Continuous manufacturing process for cultivated meat could reduce costs: Study

Professor Yaakov Nahmias, founder of Believer Meats, and a multidisciplinary team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem introduce a new continuous manufacturing process for cultivated meat.

The study, Continuous Manufacturing of Cultivated Meat: Empirical Economic Analysis, published in Nature Food, outlines a method that uses tangential flow filtration (TFF) to enable continuous production of cultivated meat.

The study describes a bioreactor system that allows biomass to expand to 130 billion cells per litre and achieve yields of 43 per cent weight per volume. The process can run continuously over 20 days, permitting daily harvests of the biomass.

“We were inspired by how Ford’s automated assembly line revolutionized the car industry 110 years ago,” said Nahmias. “Our findings show that continuous manufacturing enables cultivated meat production at a fraction of current costs, without resorting to genetic modification or mega-factories. This technology brings us closer to making cultivated meat a viable and sustainable alternative to traditional animal farming.”

The techno-economic analysis in the study indicates that, for a 50,000-L production facility, the cost of cultivated chicken could be reduced to US$6.20/lb.

Dr. Elliot Swartz, principal scientist at cultivated meat, the Good Food Institute, said, “This study provides numerous data points that demonstrate the economic feasibility of cultivated meat. The study confirms early theoretical calculations that serum-free media can be produced at costs well below $1/L without forfeiting productivity, which is a key factor for cultivated meat achieving cost-competitiveness.”

“Empirical data is the bedrock for any cost model of scaled cultivated meat production, and this study is the first to provide real-world empirical evidence for key factors that influence the cost of production, such as media cost, metabolic efficiency, and achievable yields in a scalable bioprocess design,” Swartz added.

While the authors acknowledged that various other factors would affect the final market price of cultivated meat, this research underscores the potential of continuous manufacturing to lower production costs.