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Aleph Farms

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Aleph Farms
Type of businessPrivate
Founded2017; 7 years ago (2017)
HeadquartersRehovot, Israel
Founder(s)Prof. Shulamit Levenberg, Didier Toubia
CEODidier Toubia
IndustryCellular agriculture; food technology
Employees150
URLaleph-farms.com

Aleph Farms is a cellular agriculture company active in the food technology space. It was co-founded in 2017 by the Israeli food-tech incubator "The Kitchen Hub" of Strauss Group Ltd., and Prof. Shulamit Levenberg of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology[1][2] and is headquartered in Rehovot, Israel.[3][4][5][6]

History

[edit]

In December 2018, Aleph Farms released its prototype, a steak grown directly from cow cells.[7][8] In February 2021, Aleph Farms unveiled the world's first cell-based ribeye steak, produced through 3D bioprinting.[9]

In May 2019, the company announced a US$12M funding round led by Vis Vires New Protein. Other investors were Cargill and M-Industry (Industrial Group of Migros).[10] In July 2021, the company received $105 million in a Series B investment round.[11] The round was led by L Catterton's Growth Fund and DisruptAD, a sovereign fund based in Abu Dhabi.[12] Other participants include Temasek, Skyviews Life Science and an international consortium of food giants Thai Union, BRF, and CJ CheilJedang.[13] Additional participants include existing investors like Strauss Group, Cargill, Vis Vlires New Protein, Peregrine Ventures and CPT Capital.[14]

In September 2021, actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio announced that he had funded Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms for undisclosed amounts of money, stating: 'One of the most impactful ways to combat the climate crisis is to transform our food system. Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms offer new ways to satisfy the world's demand for beef, while solving some of the most pressing issues of current industrial beef production.'[15]

In January 2024 the company received the first approval by the Israeli Ministry of Health to sell lab-grown steaks in Israel.[16] The steaks were rabbinically declared kosher.[17]

Cost and scale

[edit]

Aleph Farms aimed to reach price parity with conventional meat within five years from its initial market launch.[18]

Aleph Farms has signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with global food and meat companies to bring cultivated meat to local markets. The agreements were signed with BRF in Brazil, Mitsubishi Corporation in Japan, Thai Union in Thailand and CJ CheilJedang in South Korea.[19]

In February 2022, Aleph Farms reportedly moved into a 65,000-sq-ft facility to increase its operations sixfold. The move allowed the company to launch a pilot production facility and build an R&D center.[20]

Technology

[edit]

The cellular agriculture technique used by Aleph Farms for their cultured meat is based on a process naturally occurring in cows to regrow and build muscle tissue.[21][22]

The company isolates the cells responsible for this process and grows them in bioreactors, in the same conditions as inside the cow, to form muscle tissue typical to steaks.[23][24][25] To mimic the natural environment and the 3D structure, cultivated meat companies, and Aleph Farms in particular, use a scaffold which is required to achieve the appropriate characteristics that allow cell adhesion and subsequent proliferation and tissue development.[26][27] The extent to which the biology of the muscle is replicated, determines the complexity of the tissue engineering process that must be utilised. Like-for-like pieces of muscle (e.g. steak) require a system containing multiple cell types growing in an organised manner, on a structure that is similar to the extracellular matrix, composed mainly by collagen.[28]

The company developed a technique that enables different cell types to grow together. In order to grow the meat without the need for raising livestock, a small amount of cells is extracted from an animal through a small sample and is placed afterward in a nutrient-rich broth. Within a cultivator designed to mimic the internal environment of the animal's body, the cells then multiply, differentiate, and form the same tissue as inside the animal's body.[29] After the steak in the cultivator has grown to the desired size and characteristics, the steak is harvested and ready for cooking.[30]

To produce thick vascularized tissues, Aleph Farms developed a technology based on 3D-Bioprinting. It involves the printing of actual living cells that are then incubated to grow, differentiate, and interact, in order to acquire the texture and qualities of a real steak.[31] A proprietary system, similar to the vascularization that occurs naturally in tissues, enables the perfusion of nutrients across the thicker tissue and grants the steak with the similar shape and structure of its native form as found in livestock before and during cooking. This technology enables Aleph Farms to produce thicker and fattier steaks.[32]

