Mosa Meat, which claimed to have launched the world’s first slaughter-free beef burger in 2013, has raised €7.5m alongside Switzerland’s largest meat producer Bells Food Group and science and technology company M Ventures to bring lab-grown meats into the mainstream market by 2021.
The Dutch firm will use the funding to develop an “end-to-end” process for cultured meat production at a reduced cost. They added that the endpoint of the funding would allow the company to prepare for the construction of a pilot production plant for the introduction of a premium product by 2021.
Mosa Meat has become the first European cultured meat company to have received an investment and said it believed the partnership with M Ventures and Bells Food Group was a “perfect collaboration”.
“M Ventures brings strong experience in early stage financing of science-based companies like ours and has added tremendous value throughout the fundraising process, while Bells Food Group brings strong downstream capabilities in meat processing and distribution,” said Mosa Meat CEO Peter Verstrate.
All three businesses believed that the mainstream introduction of cultured meats would have a dramatic improvement on greenhouse emissions, which many meat bodies, such as Beef and Lamb New Zealand, are aiming to combat.
“Replacing traditional meat production with cultured meat would have a huge impact on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, it would free up a large amount of resources that are now used for meat production worldwide and will completely disrupt an old-established and currently unsustainable industry,” said Alexander Hoffmann, principal at M Ventures.
Meanwhile, as meat demand continues to grow each year, Bells Food Group CEO Lorenz Wyss said he believed that soaring interest would not be met by livestock agriculture alone.
“We believe this technology can become a true alternative for environment-conscious consumers, and we are delighted to bring our know-how and expertise of the meat business into this strategic partnership with Mosa Meat,” said Wyss.
Lab-grown meat was recently debated at the USA’s Food and Drug Administration meeting, which invited the public to submit comments related to the production of foods using animal cell culture technology.
Following the meeting, many issues were addressed, such as whether US government agencies would have jurisdiction over lab-grown meat products.