Insiders Reveal Main Issues at Lab-Grown-Meat Startup Upside Meals

In an interview with AgFunderNews revealed in June, Upside chief working officer Amy Chen confirmed that its whole-cut rooster product was nonetheless being made in 2-liter roller bottles. Upside’s web site—which includes a page devoted to explaining the manufacturing of its rooster—makes no point out of curler bottles.

“We’re already producing complete cuts, complete tissue merchandise. Moderately than producing cells in a suspension or in a slurry, we’re producing complete tissues instantly out of the cultivator,” former senior vp of operations Steve Myrick informed Meat+Poultry magazine in April 2021. When Upside opened its pilot manufacturing facility in Emeryville in November 2021, CEO Uma Valeti additionally touted its skill to make all types of meat. “Right here, you’ll be able to produce any type of meat, poultry, or seafood that you can think of. Together with each floor and complete cuts of meat,” he stated on the opening ceremony, in a video livestreamed from the ability.

However former and present staff say that these claims exaggerate Upside’s technical capabilities. Internally, staff would joke that the startup might be the subsequent Theranos—the blood testing startup that imploded spectacularly, ending with its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, being convicted of fraud. “It was a working joke: ‘Are we the subsequent Theranos?’” says one former worker. “I don’t suppose it essentially signifies that they’re the subsequent Theranos,” the previous worker provides. “Nobody is dying. Persons are being lied to, however nobody goes to die. Ideally.” One other former worker confirmed that staffers on the firm would make jokes evaluating Upside to Theranos.

Now, Upside appears to be placing its whole-cut fillets on the again burner. On September 14, Upside introduced plans to construct a 187,000-square-foot facility in Glenview, Illinois, that can initially be dedicated to creating nugget-like ground-chicken merchandise—a course of for which Upside has but to obtain a inexperienced gentle from regulators. Saying the brand new facility, Upside stated that, as soon as full, it will not produce the “whole-textured” rooster it’s been serving, although the corporate goals to take action “sooner or later.”

The general public tasting at Bar Crenn was purported to sign that the period of lab-grown meat had lastly arrived. As an alternative, sources declare, Upside has struggled with technical setbacks, whereas projecting a picture of getting solved the important thing scientific problem of scaling up the manufacturing of complete cuts of meat. The revelations elevate questions on precisely how a lot cultured meat corporations, after practically $3 billion in funding over the previous seven years, have achieved—and whether or not sure sorts of cultivated meat merchandise can ever be commercially viable.

Meaty Claims

For a nascent business, the cultured-meat startup scene is crowded. Each firm has its personal spin on the expertise—a strategy to set itself other than opponents. Some are opting to duplicate high-end merchandise like sushi-grade salmon. Others are going extra unique, with unusual riffs on mammoth meat. California-based SciFi Meals is leaning into the weirdness of it all, experimenting with beef burgers which have as little as 5 % animal cells blended with plant-based components.

Upside’s skill to supply complete cuts of meat is a degree of distinction from its opponents—an obvious technological head begin that has given Upside an edge with regards to elevating funds. The startup has raised greater than $600 million in funding since 2016—attracting greater than a fifth of all of the capital raised by cultured meat corporations as much as the top of 2022, in keeping with knowledge from PitchBook and the Good Food Institute. Its checklist of buyers contains SoftBank, Cargill, Richard Branson, and the Abu Dhabi Development Fund.

There are, roughly talking, two methods of turning animal cells right into a cultivated meat product. The best and least expensive is to develop cells in suspension, which suggests mixing free-floating cells in a bioreactor with liquid feed and ready till these cells have divided and matured. These suspension cells can then be harvested as a meat slurry and processed into ground-meat merchandise like scorching canines and rooster nuggets. Including plant-based components and processing the ensuing combination may also help mimic the feel of whole-cut meats, however to actually nail that mouthfeel, corporations will most likely must transcend suspension cells, says David Kaplan, head of the mobile agriculture lab at Tufts College in Boston.

The opposite possibility is to discover a strategy to make cells knit collectively and type sheets of tissue as they develop. Stacking and urgent these sheets collectively can lead to a texture that’s nearer to a rooster breast than a rooster nugget.