The American start-up “JUST” from San Francisco has been offering vegan products for some time. In addition to vegan cookie dough, the company is also working on cultivated meat (Clean Meat). This year, the company wants to launch Clean Meat in the form of chicken meat.
Clean Meat is usually made from animal cells, and some manufacturers use fetal bovine serum for this purpose. JUST has developed another technique to avoid this. Despite being of animal origin, Clean Meat is supported by a number of vegans as it can reduce the number of animals being slaughtered.
Suppliers are aware that regulatory problems could lead to delays in the availability of clean meat products. When asked how this could be resolved, JUST founder Josh Tetrick said the first step was to realize that there is a problem, then to realize that there are tools available. “We can look for tools in the plant kingdom, and tools in the animal kingdom. In the plant kingdom, we can search many different plants. In the animal kingdom, we can take a cell from an animal without killing it, and then feed and grow it with nutrients. So there is a large toolbox in nature with which we can produce all kinds of products. And we have to do it as quickly as possible,” says Tetrick.
Clean Meat from JUST will be offered in restaurants before it goes into stores. Other start-ups like Aleph Farms and BlueNalu are also trying to grow meat in the laboratory.