Company promotes lab-grown meat as perfect space food

An Israeli lab-grown meat start-up wants to use 3D meat production to feed astronauts on long-term missions to Mars.

Doughman Headshot3 Headshot
(Aleph Farms)
(Aleph Farms)

An Israeli lab-grown meat start-up wants to use 3D meat production to feed astronauts on long-term missions to Mars.

“This mission will forward our vision for advancing food security by producing fresh quality meat anywhere, independent of climate change and of availability of local natural resources. We are introducing new capabilities for locally producing fresh, quality meat even in the most harsh and remote extraterrestrial environments, such as space,” Aleph Farms wrote on their website.

The company uses 3D tissue engineering and non-GMO beef cells to create lab-grown steaks. Lab-grown meat uses real animal cells that are grown in a stainless-steel tank known as a bioreactor. The process can be used to produce a product that resembles chicken, beef, pork and other meats. Although cultured raised meat products aren’t available on the market yet, consumers around the world have expressed interest in trying it.

“Aleph Zero”

The core mission of the new initiative is to find better ways to produce meat in even the harshest and most remote environments.

To achieve their goal, the Israeli start-up plans to form strategic partnerships with technology companies and space agencies to further research in cell biology, tissue engineering and food science and improve lab-grown meat production methods.

The lessons learned could ultimately be applied to help feed remote areas on Earth.

“The constraints imposed by deep-space-exploration — the cold, thin environment and the circular approach — force us to tighten the efficiency of our meat production process to much higher sustainability standards,” Didier Toubia, the company’s Co-Founder and CEO, said.

“The program ‘Aleph Zero’ reflects our mission of producing quality, delicious meat locally where people live and consume it, even in the most remote places on Earth like the Sahara Desert or Antarctica. Providing unconditional access to high-quality nutrition to anyone, anytime, anywhere.”

“Aleph Zero” follows the company’s successful lab-grown meat production last year on the International Space Station. That experiment was done in collaboration with 3D Bioprinting Solutions, a Russian research laboratory that is currently partnering with KFC to produce and sell 3D-printed chicken nuggets.

Aleph Farms is backed by Cargill, Migros and the Strauss Group.

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