Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report - Fourth Edition highlights:
- The number of new patent applications has plateaued after a period of dramatic growth in this fledgling industry.
- The UK has granted its first approval for cultivated meat use in pet food and is leading new filings in this sector in Europe – a more favourable regulatory environment following Brexit and lack of strong public opposition has helped make the UK one of the best locations in the world for cultivated meat production.
- Upside Foods remains the single biggest filer but is facing challenges in building new facilities and developing methods to support large-scale production of its cultivated meat products.
- Innovation is focussed on scaling up methods and equipment and in creating cultivated meat products that provide a similar experience to eating livestock-produced meat.
- New start-ups are emerging despite the economic challenges, including the UK’s Ivy Farm with new filings second only to Upside Foods.
Cultivated meat (also known as slaughter-free, lab-grown or cell-based meat) is made by culturing animal cells using in vitro methods. The advantages of cultivated meat over meat from livestock include the opportunity to optimise nutritional profiles, to remove the need for antibiotic use and reduce the production of non-consumable waste products, such as cartilage, bone and intestines. Cultivated meat production is based on tissue engineering techniques originally developed for regenerative medicine, such as in vitro cultivation of animal cells/tissue, specialised growth media and 3D culturing scaffolds. The cultivated meat industry has experienced mixed fortunes over the past year. There have been regulatory approvals for Aleph Cuts’ cultivated beef in Israel, Vow’s cultured Japanese quail meat in Singapore and Meatly’s cultivated chicken for pet consumption in the UK. However, Italy and the US states of Florida and Alabama have banned laboratory grown meat and cultivated meat products face opposition in several other US states, France and Austria. Although, it should be noted that the ban on cultivated meat in Italy could be challenged by the European Commission which has yet to examine the alignment of the ban with EU law. Cultivated meat can be a polarising topic in some regions, with its champions lauding its environmental and animal welfare benefits and its critics citing the high costs of cultivated meat products and their potential negative impact on the livestock industry. One of the apparent motives for banning cultivated meat in Italy was to protect farmers but, in contrast, British farmers told researchers from the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) they do not consider alternative meat products to be a major or immediate threat to their industry.
Another challenge to the cultivated meat industry is the global economic downturn. According to the trade group The Good Food Institute, investment in cultivated meat and seafood companies fell from USD 922.3m in 2022 to USD 225.9m globally in 2023. Five cell-based meat manufacturers (Upside Foods, Believer Meats, Wildtype, Aleph Farms, and Mosa Meat) accounted for 46.9 percent of all funds raised. This has created a challenging environment for any new start-up firms entering the industry. The full effects of this drop in funding may not be seen until next year when data for patent filings in 2023 will be available. Consumer acceptance, regulatory approval and cost-effective production remain major obstacles to the widespread availability and consumption of cultivated meat products. Despite these challenges, more regulatory approvals have been granted and companies are investing in facilities and innovative methods to scale up production. Looking at overall patent filing data, the number of new patent filings plateaued in 2022. The combined impact of COVID-19 and the subsequent economic downturn appear to have stalled the rapid growth in patent filings previously seen between 2019 and 2021. Another contributing factor may be that the companies that emerged during this period are now focusing on consolidation on financing facilities, and equipment for scaling up production to commercial levels. However, despite the challenging financial climate, filings have at least been maintained at the same level as those of 2022.
Figure 1: Ten-year trend (2013-2022) - global priority filings – cultivated meat innovations
(Priority filing = the first time a patent application for a unique invention has been filed (the first filing))
From a regional perspective, the US remains the country with the highest number of new patent filings in new cultivated meat technology. US filings increased to a greater degree from 2021 to 2022 than they did between 2020 and 2021. The numbers of new filings in South Korea and Japan have dropped slightly, leaving Europe with the second highest filing numbers in this sector. Overall European filings increased slightly in 2022 compared to 2021, but over half of these were filed in the UK where filings quadrupled compared to 2021. This steep rise in filings in the UK in 2022 is mainly due to the rise of Ivy Farm Technologies Ltd. but there are also several other UK companies which filed multiple applications. These include Quest Meat Ltd., Plant Meat Ltd., Cellular Agriculture, Higher Steaks Ltd. and Roslin Tech Ltd., which shows the growth of the UK’s cultivated meat industry. As reported above, the UK has approved Meatly’s cultivated chicken for pet consumption and its CEO, Owen Esnor, considers that Brexit has opened a window of opportunity in the UK for cultivated meat as it enables a divergence from EU regulations. The UK is, however, yet to approve any cultivated meat products for human consumption. Although the total number of applications filed in Australia in 2022 is comparatively low, the four applications filed there in 2022 represents a significant increase on 2021 – due mainly to the activity of Nourish Ingredients. But with the Australian company Vow becoming only the third company to bring a cell-based meat product to market with its cultured Japanese quail in Singapore, there may be further increases in filing activity from Australian companies in this sector.
