In an interview with AgFunderNews revealed in June, Upside leader running officer Amy Chen showed that its whole-cut white meat product used to be nonetheless being made in 2-liter curler bottles. Upside’s site—which incorporates a web page devoted to explaining the manufacturing of its white meat—makes no point out of curler bottles.
“We’re already generating complete cuts, complete tissue merchandise. Somewhat than generating cells in a suspension or in a slurry, we’re generating complete tissues immediately out of the cultivator,” former senior vice chairman of operations Steve Myrick instructed Meat+Poultry mag in April 2021. When Upside opened its pilot manufacturing unit in Emeryville in November 2021, CEO Uma Valeti additionally touted its skill to make all varieties of meat. “Right here, you’ll be able to produce any more or less meat, poultry, or seafood that you can think of. Together with each floor and entire cuts of meat,” he stated on the opening rite, in a video livestreamed from the ability.
However former and present staff say that those claims exaggerate Upside’s technical functions. Internally, staff would comic story that the startup might be the following Theranos—the blood checking out startup that imploded spectacularly, finishing with its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, being convicted of fraud. “It used to be a operating comic story: ‘Are we the following Theranos?’” says one former worker. “I don’t assume it essentially implies that they’re the following Theranos,” the previous worker provides. “Nobody is demise. Individuals are being lied to, however nobody goes to die. Preferably.” Any other former worker showed that staffers on the corporate would make jokes evaluating Upside to Theranos.
Now, Upside appears to be hanging its whole-cut fillets at the again burner. On September 14, Upside introduced plans to construct a 187,000-square-foot facility in Glenview, Illinois, that can to begin with be faithful to making nugget-like ground-chicken merchandise—a procedure for which Upside has but to obtain a inexperienced gentle from regulators. Pronouncing the brand new facility, Upside stated that, as soon as whole, it might no longer produce the “whole-textured” white meat it’s been serving, despite the fact that the corporate goals to take action “someday.”
The general public tasting at Bar Crenn used to be intended to sign that the generation of lab-grown meat had in spite of everything arrived. As an alternative, resources declare, Upside has struggled with technical setbacks, whilst projecting a picture of getting solved the important thing clinical problem of scaling up the manufacturing of complete cuts of meat. The revelations lift questions on precisely how a lot cultured meat corporations, after just about $3 billion in funding over the last seven years, have completed—and whether or not positive kinds of cultivated meat merchandise can ever be commercially viable.
Meaty Claims
For a nascent business, the cultured-meat startup scene is crowded. Each corporate has its personal spin at the generation—a approach to set itself except competition. Some are opting to duplicate high-end merchandise like sushi-grade salmon. Others are going extra unique, with extraordinary riffs on mammoth meat. California-based SciFi Meals is leaning into the weirdness of all of it, experimenting with pork burgers that experience as low as 5 p.c animal cells combined with plant-based elements.
Upside’s skill to supply complete cuts of meat is some degree of difference from its competition—an obvious technological head get started that has given Upside an edge on the subject of elevating budget. The startup has raised greater than $600 million in investment since 2016—attracting greater than a 5th of all of the capital raised via cultured meat corporations as much as the top of 2022, in step with knowledge from PitchBook and the Just right Meals Institute. Its listing of traders contains SoftBank, Cargill, Richard Branson, and the Abu Dhabi Expansion Fund.
{Photograph}: Christie Hemm Klok
There are, more or less talking, two tactics of turning animal cells right into a cultivated meat product. The perfect and least expensive is to develop cells in suspension, this means that blending free-floating cells in a bioreactor with liquid feed and ready till the ones cells have divided and matured. Those suspension cells can then be harvested as a meat slurry and processed into ground-meat merchandise like sizzling canine and white meat nuggets. Including plant-based elements and processing the ensuing combination can lend a hand mimic the feel of whole-cut meats, however to in point of fact nail that mouthfeel, corporations will most probably want to transcend suspension cells, says David Kaplan, head of the cell agriculture lab at Tufts College in Boston.
The opposite possibility is to give you the option to make cells knit in combination and shape sheets of tissue as they develop. Stacking and urgent those sheets in combination may end up in a texture this is nearer to a white meat breast than a white meat nugget.
