Cell meat that is more "meaty" than plant meat, will you choose to eat?

The cell meat industry with one trillion yuan output value is still in its infancy

Most R & D results are limited to the laboratory

In addition to the cost, another factor that needs to be considered is

Can consumers accept this alternative of this traditional animal husbandry and breeding meat

On June 10, 2022, the first cell in China was born.

On the same day, US startup Eat Just broke the soil in Asia's largest cell meat factory in Singapore.

In order to change the current status of its own agricultural products, Singapore is the only country in the world that allows cells to enter the restaurant. This kind of "breeding" from the laboratory is not restricted by regional resources and can achieve local supply steadily.

Compared with the familiar plant meat, the cellular meat feels more "meat" and is closer to real animal meat. Zhou Guanghong, a professor of Nanjing Agricultural University and an academician of the Academy of Food Sciences, who has developed China's first cell culture meat and said that from a business perspective, if the technology can replace one -tenth of the animal husbandry, the corresponding output value can reach the top Trillion yuan.

However, today, the cell meat industry of trillion yuan output value is still in its infancy. Most R & D results are limited to the laboratory, and a few companies are building large -scale production plants. For most public, cell meat is still a very strange concept. If someone walks into a restaurant in Singapore and order a $ 17 fried chicken nugget, it is difficult to realize that the chicken chewed in your mouth may cause a new food revolution.

The end of the fate of dairy cows is no longer a slaughterhouse

This is a special cooking live broadcast. At the live broadcast of London, the world's top chef, Richard McGwin, is dealing with a ingredient that he is most familiar with the most unfamiliar ingredients -beef. His goal was to make a beef burger, but it was usually, but his careful expression was captured by the camera and passed to tens of thousands of audiences at the other end of the camera. Because a piece of little beef in the middle of the burger is more than $ 300,000, this is the world's first cell culture meat cultivated. This live broadcast took place in 2013.

Its creator is the father of "cell culture meat" and Mark Poster, a professor of engineering at the University of Mastricht University in the Netherlands. He first extracted a special stem cell called "muscle satellite cells" from the cow neck, and placed them in biomedicine to allow them to differentiate, reproduce, and grow. The advantage of this cell is easy to differentiate. In the later stage, it will gradually merge the original muscle fiber, and eventually form a thin pink muscle bar. All this happened in just three weeks, and it took at least 2 to 3 years to raise a cow. Perster pointed out that using this technology can theoretically increase the number of burgers made by a cow from 100 to 100 million, which means that the number of livestock used by humans can be reduced by 1 million heads.

The father of "cell culture meat" Mark Poster.

After interviewing Poster, "Time" magazine describes such a "beautiful" future: the cows on the pasture take a leisurely walk and eat clover while eating. Take a piece of muscle living tissue that only pepper -sized, and send it to a laboratory of Perster a few kilometers away, and the dairy cows after the wound are sutured will return to the pasture. A few weeks later, in the high -end restaurant in Mastricht, when customers chewed the beef derived from cows, the cows still lived a rural poetry -like life on the grass. In other words, the end of the fate of cows is no longer a slaughterhouse.

Compared with traditional animal husbandry, the cells "breeding" in the laboratory are also conducive to environmental protection. Animal animal husbandry breeding is one of the important contributors of greenhouse gases. Studies have shown that compared with traditional meat production methods, cultivation of meat can be reduced by 30 % to 50 % of energy consumption, reduced 70 % to 90 % of greenhouse gas emissions and more than 90 % of land.

Nanjing Zhouzi was established in 2019 and is the first cell meat company in Mainland China. The first doctor in the field of cell meat trained in Poster, Nanjing Zhouzi Future CEO Ding Shijie pointed out "China News Weekly" that the ideal cell meat can not only shorten the production time of meat, but also save land, reduce pollution, and protect animals. The quality of meat products produced in industrialized production is more controllable and can be customized. But now, the main challenge is cost.

In the past ten years, by the end of 2021, the Israeli cell meat company Future Meat said that the cost has been reduced to about $ 1.7 per piece of chicken, which is about $ 7.7 per pound, which is about 0.1 yuan/gram. In June 2021, the company opened the world's first cell meat production factory in Request, Israel, and sold chicken breasts "breeding" from the laboratory at a price of $ 3.90.

