What context led to the inception of Aleph Farms and what is the main mission that motivates your business?

Being a food engineer and biologist at core, the main driver that always pushed me forward was tackling issues of malnutrition and food security. The convergence between innovation and impact has always played a central role in every project that I started, so when in 2016 I crossed paths with the food-tech incubator, “The Kitchen” of Strauss Group, I knew this was a great opportunity to leverage my experience. Aleph Farms was created as a result of this collaboration and we are on the mission to address issues related to climate change, food resilience and public health. We are interested in having an impact on the way we grow and consume food by investing all our knowledge into designing new ways to grow quality animal products that improve sustainability, food security and animal welfare in our food systems.

What are the fundamentals of the technology that you are using and how scalable is it? 

Cultivated meat is a fairly new sector of the food industry but it works based on straightforward principles. In simple terms, we take cells from a healthy animal, isolate the best ones and then grow large quantities of these duplicated cells in a cultivator that mirrors the environment found inside the living animal. This controlled setting offers the same temperature, pressure, pH, oxygen saturation and nutrition that make the cells grow and thrive. A support structure made of plant proteins (matrix) is used to help the cells support tissue formation, so as to obtain a final product that has a similar structure with a whole piece of meat.

We are domesticating cells instead of the whole animal in order to have better predictability with fewer resources. In a traditional farm, up to 10,000 liters of water are needed to produce one kilogram of meat, while we are able to reduce this amount by 78%.

According to an independent Life Cycle Analysis by CE Delft, when cultivated meat is produced at scale with the use of renewable energy, it is also projected to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 92% and use 95% less land when compared to industrial beef production.

Cellular agriculture is set to have the same importance in the development of the human species as the domestication of animals had millions of years ago. 

How do you address the health and safety concerns that usually arise with atypical food products being launched on the market?

The cells we use are not genetically modified, nor immortalized and our production process does not involve using antibiotics. Our production process is transparent and is fully controlled and documented. In fact, because of its novelty, cultivated meat needs to adhere to even higher safety standards than products that have been consumed for a long time already. In order to build trust with the consumers, we have been providing data-backed evidence to demonstrate the safety of our product, and remain prepared to do everything possible in order to demonstrate to regulators - and by extension, the greater public - the safety and transparency of our product.

How friendly is the international financing community towards innovative companies in the agriculture space?

The global markets are challenging due to the socio-political context but the companies that are able to demonstrate beneifts and efficiencies in regards to climate and use of resources are usually standing out from the crowd. Besides being committed to reach net zero by 2025, we are also able to offer resilience to the whole supply chain in the case of extreme climate events by diversifying the current offer. We have developed a decentralized production process and we are able to grow cells anywhere, independent of environmental conditions or resources availability. In addition to these, the short production cycles offer predictability and flexibility while also keeping the prices and the quality consistent.

What are your plans in terms of business growth and future commercialization of your product?

We hope to launch in Singapore and Israel later this year upon receiving regulatory approvals. At the moment, our first target markets are Asia Pacific and the Middle East. The governments in these regions have been extremely supportive in terms of building the right ecosystem to drive the growth of our sector. For example, new regulations which promote cultivated meat are currently being voted in Japan and South Korea. Once the investors start to understand that the key to success is represented by private-public partnerships, we plan to expand more across the U.S. and Europe. Our company is already backed by the sovereign funds of Abu Dhabi (ADQ) and Singapore (Temasek) and by the Israel Innovation Authority. Cultivated meat, which is grown directly from animal cells rather than the entire animal, could complement the production capacity of sustainable livestock farming methods to meet the growing market demand for protein, while drastically cutting down on the overall environmental footprint of meat production and ensuring food security.