Meat protein-free medium enables affordable, scalable cell-cultured meat

Cell culture meat company Meatly announces the development of a protein-free culture medium – the first of its kind in the cultured meat industry. This marks an important step forward in the quest for animal-free, cost-effective cultured meat production.

A growing medium is the mixture of nutrients used by companies in the cultured meat industry to grow animal cells. It is essential to the production process and accounts for the majority of the costs concerned.

Even more impressive is that the company has created this medium (plurally known as media) for just £1 per litre. According to the company, similar alternatives cost hundreds of pounds per liter to produce.

Meatly’s new medium contains no serum, animal components, steroids, hormones, growth factors or antibiotics. has been used in their suspension culture bioreactors without microcarriers.

The absence of expensive proteins, growth factors and microcarriers means that the future industrial scale will be economically viable. The costs will be brought down even further if it is higher volumes of the medium have been purchased.

Reducing these costs was a major obstacle what the sector looks like scale up andpossibly, achieve price parity with traditional meat products.

Meatly (formerly known as Good Dog Food) was founded in 2022 by CEO Owen Ensor and CSO Dr. Helder Cruz with support from investor Agronomics.

In addition to being cost-effective, the ingredients that Meatly uses in its culture medium are food safe. ThroughMeatly can reach this industrial scale faster and contribute to making cultured meat safe and affordable.

In March, Meatly announced producing the world’s first cultured pet food. It aims to sell its products in Britain this year, becoming the first company to sell cultured meat in Europe.

To date, Meatly has raised £3.6m, significantly less capital than other cultured meat companiesprove there is a fast and cost-effective way to scale up cultured meat.

Commenting on the news, Helder Cruz, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Meatly, said:

“Our protein-free culture medium represents a crucial milestone for us and the wider meat industry. By establishing this new benchmark, we significantly reduce production costs is something the sector is struggling with with for years. It’s a huge step forward in scaling our technology and making our products available to pet owners on a commercial scale and at an affordable price.”

Jim Mellon, founder of Agronomics, an investor in Meatly, added:

“Meatly’s creation of the first-ever protein-free medium makes the company a true technology leader within his field.

The media bear the majority of the costs the production of cultured meat And Meatly has single-handedly reduced those costs a hundredfold or more.

This is a huge step forward in bringing the cost of cultured meat to the same level as conventional meat and, ultimately, towards the mass adoption of cultured products.”

“The company expects to receive regulatory approval soon, and I am pleased to be able to feed their delicious products to my dogs.”

Looking ahead, Meatly is gearing up to bring its product to market in the coming months, backed by investors like Pets at Home and Agronomics.

Cell culture meat company was founded in November last year Bene Meat Technologies (BMT) became the first company to be certified by the European Union in the European Feed Materials Register for laboratory-cultured meat for use in pet food.

This gives the company the green light to further develop its product, scale up production and make the product available to shoppers.

However, cell-cultured meat faces increasing challenges at scale.

In the US, Florida has banned cell-cultured meat for human consumption, while Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee are all considering banning cell-cultured meat at the state level.

Despite significant gains in The NetherlandsItaly has issued a national ban on cell-cultured meat. Meanwhile, several other European countries are actively working to limit or limit its development and sale at the EU level.

It is foreseeable that more than one of Meatly’s contemporaries will choose to switch to pet food.