On the pages of our site, we have already repeatedly informed you that this or that company is starting the production of artificial meat. Naturally, everyone wants to grab a piece of the pie from the emerging market and the Fast Company-based Just laboratory in San Francisco decided to do it in a very original way. Firstly, their artificial meat will be grown in special bioreactors, and secondly, it will be elite varieties of meat, but at a very affordable price.
But first, from California, let's move northwest of Tokyo to a farm called Toriyama. The fact is that it is there that for many years Wagyu cows have been raised in special conditions. And they make one of the best marbled beef in the world. The cost of 1 pound of such meat (just over 400 grams), by the way, is about $ 100. And recently, Fast Company and Toriyama signed a contract, according to which the first will try to recreate Wagyu meat in a special bioreactor.
The Just laboratory has already quite extensive experience in creating a variety of "artificial" products in a bioreactor. They have already managed to "grow" very interesting products such as nuggets without natural chicken meat, dough and, perhaps, the most controversial product, vegetable chicken eggs.
Now in the laboratory, scientists isolate various cells that have been collected from an animal, and then select the most suitable cell line for research. The main concern at this stage is the cost of the media that feeds the cells, so the Discovery Lab is looking for new and cheaper ingredients to create culture media. The most interesting part of the plant is the robot Randy Johnson (named after the baseball player), which studies how all the components created interact with each other.
However, some experts fear that the widespread use of artificial marbled beef will cause a drop in interest in real Wagyu meat. But Toriyama is convinced of the opposite:
Vladimir Kuznetsov