Aleph Farms, the Israel-based leader in growing steak directly from non-GMO animal cells, launches its ‘Aleph Zero’ program focused on cultivating meat for space exploration, enabling “human life to become multiplanetary and unconditional nutrition to be available to all” and building resilience for food security on Earth and beyond.
The core mission of the new initiative is on the local production of fresh and quality meat proteins independent of factors such as climate change and of availability of local natural resources, and to produce meat in harsh and remote environments, including space.
To achieve this goal, Aleph Farms is securing strategic partnerships with technology companies and space agencies to leverage its knowledge in cell biology, tissue engineering, and food science to establish BioFarms™ in extraterrestrial environments, and eventually apply the lessons learned in space to what it terms as “earthbound sites”.
This program follows the success of the company’s first experiment of producing meat on the International Space Station a year ago, in collaboration with 3D Bioprinting Solutions. This proof-of-concept marked a historic milestone in sustainable food production, resulting in new capacities to cultivate real meat directly from various types of cow cells, under micro-gravity and far from any natural resources.
“‘Aleph Zero’ represents the mathematical symbol of the smallest infinite number, and how Aleph Farms brings space infinity closer by supporting deep-space exploration and colonization of new planets. The term also represents the company’s vision for producing meat with near-zero natural resources,” explains Didier Toubia, Co-Founder and CEO of Aleph Farms.
“The constraints imposed by deep-space-exploration — the cold, thin environment and the circular approach — force us to tighten the efficiency of our meat production process to much higher sustainability standards,” notes Toubia.
“The program ‘Aleph Zero’ reflects our mission of producing quality, delicious meat locally where people live and consume it, even in the most remote places on Earth like the Sahara Desert or Antarctica, providing unconditional access to high-quality nutrition to anyone, anytime, anywhere,” adds Toubia. “When people will live on the Moon or Mars, Aleph Farms will be there as well.”
