Cultivated meat is produced by growing animal cells in a laboratory rather than slaughtering livestock. Companies in the field typically take cell samples from living animals and combine cultivated cells with plant proteins to approximate the taste and texture of conventional meat. The resulting products are not technically vegan, since they derive from animal cells, but spare the animals themselves.
Mission Barn, a San Francisco-based startup, focuses on cultivating fatty tissue from cell samples—it has produced pork meatballs from cells taken from a Yorkshire sow named Dawn, who remains alive on a farm in upstate New York. Rather than attempting to replicate a whole cut, the company blends cultivated fat with plant proteins.
Redefine Meat, an Israeli startup, takes a different approach, creating textured plant protein that mimics steak. Because plant proteins absorb marinades more quickly than animal proteins, chefs can be bolder with flavouring.
Adjacent innovations include ersatz coffee made from chickpeas, rice hulls and green tea (produced by Voyage Foods) and butter-like fats synthesised from carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen (produced by Savor, an American food-tech firm). Paired with direct-air carbon capture, synthesised fats could in principle consume greenhouse gases rather than produce them.
It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.