Ashdod-based food-tech start-up Aleph Farms has successfully grown the world’s first “cell-grown minute steak,” the company said on Wednesday.
Grown from a few cells extracted painlessly from a living cow - complete with the “full experience of meat” including the appearance, shape and texture of beef cuts – the production of a slaughter-free steak has long been considered a revolution in the global meat industry. The company says the product will not be commercially available for at least two years.“We’re shaping the future of the meat industry – literally,” said Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms.“Making a patty or a sausage from cells cultured outside the animal is challenging enough, imagine how difficult it is to create a whole muscle steak. At Aleph Farms, this is not science fiction. We’ve transformed the vision into reality by growing a steak under controlled conditions.”Once cells are extracted from the animal, they must be nourished and grown to produce a complex matrix replicating muscle tissue. The company partnered with Haifa’s Technion–Israel Institute of Technology to overcome a key barrier and enable various cell types to interact with each other to build a complete tissue structure as they would in the natural environment.“The initial products are still relatively thin, but the technology we developed marks a true breakthrough and a great leap forward in producing a cell-grown steak,” said Toubia.