Experts and scientists have repeatedly raised alarms about the detrimental effects of traditional farming and unsustainable animal rearing practices on the environment, further worsening global warming conditions.
While switching to sustainable practices in the agricultural sector may resolve some environmental concerns, it is estimated that demand for food will increase by at least 59% by 2050 as the global population expands. The growing demand for food will be impossible to meet using current agricultural practices, putting more pressure on the food supply chain.
CULT Food Science Corp, a first-of-its-kind publicly-traded strategic investment and research/IP aggregation platform in North America, is on a mission to advance the future of food by funding start-ups and early-stage companies working with cell-based foods, cultivated meat, and cultured dairy.
With a broad portfolio of 14 companies, CULT is funding companies across four continents that are developing cell-based products including pork, chicken, beef, milk, cheese, honey, and chocolate.
Cell-based food is about harnessing the power of cells through biotechnology for creating everything from meat to other things like leather in ways that were never possible before.
A relatively new concept, scientists are employing a combination of biotechnology, molecular biology, and tissue engineering to produce lab-based food products that taste exactly like the ones grown or reared on a farm. This technology has the large-scale potential to address ethical, environmental, and public health issues associated with traditional ways to obtain food.
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“At a basic level, it is the art and science of creating food and materials through cells without the animal,” Lejjy Gafour, president of CULT, told Proactive. “This can broadly be both animal cells and plant cells.”
“We see that consumers are aware of the effects of how we produce food, and not just from a sustainability perspective, but even situations like the global pandemic,” Gafour said, explaining that the coronavirus pandemic posed threats to food security and became a unique instance for many people who witnessed empty shelves in grocery stores for the first time in their lives.
Besides, investors are more focused on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) perspectives of a company, and understanding that biotechnology could alleviate the economy in more ways than just financial returns, Gafour noted.
The emerging cell-based meat is expected to become a $25 billion market by 2030, estimates McKinsey & Company. The meat market is worth $2 trillion, and cell-based meat could become a prominent part of that with potential for growth.
Food for the future
“Many people are not familiar with this space but it's not a futuristic concept anymore, either,” Gafour said.
A Singapore-based restaurant was the first to make its historic debut in the lab-grown meat, serving cultured chicken to its customers in December 2020 harnessed from animal cells, without cruelty against animals.
North American companies have also started working towards this paradigm shift, and detaching meat or poultry from the animal.
CULT stands at a unique position in the space, with its portfolio companies as well as its world-class scientific advisory team working to create intellectual property. Its wholly-owned research and IP aggregation platform, CELL X is continuously identifying and applying for patents in the cellular agriculture space.
Gafour told Proactive that new researchers who are interested in getting involved in the industry, and are not sure where to start can directly seek the company.
On the portfolio front, Gafour said that the criteria of adding portfolio companies to CULT is pretty straightforward – the team is focused on the potential of IPs (intellectual property) and innovations.
“Is it strong? Is it unique? Is it showing a genuine technical gap when it comes to the infrastructure side of the production? .... Perhaps they created a new cell line for a type of meat that hasn't actually been addressed globally yet, and how will it impact the future?”
Gafour explained that a combination of “great vision” and “great technical execution” is key to scaling a new invention in the market.
Fiction Foods, one of CULT’s portfolio companies, is set to release a product called ‘performance scramble’, reinventing the way nutrient-dense protein is produced.
“Fiction’s goal is to lessen harm to the environment, with the extra layer of enhancing the nutrition that you would normally see in an egg in an easy-to-use liquid format,” noted Gafour. The product is anticipated to hit the market by the end of 2022.
Following trends and overcoming misconceptions
One of the interesting trends, Gafour noted, “is definitely the data aspect that has started to pop up.”
As companies have started to scale up and expand, more data is emerging, hence common patterns have begun to emerge in the cell-based food space.
The dataset trends are hinting towards changes in the regulatory framework across different countries. Gafour predicted that there will be multiple announcements by different regions to accelerate the space, and in the meantime, companies will be submitting their regulatory approvals soon as well.
“Since the industry is so new, we see countries looking at cell-based foods very differently than other novel food technologies, because there's a lot of power when it comes to the ability to produce food while using less land and having a lower environmental impact,” said Gafour.
The US Food and Drug Administration is making steady progress on approving cell-cultured poultry and meat in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.
Another interesting trend is that the companies popping up are more culturally aligned or uniquely product-specific.
“As opposed to being more general, we’re seeing companies that are making enhanced or different food types to increase the nutrition values that you would normally see in your standard agricultural food types,” Gafaur noted, mentioning ‘performance scramble’ as an example.
Talking about general misconceptions, Gafour said that at times when people hear the term ‘lab-grown meat’, it gives an impression that it is a slimy substance made in a test tube.
“It's interesting because it is very abstract to think that these cell-based products are not an imitation of the normal, traditional product,” he said. “But it is actually the exact same thing as a standard product.”
What comes next
In 2022, CULT will be focused on expanding its own IP development.
“We have initiatives such as the CULT prize aimed at supporting super early ideas that we see really high potential impact in and we're actively receiving applications for that right now,” Gafour said, noting that the company will be announcing semi-finalists throughout the rest of the year.
“As we move forward, you will see CULT making investments and developing IP in each of the product verticals that show up in the space, whether that's meat, seafood, dairy, chocolate, honey, scaffolding, or cell lines,” Gafour said. “We're not just a passive investor.”
Contact Ritika at ritika@proactiveinvestors.com