FUTURE MEAT company produces the workshop.

Ding Shijie said that the cost of Future Meat is currently the lowest in the industry. The cost level of most cell meat companies in the world is 1 to 2 levels higher than it, ranging from 70 or eighty dollars per pound to hundreds of dollars. It is also generally equal. Judging from Zhou Zi's technical progress in the next ten years, the cost of cell cultivation has fallen by about 300 times, and there is still room for further decline. After calculating the team of Ding Shijie, it was found that the cultivation of meat can only be commercialized only if it drops to 0.3 yuan/gram to 0.03 yuan/gram to truly have industrial advantages. "This process takes about 5-10 years."

In the cultivation of cell meat, the largest raw material cost is the cost of in vitro cell culture medium, accounting for more than 70 % of the entire culture cost. When Perster created the world's first cell beef, the medium used in the culture was fetal cattle serum, but the price of this serum was high, and it cost thousands of yuan per 500 ml. And the risk of carrying the virus. And Future Meat claims that the secret of its cost reduction is the innovation of the medium. The use of serum -free culture has improved the proliferation efficiency of cells by 10 times, and it can "produce a cow in 6 days." Yang Ziliang, CEO of CELLX CellX Capital Corporation Cell Corporation, explained to "China News Weekly" that serum -free medium is a mainstream direction of the current cell meat technology, that is, the function of simulating the real serum through various growth factors combinations. These different combinations are used. These different combinations It is the exclusive "formula" of each company. However, he pointed out that the simulated serum is currently unable to compare with the real serum in the culture of cells. Therefore, how to improve the material conversion efficiency of serum has become a technical difficulty at the moment. FUTURE MEAT claims that it has reached 100 grams of meat per liter of serum.

Ding Shijie further explained that animal serum has a variety of elements and factors in animal serum, which ultimately helps cell proliferation and differentiation. If you want to research and develop higher serum -free medium, you must know the cells very well. The ideal state is to customize the "formula" according to the needs of cells. The effect can even surpass the serum medium. In this way, the quality is controllable. "

In his opinion, the decline in the cost of cell meat culture is a systematic problem, which involves a complete technical system. In addition to improving the formula of the medium, there are corresponding technical challenges in each link. For example, in the first step of cultivation, how to screen out a large amount of proper seed cells that can be proliferated and differentiated. In addition, in the process of cell proliferation and differentiation, microcarling brackets are generally needed to allow cells to be attached to it. The latest technology of Ding Shijie's team adopts animal cell suspension and domestication technology to get rid of the dependence of brackets. In addition, the foodization of cell meat is also involved. Most of the current cell meat is colorless and tasteless. How to treat it as a real meat is also the key to the cell meat that can officially end the dining table.

The industry that just takes off

At present, only about 700 people have tasted cells in the world, and they mainly come from Singapore. Among many restaurants in Singapore, the $ 17 special fried chicken nuggets tasted by customers, 70 % of which are of cells produced chicken produced by cell meat culture companies EAT Just. These "growing" chicken from the laboratory are mixed with raw materials such as mung bean plant protein, and then wrapped with crushed bread crumbs for seasoning for guests to enjoy.

In June of this year, Eat Just announced that it would build the largest cell meat factory in Asia in Singapore, covering an area of ​​30,000 square feet and planned to open in 2023. At the same time, the company is looking for a venue in the United States to build a giant biological reactor about four floors. It is understood that the facility can produce 30 million pounds of cell meat per year. These expansion require huge funds. In 2021, the company's cumulative financing reached US $ 467 million. In addition to cell cultivation chicken, Eat Just plans to cultivate beef and fish in the future. In Japan, the company turned its attention to the high -end and cow that was regarded as the "national treasure" as a "national treasure". The goal of the company's CEO Josh Trikk is that by the end of 2030, the price of Eat Just's cellular meat products is close to natural chicken, beef and pork, and even lower.

