Zero to One: Beef in Suspension

It is human nature to be resistant to change. In fact, if we look back over the last few centuries, some of the most monumental creations and inventions have also been met with skepticism. When coffee first gained popularity in the 1500s, it also developed a movement of people who tried to stop it, deeming it dangerous and devil-created. Even books, as they started to become popular after the development of mass printing, were feared to ‘addle the brain’ and worsen people’s memories.?

Alexander Graham Bell's telephone was also not an instant home run. One prospective buyer said to him, “What use…could this company make of an electrical toy?” A true visionary, Bell ignored the naysayers and a decade later, more than 150,000 Americans were proud owners of their own phones. And perhaps most prolific are the early reviews of the automobile. The New York Times itself actually avowed that the price of cars "will never be sufficiently low to make them as widely popular as were bicycles." Luckily they were wrong, and road tripping around America has become a national pastime.?

Cultivated meat has faced its fair share of critics over the last decade—even from those within the better food movement. Far and away, one of the biggest critiques it receives is the exorbitant price point attached to its production, with many questioning whether it will ever be an affordable option. The truth is that yes, there are indeed challenges involved in making cultivated meat a practical, scaled, and mainstream choice. This is important—while the majority of people want to make better decisions when it comes to food, there’s a limit to how much extra they are willing to pay (especially in times of economic uncertainty). But with climate change, increasing food insecurity, and pandemics from zoonotic diseases, frankly we must now find a better way forward.

This is why we at SCiFi Foods made the decision to tap into the incredible power of bioengineering, enabled by new tools like CRISPR, to solve these challenges and build a future that will last, one that we want to live in. And I’m excited to share today what we believe will be a massive turning point for the entire space: by using this unique technical approach, we’ve been successful at engineering beef cells that grow in single-cell suspension, the biggest zero to one in making cultivated meat affordable. This enables us to manufacture them in large bioreactors, unlocking a 1000x price reduction in at-scale production compared to normal beef cells. Yes, you read that correctly: a 1000x price reduction.

With this technological hurdle passed, we are running as quickly as possible to bring to market our first product: a blended burger, part plant-based meat and part cultivated beef—at a price and taste comparable to conventional beef. And because of this recent marked milestone, we're now aiming for production in just a couple of years instead of decades.?

Plant-based products have helped pave the way, showing that alternatives can stand in for conventional meat not just for vegans and vegetarians, but for anyone who wants to make a better choice. But for most meat eaters, the taste still simply isn't good enough to become repeat customers or make a lasting change—the changes needed to truly make a difference for the planet. Now, with the rise of cultivated meat, we’ll no longer have to choose amongst sacrifices for the planet, our taste buds, or our wallets.?

I’m excited to share one of our burgers with you soon, so you can experience it for yourself!

Joshua March

Co-Founder & CEO, SCiFi Foods