Upside Foods

Last updated

Upside Foods
FormerlyMemphis Meats
Company type Privately held company
Industry Food technology
Founded2015
Founders
  • Uma Valeti
  • Nicholas Genovese
  • Will Clem
Headquarters
Berkeley, California, US
Website upsidefoods.com

Upside Foods (formerly known as Memphis Meats) is a food technology company headquartered in Berkeley, California, aiming to grow sustainable cultured meat. [1] The company was founded in 2015 by Uma Valeti (CEO), Nicholas Genovese (CSO), and Will Clem. [2] [3] Valeti was a cardiologist and a professor at the University of Minnesota. [1]

Contents

The company plans to produce various meat products using biotechnology to induce stem cells to differentiate into muscle tissue, and to manufacture the meat products in bioreactors. [1]

History

In February 2016, Memphis Meats published a video of a cultured meatball and in March 2017, they published a video of cultured chicken and duck dishes. [4] [5] [6] [7] In February 2017, the company indicated its goal was to produce at 60 euros per kilogram and enter the market by 2020. [8]

In August 2017, Memphis Meats announced that it had raised a $17 million Series A funding round. The round was led by DFJ and also included investment from Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Suzy and Jack Welch, Cargill, Kimbal Musk, and Atomico. [9]

Initially, the production cost of the cultured beef was $18,000 per pound ($40,000/kg), and the production cost of the cultured poultry was $9,000 per pound ($20,000/kg). [5] [10] [11] As of June 2017, the company had reduced the cost of production to below $2,400 per pound ($5,280/kg). [12] The company said that it anticipated cost reductions and commercial release of its products by 2021. [5] [7] [6]

In January 2020, Memphis Meats raised a $161 million Series B. The round was led by SoftBank Group, Norwest, and Temasek. Also joining the round are new and existing investors including Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Threshold Ventures, Cargill, Tyson Foods, Finistere, Future Ventures, Kimbal Musk, Fifty Years, and CPT Capital. [13]

In May 2021, the company announced that it was changing its name to Upside Foods. [14] In September 2021, co-founder and chief science officer Genovese, as well as process development vice president KC Carswell, left the company. [15] [16]

On November 4, 2021, Upside Foods opened its first large-scale production plant, called the "Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center" (EPIC), in Emeryville, California. It covers 16,154 square meters (53,000 square feet), with renewably-powered vats and tubes, in order to produce 22,680 kilograms (50,000 pounds) of cultured meat annually, to be sold commercially. [17] [18]

On November 17, 2022, the FDA completed a pre-market consultation process for the company to sell its cultivated chicken to the public. [19] This makes Upside Foods the first company to complete this pre-market consultation. [20] The FDA made it clear in its announcement, however, that this was not considered an approval process. [21]

On April 24, 2023, Upside Foods announced a range of new products made of chicken cells, plant protein, and seasoning ingredients. Additionally, the company developed a cell line that grows in a culture medium without platelet-derived growth factors, costing between $20,000 and $30,000 per gram. [22] In May, the company's COO said that its first commercial plants would likely open later in 2023. [23] In June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave Upside Foods regulatory approval for the label on its lab-grown chicken, making it the second company to receive approval in the United States. [24] In September 2023, Upside Foods shared plans to build a facility in Glenview, Illinois. [25] The 187,000 square-foot facility will be used to create nugget-like chicken products, which have yet to receive a green light from regulators. [25] [26]

On September 15, 2023, a report by Wired magazine revealed major issues with the company's bioreactor technology. According to the report, Upside Foods has been primarily relying on less efficient roller bottles, which require more work for a much smaller output and are incapable of cultivating full cuts of meat. [27]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meat alternative</span> Plant-based food made to resemble meat

A meat alternative or meat substitute, is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten as a replacement for meat. Meat alternatives typically approximate qualities of specific types of meat, such as mouthfeel, flavor, appearance, or chemical characteristics. Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy, but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn. Alternative protein foods can also be made by precision fermentation, where single cell organisms such as yeast produce specific proteins using a carbon source; as well as cultivated or laboratory grown, based on tissue engineering techniques. The ingredients of meat alternative include 50–80% water, 10–25% textured vegetable proteins, 4–20% non-textured proteins, 0–15% fat and oil, 3-10% flavors/spices, 1-5% binding agents and 0-0.5% coloring agents. 

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cultured meat</span> Animal flesh produced by culturing animal cells

Cultured meat, also known as cultivated meat among other names, is a form of cellular agriculture where meat is produced by culturing animal cells in vitro. Cultured meat is produced using tissue engineering techniques pioneered in regenerative medicine. Jason Matheny popularized the concept in the early 2000s after he co-authored a paper on cultured meat production and created New Harvest, the world's first non-profit organization dedicated to in-vitro meat research. Cultured meat has the potential to mitigate the environmental impact of meat production and address issues regarding animal welfare, food security and human health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cargill</span> American multinational food conglomerate

Cargill, Incorporated is an American multinational food corporation based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and incorporated in Wilmington, Delaware. Founded in 1865 by William Wallace Cargill, it is the largest privately held company in the United States in terms of revenue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tyson Foods</span> American food company

Tyson Foods, Inc. is an American multinational corporation based in Springdale, Arkansas that operates in the food industry. The company is the world's second-largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork after JBS S.A. It annually exports the largest percentage of beef out of the United States. Together with its subsidiaries, it operates major food brands, including Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Wright Brand, Aidells, and State Fair. Tyson Foods ranked No. 79 in the 2020 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.

