Revolutionising development of cultivated meat products through synergistic optimisation of growth-media fomulations

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The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations predicts that food production must increase by 50% by 2050 to feed a global population of 10bn. Feeding this growing population with finite land and water resources is one of the greatest challenges facing humankind. Livestock agriculture currently consumes 70% of available arable land and 27% of global freshwater, and is one of the major contributors to climate change, air and water pollution, land degradation, loss of biodiversity, animal welfare concerns, and human health risks such as zoonotic disease and antibiotic resistance.Cultivated meat and seafood offer a sustainable alternative, produced through cultivation of terrestrial, avian, and aquatic animal cells and indistinguishable from conventional meat. Cultivated meat represents an enormous opportunity to decarbonise meat production, reduce land and water usage, slow biodiversity loss, and feed more people with fewer resources. Furthermore, cultivated meat alleviates ethical concerns over the treatment of animals, does not require any use of antibiotics, and has positive implications for food security in an evolving geopolitical climate.Despite this vast opportunity, development and scale-up of cultivated meat products is critically constrained by a lack of food-grade ingredients, long product development cycles, and the huge cost of equipment/manufacturing facilities. Extracellular is the first dedicated manufacturing partner to support cellular agriculture, accelerating the development and commercialisation of cultivated meat products. Our unique integrated approach consolidates a fragmented value-chain, enabling cultivated meat companies to develop better products faster, cheaper, and achieve scale at significantly lower risk. The Innovate UK project will deliver a range of proprietary food-grade growth-media solutions that enable product development costs and lead-times to be reduced by \>50%.