that’s grown from animal cells rather than having to farm and slaughter an animal - is positioned to be a leading solution for making our global food system more sustainable.
Many innovative startups, as well as some of the world’s leading meat companies are investing in and developing the technology to make it a reality. But one hurdle some companies have struggled with has been the ability to produce cultivated meat on a commercial scale that can be cost-effective and mass produced.
Now, California-based start-up SciFi Foods has announced its first commercial-scale production of cultivated beef.
The company was able to successfully complete its first 500L bioreactor run, which harvested kilograms of cultivated beef. The process, which was 100 percent serum-free, is on the same scale that SciFi plans to be commercializing out, and took place at its manufacturing facility which opened last year in San Leandro, California.
Credit: SciFi Foods
SciFi Foods describe the development as “monumental”, and claim that it is the only company in the world with beef cell lines that grow in a single-cell suspension. This method, it says, enables them to scale production of cultivated beef quickly and affordably. This is because the cell lines don’t require what it calls “expensive” substrates like microcarriers or scaffolding, which can make scaling-up in a cost-effective way more difficult.
The cultivated beef cells will be used to produce SciFi Burgers, which are referred to as “blended” products. The burgers use real beef that’s cultivated from cells, and combine it with plant protein, at a ratio of 10 percent cultivated beef and 90 percent plant. This hybrid approach will allow the manufacturing process to produce thousands of SciFi Burgers every month at the facility.
A SciFi Burger. Credit: SciFi Foods
The remaining step for SciFi Foods is to work with regulators in the US to receive government approval to start selling its cultivated meat products. The manufacturing facility has already been designed from the ground up to pass FDA USDA inspections, SciFi Foods says, and it is hopeful that regulators will give the company the go-ahead to start selling cultivated beef as soon as possible.
The US has already approved cultivated chicken for human consumption, when in 2022 the California-based startup UPSIDE Foods received the green light from the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to sell its chicken made from real animal cells.
Approvals for more companies are expected to follow in the coming years, as the cultivated meat sector develops and continues to grow.
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