New Harvest is a donor-funded research institute dedicated to the field of cellular agriculture, focusing on advances in scientific research efforts surrounding cultured animal products. Its research aims to resolve growing environmental and ethical concerns associated with industrial livestock production.

Eat Just, Inc. is a private company headquartered in San Francisco, California, US. It develops and markets plant-based alternatives to conventionally produced egg products, as well as cultivated meat products. Eat Just was founded in 2011 by Josh Tetrick and Josh Balk. It raised about $120 million in early venture capital and became a unicorn in 2016 by surpassing a $1 billion valuation. It has been involved in several highly publicized disputes with traditional egg industry interests. In December 2020, its cultivated chicken meat became the first cultured meat to receive regulatory approval in Singapore. Shortly thereafter, Eat Just's cultured meat was sold to diners at the Singapore restaurant 1880, making it the "world's first commercial sale of cell-cultured meat".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beyond Meat</span> Producer of plant-based meat substitutes

Beyond Meat, Inc. is a producer of plant-based meat substitutes founded in 2009 by Ethan Brown. The company's initial products were launched in the United States in 2012. The company went public in 2019, becoming the first plant-based meat analogue company to go public.

This page is a timeline of major events in the history of cellular agriculture. Cellular agriculture refers to the development of agricultural products - especially animal products - from cell cultures rather than the bodies of living organisms. This includes in vitro or cultured meat, as well as cultured dairy, eggs, leather, gelatin, and silk. In recent years a number of cellular animal agriculture companies and non-profits have emerged due to technological advances and increasing concern over the animal welfare and rights, environmental, and public health problems associated with conventional animal agriculture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Good Food Institute</span> Nonprofit promoting animal product alternatives

The Good Food Institute (GFI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes plant- and cell-based alternatives to animal products, particularly meat, dairy, and eggs. It was created in 2016 by the nonprofit organization Mercy For Animals with Bruce Friedrich as the chief executive officer. GFI has more than 150 staff across six affiliates in the United States, India, Israel, Brazil, Asia Pacific, and Europe. GFI was one of Animal Charity Evaluators' four "top charities" of 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SuperMeat</span> Israeli startup company

SuperMeat is an Israeli startup company working to develop a "meal-ready" chicken cultured meat product created through the use of cell culture.

Cellular agriculture focuses on the production of agricultural products from cell cultures using a combination of biotechnology, tissue engineering, molecular biology, and synthetic biology to create and design new methods of producing proteins, fats, and tissues that would otherwise come from traditional agriculture. Most of the industry is focused on animal products such as meat, milk, and eggs, produced in cell culture rather than raising and slaughtering farmed livestock which is associated with substantial global problems of detrimental environmental impacts, animal welfare, food security and human health. Cellular agriculture is a field of the biobased economy. The most well known cellular agriculture concept is cultured meat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mosa Meat</span> Dutch food technology company

Mosa Meat is a Dutch food technology company, headquartered in Maastricht, Netherlands, creating production methods for cultured meat. It was founded in May 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Finless Foods</span> American food technology company

Finless Foods, or Finless for short, is an American biotechnology company aimed at cultured fish, particularly bluefin tuna.

Aleph Farms is a cellular agriculture company active in the food technology space. It was co-founded in 2017 by the Israeli food-tech incubator "The Kitchen Hub" of Strauss Group Ltd., and Prof. Shulamit Levenberg of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and is headquartered in Rehovot, Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BioTech Foods</span> Spanish food technology company

BioTech Foods is a Spanish biotechnology company dedicated to the development of cultured meat from the cultivation of muscle cells previously extracted from animals. It is a subsidiary of Brazilian company JBS S.A.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vow (company)</span> Australian startup company

Vow is an Australian company that grows cultured meat for commercial distribution, and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Believer Meats</span> Israeli food technology company

Believer Meats, from 2018 to 2022 known as Future Meat Technologies, or Future Meat for short, is a biotechnology firm which produces cultured meat from chicken cells and is working on cultured lamb kebabs and beef burgers. Based in Israel, its main office is located in Jerusalem, while its primary production facility is operating in Rehovot. Future Meat Technologies mainly seeks to supply hardware and cell lines to manufacturers of cultured meat rather than directly selling food products to consumers. In November 2022, Future Meat Technologies rebranded to Believer Meats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wildtype (company)</span> American food technology company

Wildtype is an American seafood company that produces cultivated seafood from fish cells. Its headquarters is located in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco, California and includes a former microbrewery that has been converted into Wildtype's first Fishery where their cultivated seafood is produced. Wildtype's first product is cultivated Pacific salmon that will offer several benefits when compared to conventionally-harvested fish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steakholder Foods</span> Israeli food technology company

