Dutch cell-cultured meat company Mosa Meat has successfully removed animal components from the differentiation media used to grow its cultured fat cells. It has also optimised the composition of the media.
Together with choosing the most affordable suppliers, these steps have allowed the company to reduce the cost of the media by 66 times.
The move brings Mosa Meat one step closer to launching affordable cultured beef burgers. The company eventually aims to achieve price parity with conventional meat.
In February, Mosa Meat closed a $10m Series B funding round, bringing the total amount of funding it has raised to a staggering $85m. Last July, it announced that it had also radically reduced the cost of its cell culture media.
The company recently held a blind tasting session to compare its cultivated fat to conventional animal fat. A previous tasting session found no difference between the two types of fat, and since then, Mosa Meat’s Fat Team has carried out further optimisation of the taste.
“It was thrilling to have the tasting, obviously because it brought back memories from earlier tastings but more so because of the result…the fat I tasted had an overwhelming animal signature,” said co-founder Peter Verstrate. “We’ve definitely checked yet another box on our journey towards a product that meets the expectations of critical meat lovers!”
