UK-based cultured meat company Meatly (formerly Good Dog Food) has developed a new protein-free culture medium, which it says is the ‘first of its kind’ in the industry.

Through R&D, Meatly has set a new benchmark for the industry by creating this medium for just £1 per litre, compared with typical media that costs hundreds of pounds per litre to produce.

Meatly’s new food-safe media does not contain serum, animal-derived components, steroids, hormones, growth factors or antibiotics, and is used in Meatly’s suspension culture bioreactors without micro-carriers.

The company says that the absence of expensive proteins, growth factors and micro-carriers means that future industrial scale will be economically viable, with costs being brought down further when higher volumes of the medium are purchased.

Helder Cruz, co-founder and chief scientific officer at Meatly, said: "Our protein-free culture medium represents a critical milestone for us and the wider cultivated meat industry. By setting this new benchmark, we are driving the cost of production down significantly, which is something the industry has been grappling with for years. It is a huge step forward in scaling our technology and making our products available to pet owners on a commercial scale and at an affordable price.”

Jim Mellon, founder of Agronomics, an investor in Meatly, added: “Meatly’s creation of the very first protein-free medium establishes the company as a true technological leader within its field. Media accounts for the majority of the costs involved in the production of cultivated meat and Meatly has single-handedly slashed those costs a hundredfold or more. This is a huge step forward in bringing the cost of cultivated meat to price-parity with conventional meat and, ultimately, toward the mass adoption of cultivated products.”

In March, Meatly partnered with ethical pet food brand Omni to launch the “world’s first” cans of pet food that use cell-based chicken as the protein source.

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