Can you eat beef, pork or chicken without killing the animals or the bird?
It seems very soon you can indulge in meat, and be compassionate to animals at the same time.
Uma Valeti, an Indian-American cardiologist and founder CEO of San Francisco-based startup, Memphis Meats, which will be growing cultured meat, meat outside a live animal. The company is already growing real meat in small quantities using cells from cows, pigs, and chickens, according to Veg News. Similar to all in-vitro meat production, small amounts of animal cells are needed to start the culturing process. Memphis Meats’ process includes using fetal bovine serum—a nutrient-rich cocktail extracted from unborn calves’ blood that is popular in cultured meat production because of its resulting low levels of antibodies and high amounts of growth factors.
The company said in a press release that its first products—hot dogs, sausages, burgers, and meatballs—will be developed using recipes perfected over a half century by award-winning chefs. The founders expect to have products to market in less than five years.
Valeti made a presentation to investors Feb. 4 in San Francisco at the biotech accelerator Indie Bio, which was created by venture capital firm SOS Ventures.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who provided $330,000 to fund the world’s first cultured hamburger, describes cultured meat as a technology with “the capability to transform how we view our world.”
Valeti, a cardiologist who trained at the Mayo Clinic, and is associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota and president of the Twin Cities American Heart Association, said that cultured meat was the way of the future.
“We plan to do to animal agriculture what the car did to the horse and buggy. Cultured meat will completely replace the status quo and make raising animals to eat them simply unthinkable,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
Valeti founded Memphis Meats with Nicholas Genovese, a stem cell biologist, and Will Clem, a biomedical engineer who owns a chain of barbecue restaurants in Memphis, TN. The mouthwatering reputation of Memphis barbecue inspired the company’s name.
While generating one calorie from beef requires 23 calories in feed, Memphis Meats plans to produce a calorie of meat from just three calories in inputs. The company’s products will be free of antibiotics, fecal matter, pathogens, and other contaminants found in conventional meat.
In addition to its initial accelerator funding from SOS Ventures, Memphis Meats is closing in on a $2 million seed round of venture capital funds, the release said.
Bruce Friedrich, executive director of The Good Food Institute said that “cultured meat is sustainable, creates far fewer greenhouse gases than conventional meat, is safer, and doesn’t harm animals.
According to a Veg News report, Valeti wants to advance the commercial viability of meat farmed directly from real meat cells. Valeti, an early board member of New Harvest, a non-profit dedicated to advancing cellular agriculture research and mainstream adoption of cultured meat, has extensive business experience and is an investor in a variety of food and tech companies.
“We love meat. But like most Americans, we don’t love the many negative side effects of conventional meat production: environmental degradation, a slew of health risks, and food products that contain antibiotics, fecal matter, pathogens, and other contaminants,” he was quoted as saying.
“That’s why we started Memphis Meats. We’re creating a new kind of farming, one that provides the same delicious meat we grew up with—without all the drawbacks. With one foot in San Francisco and the other in Memphis, Tennessee, we’re using the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley coupled with the rich culinary traditions of the American south to provide better meat for the entire world,” Veg News quoted him as saying. His process he claims will produce 90 percent less greenhouse emissions and would spare billions of animal lives a year.
The post Eat Meat But Spare Animals: Cardiologist Develops Cultured Meat appeared first on News India Times.