Since 2020, capital has successively bet cells to cultivate meat companies. As of the end of 2021, there were about 107 cell meat startups in the world. It has added 21 newly added in 2021. The cumulative attraction has attracted nearly $ 2 billion. Among them, financing companies are mainly concentrated in Israel and the United States. Investors include both the "national team" represented by the Singaporean government, as well as Microsoft founders Bill Gates, Amazon founder Bezos, and Michelin Samsung chef. In March 2021, the Israeli cell meat technology company Meatech landed on Nasdaq, the world's first and the only cell meat company in the world. Therefore, many industries believe that 2021 is the first year of the cell meat industry.

Ding Shijie analyzed that the cells cultivated in 2021 were "fiery" of meat. On the one hand, because of the continuous maturity of technology and on the other hand, in recent years, the world's attention to climate and environment, coupled with the frequent excess of African swine fever, allowing people to treat people to make people treat them. The stable supply and safety of meat have higher requirements. "We speculate that within three years, cell meat may be promoted in small scale in the local area. If it is to become a relatively mainstream meat choice in the market, it may take at least 5 to 10 years by consumers."

In the United States, the valuation has entered the UPSide Foods, which has entered the $ 1 billion club, and founded a pilot factory in San Francisco in November 2021. The annual production capacity is close to 200 tons. Essence It is expected that this year, the company will also build a large -scale chemical plant with an annual output of "thousands or even 10,000 tons". In addition, some optimistic analysis believes that after Singapore, the United States may approval cell meat at the end of 2022 to officially enter the market. "In addition to cost, there is still a major obstacle to industrialization, which is the government's approval of cell meat products." Yang Ziliang said. Yang Ziliang pointed out that because this is an emerging field, it has also subverted people's understanding of the traditional sense of meat. Therefore, the government lacks experience in approval and lacks relevant knowledge. Although the approval of Singapore looks the fastest, it has started since three or four years ago. According to his understanding, Singapore's approval is mainly "see" four points: first, the safety of raw materials, how the seed cells are extracted, whether the animals of the cell source are healthy, what optimization has been done in the future, whether the use of gene editing technology, etc.; The second is the medium Whether the ingredients are safe; the third is whether the specific production process is safe and stable; in the end, a series of tests must be performed for the cultivated cell meat terminal products.

In addition, because the production process of each enterprise is different, the Singapore government review agency has adopted "one thing, one discussion" and "work well" on cell meat companies. In Yang Ziliang's view, Singapore has relied on imports for many years. Therefore, in 2019, the "30 · 30 Vision" of agricultural products was introduced. It is hoped that by 2030, the agricultural products produced in the country will account for more than 30 % of national nutritional needs, and cell meat can be produced. Promotion is an important way to solve local food safety. This is also one of the reasons why the cell meat industry has developed rapidly in recent years.

Domestic policies have also released some positive signals. In December 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs released the "Fourteenth Five -Year Plan" National Agricultural and Rural Science and Technology Development Plan ". For the first time, it mentioned that cell culture meat and other artificial synthetic proteins were mentioned. It is an important technology worthy of attention in future food manufacturing. Yang Ziliang, who returned to start a business, remembers that since 2020, more and more domestic capital has begun to pay attention to the cell meat industry. By 2021, more investors who come to him to communicate.

Nonetheless, compared with the initial industrialized plant meat, there are only three cells in China's current cell cultivation, and the results are still in the laboratory research stage. Avant Meats in Hong Kong mainly focuses on the cells of fish; Nanjing Zhouzi Future Food Technology Co., Ltd., which is based on the technology developed by Nanjing Agricultural University professor and academician of the Academy of Food Sciences, and CELLX, a young company established in July 2020.

In June 2022, Zhou Zi developed the "pork belly" cultivated by China's first cell in the future, and at the scene of the new product conference, it was fried with cell meat to fry a "living color" green pepper fried meat. The person lamented, the pork belly was chewy. In November 2019, at the National Research Center of National Meat Quality and Safety Control Engineering Technology of Nanjing Agricultural University, China's first cell was born with a quality of meat with only 5 grams. One month later, Zhou Zi was established in the future and received 20 million angel round financing.

