Cell Based Tech Weekly – “Same Meat” Research, FUJIFILM Cell Media, Fifty Years Raises 50M for Second Fund

Categories Weekly Report
source:giphy

Research

Researchers at the University of Bath and Portland State University published findings about consumer acceptance of cell cultured meat.

The study had 480 participants:

  • Almost two thirds of participants reported they would be willing to try cultured meat, and almost half would be willing to buy it regularly and eat it instead of conventional meat. 

Findings: While more than half of consumers surveyed said they would try cultured meat, researchers found that the majority of the consumers who would not try cultured meat were in the subject group where the meat was presented with “high tech framing” as opposed to being framed as having “societal benefits” or being “same meat” (clean meat tastes like conventional meat). “Same meat” framing was conducive to the highest rates of willingness to try. http://cellbased.link/z5d

Publicity

Israel based cellular agriculture company, Future Meat Technologies was one of the companies featured at the UK Israel Business (UKIB) Innovate ’19 conference last Wednesday. http://cellbased.link/qjl

  • Founder of Future Meat Technologies, Professor Yaakov Nahmias, pointed at the massive market of carnivores in India and China that plant based meat is not serving.
  • Future Meat still has a long way to go on price reduction and is aiming to get the cost to $20 per kilogram (they did not say by when), which is about ten times as much as farming of real animals.

Advancements

🧫 FUJIFILM Irvine Scientific, subsidiary of FUJIFILM Holdings (FUJIY OTCMKTS), announced plans to open up a third manufacturing facility in Tilburg, Netherlands (they currently have one in the United States and one in Japan) for manufacturing of animal component-free, dry powder media, liquid media, and downstream bio-processing liquids. http://cellbased.link/yn1

Why We Care: Cell culture media is a critical input for cellular agriculture and FUJIFILM CEO says the demand for this valuable resource is rapidly growing. The new facility will propel FUJIFILM past its current 1,000,000 Kg/year of dry powder production capacity.

Investments

Fifty Years, the San Francisco based venture-capital firm that invested in cell based companies Geltor and Memphis Meats, has raised $50 million for its second fund. The second fund will continue to focus on impact investing including more investments in the biotech and sustainable food space. http://cellbased.link/eoh

Events

New Harvest 2019 Conference, July 19 + 20 at the MIT Media Labs in Cambridge Massachusetts.

Hosted by New Harvest: A non-profit research institute building the field of cellular agriculture. This event brings together scientists, researchers, students, investors, startups and other players to discuss the state of the science and technology, how to scale, regulatory conversations and how to bring these products to market. Use our $200 CBT discount link when you register.

Speakers attending include:
Jun Axup, Scientific Director & Partner, IndieBio
Justin Kolbeck, CEO, Wild Type
Brian P. Sylvester, Special Counsel, Foley & Lardner LLP
Lisa Feria, CEO, Stray Dog Capital
Ryan Pandya, CEO, Perfect Day Foods
Ka Yi Ling, CSO, Shiok Meats
Natalie Rubio, Research Fellow, Tufts University

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