In March 2022, Aleph Farms shared its strategy to replace the whole cow as a supplement to sustainable cattle farming. In addition to cultivated meat, it is expanding its product line to include cell-cultured collagen. The cultivated collagen will be produced from the cells of living cows, eliminating the need to slaughter animals during the production. Cultivated collagen is another representation of Aleph's technological capability to produce quality products with similar attributes of slaughter-based products from animals. These attributes have not been matched by plant-based alternatives to animal products, or by fermentation-based products before. It also expands the capabilities of cell-culture technology to eventually replace the entire cow.[33]

Aleph Farms leverages key components from the production method it has developed for steaks, including the bovine cell sources and animal component-free growth medium, to produce several nature-identical collagen types directly from cow cells. Its cultivated collagen includes the entire extracellular matrix (ECM) which comprises a variety of fibre-forming proteins and it represents the complete matrix of skin, bones, and joints. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the ECM and is well recognized for its benefits.[34] The production platforms for its our steaks and its our collagen share largely similar inputs and equipment, while presenting operational and cost-reduction synergies.[35]

Sustainability

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A study published by CE Delft in January 2023 — the first ever to be based on data from cultivated meat companies — found that cultivated beef has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 92%, land use by 95%, and water use by 78% compared to intensive livestock farming.[36]

In April 2020, Aleph Farms became the first cultivated meat company to announce net zero carbon goals, which are to reach net zero carbon within its operations by 2025, and throughout its supply chain by 2030. In November 2021, it shared its strategy for achieving these goals along with key partnerships it has established to support its efforts. .[37]

The company signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ENGIE Impact, the sustainability consulting arm of ENGIE, one of the world's leading energy providers. Engie will ensure that Aleph's operations are net zero compatible from the get-go, integrating energy efficiency, circularity in energy, as well as renewable energy and other strategic investments across its production line and supply chain.[38]

In January 2022, Aleph Farms announced its partnership with Federation University Australia and Professor Harpinder Sandhu, an Ecological Economist with expertise in food and farming systems. The partnership focuses on examining the role of cultivated meat in a Just Transition of the livestock farming industry. Together, the entities will conduct a comparative study focused on the US, Europe and the Global South, examining different types of livestock systems (intensive and extensive) and exploring the impacts and potential benefits cultivated meat could bring to the table. Based on the findings, they will develop tailored business models that include synergies between cultivated meat and traditional livestock farming systems in each of these regions.[39]

Space Program

[edit]

In September 2019, Aleph Farms conducted the world's first experiment of meat cultivation aboard the International Space Station. It worked with 3D Bioprinting Solutions to produce a small-scale muscle tissue, the building block of its cultivated steak. The focus of this experiment was on establishing the cell-cell contacts, the structure, and the texture of a muscle tissue.[40][41]

In October 2020, Aleph Farms announced the launch of its space program, Aleph Zero. The focus of the program is on developing a technological platform for the production of cultivated beef steaks in a process that consumes a significantly smaller portion of the resources needed to raise an entire animal for meat. Understanding these processes in such an extreme environment, will advance Aleph's ability to develop a complete process of cultivated meat production for long-term space missions and build an efficient production process that reduces the environmental footprint on Earth.[42]

In April 2022, Aleph Farms carried out its second experiment in space as part of the Rakia Mission and Ax-1. Its experiment makes use of a special microfluidic device, developed by SpacePharma, that enables cow cells to grow and mature into cells that build muscle tissue, the cultivated steak, under microgravity conditions.[43]