Steakholder Foods is a company which develops 3D bioprinting technologies for usage in cellular agriculture. Based in Israel, it has a Belgian subsidiary called Peace of Meat, with which it produces cultured meat, with a focus on cultivating foie gras. It was originally founded in 2019 as MeaTech 3D Ltd., or MeaTech for short.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bene Meat Technologies</span> Czech company

Bene Meat Technologies a.s. (BMT) is a Czech biotechnology start-up focused on research and development of technology for the production of cultivated meat on an industrial scale. It cooperates with scientific institutions and companies in the Czech Republic and abroad. The company has its laboratories on the first floor of the Cube building in Vokovice, Prague.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Bunge, Jacob (February 2, 2016). "Sizzling Steaks May Soon Be Lab-Grown". The Wall Street Journal.
  2. ↑ "Upside Foods develops animal-free growth medium for cell-based meat". Food Dive. Retrieved January 10, 2022.
  3. ↑ "Why did Upside Foods fire its co-founder just weeks after his team's scientific triumph?". The Counter. December 13, 2021. Retrieved January 10, 2022.
  4. ↑ Gelman, Susan (February 29, 2016). "Meat Without Misery". The Common Reader. Online.
  5. 1 2 3 Bunge, Jacob (March 15, 2017). "Startup Serves Up Chicken Produced From Cells in Lab". The Wall Street Journal.
  6. 1 2 Farber, Madeline (March 15, 2017). "A San Francisco Startup Is Serving Chicken That Was Made in a Lab". Fortune.
  7. 1 2 Kooser, Amanda (March 16, 2017). "This lab-grown chicken and duck meat looks surprisingly delicious". CNET.
  8. ↑ Leonie Hosselet (February 6, 2017). "Van het lab naar een bord is een lange weg voor kweekvlees". Trouw (in Dutch). Retrieved May 26, 2020.
  9. ↑ Sawers, Paul (August 23, 2017). "Lab-grown food startup Memphis Meats raises $17 million from DFJ, Cargill, Bill Gates, others". VentureBeat.
  10. ↑ "'World's first' lab-grown meatball revealed". Fox News. February 3, 2016.
  11. ↑ Addady, Michal (February 2, 2016). "You Could Be Eating Lab-Grown Meat in Just Five Years". Fortune.
  12. ↑ Bunge, Jacob (August 23, 2017). "Cargill Invests in Startup That Grows 'Clean Meat' From Cells". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved November 2, 2017.
  13. ↑ Rowland, Michael Pellman (January 22, 2020). "Memphis Meats Raises $161 Million In Funding, Aims To Bring Cell-Based Products To Consumers". Forbes.
  14. ↑ "Memphis Meats Changes Name, Plans to Roll Out Lab-Grown Chicken This Year". foodprocessing.com. May 12, 2021. Retrieved May 15, 2021.
  15. ↑ Reynolds, Matt. "Upside Foods Sues an Ex-Employee Over Secret Lab-Grown Meat Tech". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved January 10, 2022.
  16. ↑ Alex Bitter (October 28, 2021). "A Memphis Meats cofounder has left the lab-grown meat company, now called Upside Foods, as skepticism about the entire industry grows". Business Insider. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
  17. ↑ Katie Spalding (November 8, 2021). "World's Most Advanced Lab-Grown Meat Facility Opens in California". IFLScience. LabX Media Group . Retrieved December 5, 2021.
  18. ↑ Brian Kateman (November 30, 2021). "11 Plant-Based and Alternative Protein Trends to Watch for in 2022". Forbes. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
  19. ↑ "Meat the Future: FDA Greenlights First Lab-Grown Meat Company". Time. November 17, 2022. Retrieved November 18, 2022.
  20. ↑ Hall, Christine (November 16, 2022). "Upside's cell-cultured chicken is first to receive FDA blessing for its production method". TechCrunch. Retrieved November 18, 2022.
  21. ↑ "FDA Spurs Innovation for Human Food from Animal Cell Culture Technology". FDA. November 17, 2022. Retrieved November 21, 2022.
  22. ↑ Megan Poinski (April 24, 2023). "Upside Foods announces cultivated ground chicken as its second product". Food Dive. Retrieved April 24, 2023.
  23. ↑ Piñon, Natasha (May 19, 2023). "This company could take lab-grown meat mainstream thanks to a green light from the FDA". CNBC. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  24. ↑ Douglas, Leah (June 14, 2023). "Upside Foods secures USDA approval for its cultivated meat". Reuters. Retrieved December 14, 2023.
  25. 1 2 Reynolds, Matt. "Insiders Reveal Major Problems at Lab-Grown-Meat Startup Upside Foods". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved December 15, 2023.
  26. ↑ "The Biggest Problem With Lab-Grown Chicken Is Growing the Chicken". Bloomberg.com. December 14, 2023. Retrieved December 15, 2023.
  27. ↑ Reynolds, Matt. "Insiders Reveal Major Problems at Lab-Grown-Meat Startup Upside Foods". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved January 9, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.