Strangely, tobacco makes it less expensive to produce artificial meat

Acting as a reactor, the medicinal plant will provide substances that promote meat growth, significantly reducing the cost of artificial meat production.

Mass production of artificial meat is currently a major barrier. To solve this problem, an Israeli start-up is using tobacco plants as bioreactors to create expensive complex growth factors, which must be preceded by the use of a number of substances known to be toxic. of cattle origin.

 Previously, artificial meat production required fetal serum from slaughterhouses, which was expensive and unethical.

In addition to the issue of marketing authorization on the European market, the whole problem of artificial meat lies in the ability of manufacturers to find solutions to produce meat on a large scale.

In Israel, a company may have succeeded in using an unexpected ingredient: tobacco! Specifically, the Aleph Farms laboratory has studied the problem of culturing meat from stem cells. 

Along with that, another startup, BioBetter, specializes in manufacturing the culture media needed for reproductive cells to create artificial meat. Founded by a researcher at the University of Jerusalem (Israel), the company offers a cost-effective alternative in the field of laboratory meat production by growing tobacco plants.

 Tobacco plants will provide growth promoters, not of animal origin to reduce the cost of artificial meat production

Before becoming a piece of meat, stem cells need amino acids, nutrients, especially fetal serum from slaughterhouses, which are expensive and unethical to provide nutrients and grow. meat. These are all very expensive commodities that challenge large-scale meat production.

"Companies are now working to find an ethical and less expensive solution that doesn't need fetal bovine serum," said Jean-François Hocquette, a researcher at the National Institute for Food Research (INRAE). ".

INRAE ​​has praised the economic merits of this technology by stating that the production of these artificial meat growth promoters costs as little as one dollar per gram.

Israel has become a major destination for "meatless meat" research. According to Les Échos, this country has 10% of companies working on research and production of artificial meat in the world.

In addition, the companies involved have invested more than $500 million in 2021 in the sector, behind US startups about $700 million.