In Yang Ziliang's view, domestic cell cultivation of meat technology has started late, and the development of industrial development is generally "slow" for 2 to 3 years than foreign countries. Many international companies have completed the test and started to establish their own pilot factories. The cost can be reduced in a larger scale of production. These are the tasks that domestic companies must complete within one or two years. How to produce at a lower cost and stable production in a larger system is a major challenge facing domestic cell meat companies.

In June 2021, the cell meat industry report released by McKinsey predicts that by 2030, the cell meat market can reach a scale of $ 25 billion, accounting for about 1.5 % of the global human market. Accepting cell meat is fully accepted, and the cell meat has the same level as the taste and cost as the natural animal shepherd.

A future food revolution?

For the core of cell culture meat technology, as early as 1931, Churchill, who was later served as British Prime Minister, explained very clearly. In an article that predicts future technology, he wrote: "We will get rid of the absurdity of chickens in order to eat chicken breasts or chicken wings, and to cultivate these parts in the right media." Cultivating meat ignores animals as an organic life as a whole, and is split out of the whole. The meat cultivated in the laboratory is the stack of cells, as well as the stacks of various nutrients of fat, protein, carbohydrates, and minerals. This is just like building a house with bricks, but it is actually not enough.

In the early days, people thought that the taste of cell meat was different from real meat, which was some kind of "unnatural" manifestation. When tasting the first cell meat burger, the two gourmet critics on the scene believed that although the taste was "close to the meat", it lacked juice when chewing, the texture of the meat was a bit astringent, and the consistency felt lack of fat. After years of technological development, Yang Ziliang believes that the cells have infinitely close to real meat in taste and flavor. "In various internal blind tests, it is basically difficult for people to distinguish which cells are cells and which are real animal meat."

Even so, people's attention to the so -called "nature" always affects consumers' acceptance of cell meat. In 2018, animal protection of non -profit organization Fanalytics conducted an interesting social psychological survey of 1185 American adults. The results show that when the respondents who do not understand cell meat introduce this new technology, if the cells will be the cells, the cells will not be introduced. The name of the meat was replaced with "clean meat", and 66 % of the interviewed objects were willing to try. In the introduction of "clean meat", the investigator emphasized: "Clean meat is the real animal meat. It has the same taste, texture, and better nutritional ingredients as the traditional production of meat. Similar to the natural growth of muscles in the animal. In fact, this cell growth process is in all natural life. Clean meat has many benefits to human health, animals and the environment. The most important thing is that it is pure and natural. "In contrast, many surveys of the same period show that among various people, the acceptance of cell meat is generally less than 50 %, and the acceptance of generations Z is slightly higher than the elderly.

Yang Ziliang said that Cellx will cooperate with some Michelin restaurants in the future to make high value -added products, and then slowly sink to a broader ordinary consumer group. Just like the strategy of Just Eat in Singapore, it was originally in some high -end restaurants. Later, he entered the night market and strived to integrate into a more local culture and young consumer groups. "This is a very good idea." People's understanding of food and changes in consumer concepts are not overnight, and they need to gradually penetrate.

Many people in the industry believe that in the short term, although cell culture meat grows fast, it will not completely replace animal husbandry, but as a supplement to traditional animal husbandry, providing human meat protein with a new consumer choice Essence

However, from the perspective of Yang Ziliang, in the long run, humans will inevitably experience a food revolution, "the understanding of eating will change completely." He explained that human beings now mainly eat pigs, chickens and ducks, not because they are delicious and nutritious, but because they have evolved in the past thousands of years of evolution. "These are the most domesticated animals, but what about other animals? But we haven't tried it." Now, through the cell culture technology in vitro, the boundary of human recipes can be expanded. limit.

Yang Ziliang pointed out that all the materials needed by humans in the future will definitely achieve production at the level of cell microorganisms. In addition to meat, there are milk, eggs, fur, and various agricultural products. With the growth of the population and the shortage of resources, humans always find a more efficient, unlimited production method. "This will be a new revolution, and the food revolution is part of it."

Send 2022.6.27 Total Issue 1049 "China News Weekly"

Magazine title: Cell culture meat, can it open a food revolution?

Reporter: [email protected])

Edit: Du Wei

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