World’s First Lab-Grown Meat Factory Launches

Over 5,000 lab-grown burgers will be produced each day, marking a milestone in the race to create a more sustainable future of food. 

Credit: Future Meat

The world’s first cultured meat factory has launched in a major milestone in the race to create a more sustainable food system. 

Cultured meat - essentially, animal protein grown under lab conditions - is expected to transform the future of the food industry, by producing animal protein in a much quicker, more efficient way, and without harming millions of animals and damaging the planet.

Now, industry-leading food tech company Future Meat Technologies have launched their new cultured meat factory in Israel. 

The first-of-its-kind facility will produce over 500 kilograms of cultured meat products - the equivalent of 5,000 hamburgers - every day.

Future Meat currently produces cultured chicken, pork and lamb, with beef coming soon. Its cultured meat is expected to generate 80% less greenhouse emissions and use 99% less land and 96% less freshwater than traditional meat production. And the cultured meat’s production cycle is around 20-times faster than traditional animal agriculture. 

"After demonstrating that cultured meat can reach cost parity faster than the market anticipated, this production facility is the real game-changer," says Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, founder and chief scientific officer of Future Meat Technologies. “Our goal is to make cultured meat affordable for everyone, while ensuring we produce delicious food that is both healthy and sustainable, helping to secure the future of coming generations."

Future Meat aims to have its cultured meat on supermarket shelves in the United States in 2022, and is currently looking to build more production facilities in multiple territories. 

The Future of Food

Also known as cell-based or cultivated meat, lab-grown meat is one of the leading solutions to eliminating factory farms and making the suffering of animals in the farming industry a thing of the past. And because it’s crafted in a lab rather than via animals on a farm, it’s healthier than conventional meat because it contains no antibiotics.

“A new space race for the future of food is underway”, Bruce Friedrich, Executive Director of the Good Food Institute (GFI) explains.  

"Most of the conventional meat companies have reconstituted as protein companies, and nine of the 10 biggest have either launched or invested in plant-based meat, cultivated meat, or both”, Friedrich added.

And it’s easy to see how alternative proteins are already beginning to transform the industry: Israel also welcomed a trial launch for the world’s first lab-grown meat restaurant last year, while meat giant McDonald’s recently announced its first vegan burger, dubbed the McPlant. And TIME magazine named plant-based Impossible Pork as one of ‘The Best Inventions of 2020’.   

For more on the future of food, and how lab-grown meat could help save billions of animals from factory farms, listen to our podcast episode with James Arbib: Rethinking Humanity.

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