Celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the world’s first cultivated beef burger
When our founders Mark Post and Peter Verstrate unveiled the first cultivated beef burger exactly 10 years ago today (Aug 5, 2013), Mark shared the broader ambition as part of the announcement: “The aim is to – of course – make a consumer product out of it. May take 10 years. Maybe even earlier, but eehm.. 10 years is probably a good guess”.
Yes, that’s the literal quote and it turned out to be a stunningly accurate guess.
Because over the past years, we have actually developed our first consumer products, for which we are awaiting a first market approval in Singapore and are working with many food safety agencies across the world to introduce cultivated beef to those that crave change.
Industry progress
We are happy to be one of 150 cellular agriculture companies that were born after the 2013 unveiling, many of whom are showing great progress in product development and scaling up production capacity.
Governments across the world are seeing the value of cultivated meat development and are increasingly funding research, development, education, and scale-up initiatives.
Food safety authorities from Singapore, the U.S. have been evaluating and approving cultivated meat products for sales. They, as well as other food safety experts like the World Health Organization are in agreement that cultivated meat is as safe to consume as comparable foods produced by other methods.
Our progress
Of course our ambition is not to make a consumer product that is just safe. We have dedicated an incredible amount of research to making sure we can create the best beef possible, meaning great taste and nutritional value, while being produced in the most sustainable, animal-friendly and scalable way. We have previously shared more detail about these considerations in the blogpost The Mosa Approach.
Therefore we are incredibly excited that this resulted in a first product that got a raving review from 2-star Michelin chef Hans van Wolde, who said: “When I first tried a Mosa Burger as part of the internal development team, I was blown away by the beefy taste and the amazing mouthfeel of the beef fat. It gave me goosebumps. I genuinely believe this new way of making beef can delight connoisseurs and casual beef lovers alike, while enjoying the positive benefits of cultivated beef from a sustainability perspective.“
And while we are awaiting regulatory approval, we are preparing the first tastings in The Netherlands, after The Dutch government created a ‘code of practice’ that makes tastings possible in controlled environments.
We have also made tremendous progress in preparing for larger production volumes, for example opening our new 2,760 square metre (29,708 square feet) scale-up facility in Maastricht and working with our partners on cell feed that is food-grade instead of pharma-grade, vastly decreasing cost and scalability of production. All of this, without using Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS).
And with our largest scientific team in the world working on these challenges, we have published 20+ peer reviewed articles for the benefit of the broader field.
More beef in the future
We remain committed to producing beef as our first products. Compared to the production of slaughtered beef, as cultivated beef can reduce climate impact by 92%, air pollution by 93%, while using 95% less land and 78% less water. These efficiency gains are much larger for beef than for any other type of meat. As sustainability has been a core motivation for us, we stay committed to solving for beef first. Minced beef like hamburgers initially, but we are optimised to ultimately create cultivated whole-cuts like steak. Over time we will also be able to explore production of other types of meat, fish, and materials like leather, as the technology required will be similar to what we are now developing.
This is still quite a big endeavour. Our pioneering work involves overcoming uncertainties in many different areas. This has been true in the past 10 years, and it will remain true in the next 10. But we are optimistic and confident about our future where we remove cows from the food system and minimise the negative impact of meat consumption on our planet.
Thank you for being a part of the journey.
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