A new study by Israel’s Believer Meats and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) demonstrates how cell-based meat can be produced in a cost-effective way.

Believer Meats’ founder Professor Yaakov Nahmias and a multidisciplinary team at HUJI found that continuous manufacturing addresses the sector’s key challenges of scalability and cost.

The study, ‘Continuous Manufacturing of Cultivated Meat: Empirical Economic Analysis,’ published in Nature Food, demonstrates the use of tangential flow filtration – an efficient way to separate and purify biomolecules – for the continuous manufacturing of cultivated meat.

The bioreactor assembly permits biomass expansion to 130 billion cells per litre, achieving yields of 43% weight per volume. The process was carried out continuously over 20 days, enabling daily biomass harvests.

The research also introduced an animal component-free culture medium, priced at $0.63 per litre, which supports the long-term, high-density culture of chicken cells.

Utilising this data, the team conducted a techno-economic analysis of a hypothetical 50,000-litre production facility. The analysis indicates that the cost of production of cultivated chicken could be reduced to $6.20 per pound, aligning with the price of organic chicken. For context, the only cultivated meat currently available in supermarkets – Good Meat's chicken – costs more than $20 per pound, and cultivated cells only constitute 3% of the product.

Believer Meats’ Nahmias said: “We were inspired by how Ford's automated assembly line revolutionised the car industry 110 years ago. Our findings show that continuous manufacturing enables cultivated meat production at a fraction of current costs, without resorting to genetic modification or mega-factories. This technology brings us closer to making cultivated meat a viable and sustainable alternative to traditional animal farming.”

Bruce Friedrich, president of The Good Food Institute, commented: “GFI applauds the spirit of openness that continues to characterise cultivated meat researchers like Nahmias and his colleagues, who understand that showing the scientific potential of cultivated meat will benefit all scientists working in the field”.

The GFI’s principal scientist of cultivated meat, Elliot Swartz, added: “This important study provides numerous data points that demonstrate the economic feasibility of cultivated meat. The study confirms early theoretical calculations that serum-free media can be produced at costs well below $1/litre without forfeiting productivity, which is a key factor for cultivated meat achieving cost-competitiveness.”

“Empirical data is the bedrock for any cost model of scaled cultivated meat production, and this study is the first to provide real-world empirical evidence for key factors that influence the cost of production, such as media cost, metabolic efficiency and achievable yields in a scalable bioprocess design.”

The research represents the first demonstration of cost-efficient manufacturing of cultivated meat and the first empirical economic analysis based on solid data. It is a collaborative effort involving engineers, biologists and chemists at the HUJI and Believer Meats, which is currently building the ‘world's first’ large-scale industrial production facility for cultivated chicken.

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