UK – 3D Bio-Tissues (3DBT), a biotechnology startup in the UK has managed to cultivate the world’s first pork steak made from 100% cultivated meat.
The steak fillet was made using the company’s own patented serum-free and animal-free cell booster, eliminating the need for conventional plant-based scaffolds.
The CEO of 3DBT, Che Connon, who is also a professor of tissue engineering at Newcastle University, together with the chief science officer of 3DBT Ricardo Gouveia, took to the lab to test for various qualities of the pork steak in both raw and cooked states.
They found that the visual properties of the steak displayed similar structural integrity to actual pork. The duo also found that pan frying the steak led to a level of shrinkage as is expected from all meat, conventional or not.
Connon said, “This is a significant scientific breakthrough which has very positive implications not just for 3DBT but also for the UK and the cultivated meat industry as a whole.
The company intends to liaise with manufacturers and supermarkets to sell their cultivated products as well as work with fashion companies to produce cultivated leather using the same tissue templating process on skin cells.
The growth witnessed within the cultivated meat industry is impressive as more companies join in the environmentally friendly and cruelty-free route of meat processing and production.
In August, Future Meat Technologies also developed the world’s first cultivated lamb that is reported to cook and taste like conventional ground lamb meat.
Singapore approves serum-free media
Meanwhile, in Singapore, the industry hit another milestone with the Singapore Food Agency’s (SFA) approval for Good Meat to use its serum-free media to produce lab-grown chicken for human consumption.
Good Meat claims that its technology helps remove cell-cultured meat from its reliance on fetal bovine serum, enabling it to truly develop slaughter-free products.
The company thus appreciated SFA’s market approval as a technical and regulatory breakthrough that will boost the scalability of its products and lower manufacturing costs.
The recent approval continues Singapore’s trailblazing support for cell-based meat and leaves the US and Europe playing catch-up on the regulatory front.
2-years on, Singapore remains the only country in the world where consumers can purchase lab-grown products.
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