Figure 2: Ten-year trend (2013-2022) - global priority filings, by jurisdiction – cultivated meat innovations
Types of innovation
The cultivated meat technologies disclosed in the new 2022 patent filings include:
- Apparatus and methods which aim to reduce production costs and increase production capacity, for example, bioreactors and suspension cell culture
- Culture media comprising of additional nutritional components and ingredients to increase production efficiency and reduce costs
- Compositions and methods which aim to produce cultured meat products that mimic the texture, smell and taste of real meat
- Genetically modified cells and cell lines
- Methods to reduce operational costs and increase efficiency, for example, by extending the replicative capacity of cells and recycling growth factors and other components of cell culture.
Notable companies
The number of unique patent applicants (i.e., the number of entities that have filed at least one new patent application in the given year, or unique assignees (assignee = the owner of a patent/application)) has continued to increase rapidly year-on-year, which again demonstrates the interest and potential for growth in this market as new entities continue to be attracted to invest in R&D (Figure 3). Upside Foods, based in California, has continued to lead in terms of the number of annual patent filings (Figure 4). Yonsei University in South Korea is also a top filer in this sector.
Upside Foods, based in California, remains the top filer for 2022 in terms of the number of new patent filings.
Figure 3: Ten-year trend (2013-2022) - unique assignees by year – cultivated meat innovations
(Patent assignee = the owner of a patent/application, also known as the ‘applicant’ (for a patent application), patentee (for a granted patent), or proprietor.)
The new applications from Upside Foods relate to methods for extending the replicative capacity of bovine cells, methods for forming cell-based meat fibres that mimic slaughtered meat, the engineering cell lines capable of proliferative growth factor-free media formulations, and methods for shaping cell mass by vacuum sealing. Upside Foods gained the first regulatory approval for any cultivated meat product in the US in 2022 for cultivated chicken. The company’s stated focus is now on scalability and commercialisation – and this is reflected in some new applications relating to pipe-based bioreactors for producing comestible meat products and for a suspension-based chicken product formulation. Its scalable technology is known as “suspension” and Upside Foods is regularly operating at the 2000-litre scale with this process. The UK’s Oxford University spin-out, Ivy Farm Technologies is second only to Upside Foods for new patent filings in 2022. Its applications relate to genetically modified and manipulated cells, bioreactors for culturing the cells, cell culture methods, substrate assemblies for culturing cells and artificial meat products. Similar to Upside Foods, Ivy Farm has recently announced a partnership with a Finnish biotech firm Synbio Powerlabs Oy to demonstrate the scalability of their mammalian cells in food grade fermenters at Synbio’s new production plant. The plan is to go live in 2025 and the plant will be the largest such facility in the world. Ajinomoto Co. Inc. is a Japanese food and biotechnology firm with applications relating to an animal cell culturing method conducted with a pea-derived material and/or yeast extract and methods for producing cultured meat. Korea Food Research Institute is a government funded research institute and its applications focus on using various medium additives for culturing meat to reduce the amount of fetal bovine serum (FBS) required. Reducing the use of FBS in culture media is desirable due to cost and ethical issues. Nourish Ingredients is an Australian-based start-up that has developed a way to make animal fats without animals by instead using fat produced by fermented yeast. Its new applications in 2022 relate to compositions and methods for producing food products which emit meat-like aromas when heated. Its focus is on developing fats and oils that make alternative proteins smell, taste and cook better, to achieve a similar flavour to livestock-derived meat. Hong-Kong based, Nutrir Ltd., emerged as a new patent filer in this field in 2022. Its applications relate to methods of producing cultivated tissues using a hydrogel composition and additive compositions for culture media.
Figure 4: Ten-year overview (2013-2022) - global top filers – cultivated meat
Implications for innovation and future patent filings
Despite a challenging economic environment and the bans imposed in Italy and some US states, new patent filings for cultivated meat technology in 2022 have stayed at the same level as in 2021, and further regulatory approvals have been granted for cultivated meat products. Of particular note is the first regulatory approval in the UK for cultivated meat for use in pet food. This could pave the way for more countries to approve cultivated meat for pet food, leading to further innovation in this field. It is also the first significant step in the UK towards approving cultivated meat for human consumption. Scaling up is clearly the main focus of the industry at the moment and the biggest obstacle to further development faced by the more established companies in this sector. The desire to create an affordable and sustainable product is driving innovations in high volume methods, accelerated production and ways to make the culturing process more efficient.
As with other alternative sources of proteins, there are also significant efforts to make cultured meat products more akin to real meat in terms of their taste, flavour, aroma, texture, and in the way they cook. As well as the complex challenges in making an artificial meat product, companies recognise the importance of making a delicious product that consumers want to eat. Even though this sector is facing some significant challenges, there still appears to be an appetite for further innovation aimed at overcoming these challenges to deliver the environmental and ethical benefits which cultivated meat promises.
