Cultivated Meat Consortiums – Leveraging for Accelerated Growth
The cultivated meat industry aims to be able to feed ten billion people by 2050. Not only that, the industry promises a healthier earth by reducing animal farming's impact on the climate and preserving the ocean's ecosystem. It’s 2022, leaving less than three decades to achieve all of these.
If the lab-grown meat industry will be able to achieve its goals, it must be able to create procedures that boost scalability, drive global acceptance, and provide funding. One of such procedures that will prove effective would be the creation of cultivated meat consortiums.
A consortium is simply a coalition of companies to achieve a common objective. As with every business, creating or joining a consortium makes achieving goals easier as all participating organizations are able to pool resources together and share responsibilities. Also, like a syndicate, forming a single consortium for a string of companies can help solidify trust and improve consumer acceptance. In a consortium, businesses complement each other; share experiences and discoveries; leverage on each other’s unique selling points; and share risks.
Leveraging on cultivated meat consortiums would therefore go a long way to help the industry achieve its long-term goals and get established really fast. You would be surprised though that this is already happening. Although an industry featuring tens of new companies, these are also companies that are eager to grow, discover more, and compete favorably with the conventional meat industry.
In the space of three years, these consortiums have been created and are now beginning to make a name for themselves in the industry:
Israel’s Cultivated Meat Consortium
Earlier this year, an Israeli-cultivated meat consortium was reinforced to kick start with an $18 million government grant. Consisting of 14 companies and 10 academic and research institutions, the consortium is the largest of its kind we have yet globally. Members of the consortium include leading alternative protein startups such as Aleph Farms, Super Meat, and BioBetter; while some of the academic and research institutions in the consortium are Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Agricultural Research Organization, and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
It is no surprise that a consortium of such magnitude has found its feet in Israel. Israel has always been the happening hub for the alternative protein market. In a report by the Good Food Institute, Israel’s alternative protein sector grew by 450% in 2021 alone while the country's investment into cultivated meat amounted to 36% of global total investments. In another report by GFI, Israel has recorded 11 new alternative protein startups over the past year.
Israel has the startups, it has the research centers, and it has the consumers. Little wonder it also has the consortium.
According to the Israel Innovation Authority which authorized the funding, “The establishment of the Israeli cultivated meat consortium is a fundamental milestone toward fulfilling this optimistic forecast (that the cultivated meat industry would achieve a market value of $25 billion by 2030), and Israel is paving the way…”
Cultivated Meat Consortium at the University of California, Davis
UC Davis Cultivated Meat Consortium (CMC) has a mission to build on the strength of campuses in the research aspects of agriculture, food science, biotechnology, and bioprocessing. The consortium relies heavily on research and student internships for building strong alumni who will then become workers in cultivated meat industries and will serve as teachers for the generations of students behind them.
Part of the consortium’s core activities includes “tackling pre-competitive and commercial challenges in the scholarly area” of cultivated meat; partnering with public and private organizations in the industry; and awarding the consortium’s faculty participants for incredible research feats.
Speaking of research, CMC has been focusing on research aspects like “establishing a process for growing and differentiating cells lines in inexpensive medium” and “developing an efficient strategy for stem cell amplification and differentiation to muscle, fat, and connective tissue that maintains cell line stability and supports scalability.”
The Cultivated Meat Modeling Consortium
The Cultivated Meat Modeling Consortium has one belief – that computers can be able to get cultivated meat to the table sooner than expected. The consortium, therefore, aims to "source and connect vision, funding, and expertise for large-scale impact."
With its sole focus on computation modeling, this consortium works to create modeling technologies that would accelerate production in the industry, thereby enabling it to mature into a well-established industry way faster than what has been projected.
Whilst developing projects that provide immediate value and beat costs, the consortium also works to support its participating members by providing excellent leadership, ensuring confidentiality, and maintaining the trust of all member companies.
Conclusion
Although there is still a long way to go, the cultivated meat industry has come far enough to boast of significant progress. And it’s even more amazing because the industry has been able to achieve most of its progress within the space of five years. With the rise of consortiums with solid goals and objectives, we believe that the lab-grown meat industry is even set for faster growth in the coming years, and that it is not just going to beat the records, but that it will indeed become a sustainable and eco-friendly option for bringing meat to the table of consumers across the world.