References

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  1. ^ Eytan Halon (28 May 2019). "INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIP TO INVEST $100M. IN ISRAELI FOODTECH INNOVATION". The Jerusalem Post.
  2. ^ Shani Ashkenazi (7 July 2021). "Cultured meat co Aleph Farms raises $105m". Globes.
  3. ^ Amir Mizroch (3 December 2018). "Something Big Is Cooking In Israel's Food Tech Kitchen". Forbes.
  4. ^ Laura Brehaut (17 December 2018). "Raising the steaks: An Israeli start-up just made the first slaughter-free steak, a lab-grown sirloin". National post.
  5. ^ Al Root (14 May 2018). "Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Could Be the Coke and Pepsi of Alternative Meat". Barrons.
  6. ^ Shira Feder (18 December 2018). "This Israeli Lab Has Produced Steak, Hold The Cow". The Forward.
  7. ^ "World's first lab-grown steak revealed – but the taste needs work". The Guardian. 2018-12-14. Retrieved 14 December 2018.
  8. ^ Niall Firth (27 February 2019). "The race to make a lab-grown steak". MIT Technology Review.
  9. ^ "Aleph Farms unveils world's first cell-based ribeye steak". Fooddive. Retrieved 10 February 2021.
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  17. ^ Wee, Sui-Lee (July 24, 2024). "The Country Where You Can Buy Meat Grown in a Lab". The New York Times.
  18. ^ "From Printing Steaks to Raising Cash for Cultivated Beef Rollout". Bloomberg. 7 July 2021. Retrieved 7 July 2021.
  19. ^ "BRF and Aleph Farms partner to bring cultivated meat to Brazil". Foodbev. 4 March 2021.
  20. ^ "Israel's Aleph Farms Gears Up For Global Market With New Facility". NoCamels. 21 February 2022.
  21. ^ Arshad, Muhammad Sajid; Javed, Miral; Sohaib, Muhammad; et al. (2017). "Tissue engineering approaches to develop cultured meat from cells: A mini review". Cogent Food & Agriculture. 3. doi:10.1080/23311932.2017.1320814.
  22. ^ Ben-Arye, Tom; Levenberg, Shulamit (2019). "Tissue Engineering for Clean Meat Production". Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. 3. doi:10.3389/fsufs.2019.00046.
  23. ^ Hasan Chowdhury (6 May 2019). "Made without humans or cows: inside the race to bioengineer milk". Telegraph.
  24. ^ Erin Brodwin (15 December 2018). "An Israeli startup with ties to America's most popular hummus brand says it made the world's first lab-grown steak — a holy grail for the industry". Business Insider.
  25. ^ Jason Bellini (11 December 2018). "From Grass-Fed to Lab-Grown: How Meat Is Evolving". The Wall Street Journal.
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  27. ^ Vandenburgh, Herman H.; Karlisch, Patricia; Farr, Lynne (1988). "Maintenance of highly contractile tissue-cultured avian skeletal myotubes in collagen gel". In Vitro Cellular & Developmental Biology. 24 (3): 166–174. doi:10.1007/BF02623542. PMID 3350785. S2CID 1599083.
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  29. ^ Anshel Pfeffer (24 February 2021). "How do you like your steak: grass-fed or lab-grown?". The Times.
  30. ^ Jordan Okumura (20 November 2020). "Aleph Farms Unveils New Cultivated Steak Prototype". Deli Market News.
  31. ^ Laura Reiley (9 February 2022). "Raising the steaks: First 3-D-printed rib-eye is unveiled". The Wachington Post.
  32. ^ Shulamit Levenberg; Iris Ianovici (May 2022). "3D-printable plant protein-enriched scaffolds for cultivated meat development". Biomaterials. 284 121487. doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2022.121487. PMID 35421802. S2CID 247689120.
  33. ^ ""Replace the whole cow": Aleph Farms pioneers cell-based collagen production". FoodIngredients. 17 March 2022.
  34. ^ "Aleph Farms Reveals Plan to Replace the Whole Cow as Alternative to Intensive Cattle Farming". Sustainable Brands. 16 March 2022.
  35. ^ Nicole Axworthy (23 March 2022). "Cultured collagen? How aleph farms is using technology to replace the whole cow". VegNews.
  36. ^ "LCA of cultivated meat. Future projections for different scenarios". CE Delft. February 2021.
  37. ^ "What Does a Just Transition Look Like for the Meat Sector?". Foodtank. 10 November 2021.
  38. ^ "Aleph Farms Partners with Federation University to Examine the Role of Cultivated Meat in a Just Transition". Aleph Farms blog. 13 January 2022.
  39. ^ Bea Tridimas (15 November 2021). "Aleph Farms cooks up roadmap to net zero emissions". BusinessGreen.
  40. ^ Aria Bendix (8 October 2019). "Astronauts just printed meat in space for the first time — and it could change the way we grow food on Earth". Business Insider.
  41. ^ Davide Banis (8 October 2019). "This Food Startup Has Grown Meat In Space For The First Time". Forbes.
  42. ^ Shohana Solomon (13 June 2022). "Why this Israeli billionaire spent 17 days growing chickpeas and steak in space". Fortune.James Clayton (25 April 2022). "SpaceX: Can meat be grown in space?". BBC.
  43. ^ Ettay Nevo (18 May 2022). "How Can You Grow Meat in Space?". Davidson Institute at Weitzman Institute.
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