GOOD MEAT TO BUILD WORLD’S LARGEST VATS FOR GROWING CULTIVATED MEAT

US food company Good Meat has announced its plans to build the world’s ‘largest’ bioreactors, to produce cultivated meat.

The company, a subsidiary of Eat Just, has noted that said bioreactors would be able to cultivate more than 13,000 tonnes of “no-kill” chicken and beef every year. The meat is made from cells extracted from cell banks or eggs, meaning that no livestock would not need to be killed for the products.

Good Meat leads the way for cultivated meat in the US

Back in December 2020, Good Meat began selling cultivated chicken in Singapore. The company’s “chicken bites” passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency, meaning they could be marketed in the region.

At the time, Eat Just co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick said: “I think the approval is one of the ‘most significant milestones in the food industry in the last handful of decades.

“It’s an open door and it’s up to us and other companies to take that opportunity. My hope is this leads to a world in the next handful of years where the majority of meat doesn’t require killing a single animal or tearing down a single tree.”

The environmental impact of farming livestock has been widely-reported. Thus, supporters of cultivated meat say that the product type could be essential in making the food industry more sustainable.

Good Meat to build world’s biggest cultivated meat bioreactors

Good Meat has announced that it will build 10 new bioreactors. Each has a capacity of 250,000 litres and will be four storeys tall, noticeably greater in size than existing bioreactors. Construction of the bioreactors was made possible after Good Meat struck an agreement with ABEC, described as a leading bioprocess equipment manufacturer.

The site for the US facility will be decided in the coming months. The plan is to have this facility operational in late 2024. It will apparently be able to produce 11,800 tonnes of cultivated meat annually by 2026, with 13,700 tonnes being produced annually by 2030.

ABEC will also oversee the construction of a 6,000-litre bioreactor at Good Meat’s site in Singapore. Production of this site is expected to start in early 2023.

“I think our grandchildren are going to ask us about why we ate meat from slaughtered animals back in 2022,” said Tetrick in a recent interview.

“Cultivated meat matters because it will enable us to eat meat without all the harm, without bulldozing forests, without the need to slaughter an animal, without the need to use antibiotics, without accelerating zoonotic diseases.

“The bioreactors will be far and away the largest, not only in the cultivated meat industry, but in the biopharma industry too. So the design and engineering challenges are significant, the capital investments are significant and the potential to take another step toward shifting society away from slaughtered meat is significant.”

What is the future of cultivated meat?

Cultivated meat companies like Good Meat are receiving high investment and are making headlines with their on-the-ground activities. That said, cultivated meat is yet to be approved for sale by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Good Meat is joined by a variety of cultivated meat companies, such as Upside Foods and Mosa Meat seeking to make an impact in America and beyond.

Join us at SIAL Paris as exhibitor Join us at SIAL Paris as visitor