Turkey: Cult Food Science invests in Biftek to lower cultivated meat production costs

B2B business is developing a natural growth medium supplement to make cultured meat more affordable

Vancouver-based cultivated meat investor Cult Food Science had made a strategic investment in meat stem cell-developer Biftek to fund its production and distribution efforts.

Biftek, headquartered in Turkey, produces an animal-free, non-GMO, natural growth medium supplement to make cultured meat more affordable.

The stem cells required for lab-grown meat include fetal-bovine-serum which makes up 80-90% of cultured meat companies’ production costs.

Biftek is preparing a formula to dramatically decrease these expenses for foodtech companies, to boost the adoption and production of lab-based meat.

Cult Food Science CEO Dorian Banks said: “Our investment in Biftek, a company at the forefront of improving the scalability of cultivated meat, advances our vision of a cleaner, more ethical, and more secure food supply chain,”

“At Cult, we unequivocally believe that the future of food will be science-based. To realise this future, we recognize and agree that the input and production costs of cultivated meat must drop significantly to support commercial viability and mainstream adoption,” Banks added.

Leo Groenewegen, co-founder of biotechnology company CellulaREvolution, recently told inews he expected lab-grown meat to hit high-end foodservice in two or three years, although it will take at least four years to see these offerings on supermarket shelves.

Like Biftek CellulaREvolution is developing processes to improve the speed and cost of cultivated meat production.