Company to grow meat in UAE lab

An Israeli company is in talks to grow lamb meat in the UAE using biotechnology.

While it is likely to be a couple of years before UAE residents can sit down to enjoy a lamb chop grown at a local lab, Aleph Farms are pushing forward with their beef plans.

A commercial-scale pilot plant is set to be operational before the end of this year.

Gary Brennar, vice president of product and market development at the company, said no animals were slaughtered in the process of creating the meat, as cells could be taken from cows and sheep without causing injury.

“The steaks are grown in controlled conditions, in bioreactors, and the bioreactors look very much like what you see in big yoghurt factories,” he said.

Aleph Foods grows entire muscles, making the type of product consumers instantly recognise as a cut of steak.

“A lot of the other companies are doing minced meat of one kind or another, or just certain tissue cells,” he said.

“We’re doing the whole muscle product and that’s what we’re going to bring to market in the future. The idea is to produce locally. When it comes to the tissue cells we want to collaborate with local biotech research laboratories, and to source the tissue cells from a sheep locally.”

The process is fully automated and there is hardly any human contact.

“They grow in a liquid growth media. Part of it is minerals and nutrients, and in some cases it’s what we call recombinant proteins,” he said.

“We can grow the steaks very quickly, because we can feed the cells as much as we want. There are no antibiotics and no genetically modified products.”

At present, more than 50 billion kilograms of beef are consumed annually worldwide. Demand will increase in the future, with the world’s population projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050.

Farm-grown meat is considered environmentally unsustainable by many climate activists. A recent study published in Science magazine found that producing a kilo of beef emits 60kg of greenhouse gases.

As consumers become more conscious of the consequences of their food choices, the global market for meat alternatives is growing faster than any other segment of the food industry, with an expected value of $140 billion annually by 2030.