Break­through for Cul­tiv­ated Premi­um Beef Steaks

A new real meat exper­i­ence, without sac­ri­fice: Swiss start-up Mirai Foods achieves tech­no­lo­gic­al break­through for the cul­tiv­a­tion of thick tender steaks. The com­pany has developed what it calls a ​“Fibra­tion Tech­no­logy” that allows for effi­cient cul­tiv­a­tion of tis­sue that mim­ics con­ven­tion­al meat. Mirai Foods exclus­ively uses nat­ur­al cells, in a com­pletely GMO-free process.

This mile­stone under­scores Mirai Foods’ track record of suc­cess. ​“Oth­er types of meat can already be pro­duced in the lab,” says Chris­toph Mayr, CEO and co-founder of Mirai Foods. ​“A fil­let steak is the ulti­mate chal­lenge: it con­sists of dif­fer­ent cell types, which — if com­bined cor­rectly — res­ult in a com­plex meat struc­ture. This struc­tur­ing pro­cess is tech­no­lo­gic­ally chal­len­ging, mak­ing steaks extremely dif­fi­cult to pro­duce. That’s why Mirai Foods is tak­ing an import­ant step towards sus­tain­able meat with the first cul­tiv­ated beef ten­der­loin steak.”

The share­hold­er struc­ture also reflects the com­pany’s growth: along with sev­er­al oth­er investors, Zürich based food and meat pro­du­cer Angst AG, which sees Mirai as a future sup­pli­er for its diverse range of meat products, has now joined the com­pany. In a seed round, inter­na­tion­al investors have already inves­ted more than USD 5 mil­lion in Mirai Foods (includ­ing FRIBA Invest­ment, Skyviews Life Sci­ence, Ulf Claesson, PINC, Team Global).

Biore­act­or and Fibra­tion Tech­no­logy make cen­ti­meter thick steaks possible

The first cul­tiv­ated tender steak comes from Mirai Foods’ in-house developed biore­act­or, ​“The Rock­et”; it embod­ies the Fibra­tion Tech­no­logy for which Mirai Foods has filed three pat­ents. Long, fully mature muscle fibers are cul­tiv­ated, which are then com­bined by enzymes and sup­ple­men­ted with cul­tiv­ated fat tis­sue. After five days in the biore­act­or, a ten­der­loin center­piece is com­plete, from which steaks of almost any thick­ness can be cut.

While com­pet­it­ors can only pro­duce minced meat or very thin slices, Mirai Foods suc­ceeds in nat­ur­ally recre­at­ing real steaks with a thick­ness of one and a half cen­ti­meters and more. The ​“Fibra­tion Tech­no­logy” developed for this pur­pose not only enables bet­ter nutri­tion and taste, but also cre­ates sig­ni­fic­ant cost advant­ages in production.

“We have filed three inter­na­tion­al pat­ents for this key tech­no­logy,” says Suman Das, CSO and co-founder of Mirai Foods. ​“We can deliv­er a real altern­at­ive to con­ven­tion­al meat: Using our tech­no­logy, one can pre­pare and eat a real steak — and know that no anim­al had to die for it and the cli­mate is not harmed. Nutri­tion is a huge lever for great­er cli­mate pro­tec­tion and anim­al wel­fare: demand for meat is expec­ted to double by 2050; con­ven­tion­al meth­ods of meat pro­duc­tion can­not meet this demand at all, and cer­tainly not in a sus­tain­able way.”

Mirai Foods is one of only a few com­pan­ies in the world work­ing to offer nat­ur­al meat pro­duced in cul­tiv­at­ors by mul­tiply­ing muscle and fat cells without the use of genet­ic engin­eer­ing. As a res­ult, product devel­op­ment is geared toward the pref­er­ences of European con­sumers — while main­tain­ing the highest stand­ards of taste, qual­ity and health. In the long term, the com­pany aims to offer a wide range of meat vari­et­ies. For now, how­ever, the start-up is focus­ing on premi­um beef, which has the largest envir­on­ment­al foot­print of all meats.