Turkey-based startup Biftek.co recognizes the flaws in today’s clean meat movement and wants to offer up technology for companies around the world to improve it.
The startup has developed a plant-based culture medium supplement to replace Fetal Calf Serum (FCS) which is needed to culture muscle cells.
This serum is not only very expensive, but has raised questions regarding quality and animal welfare practices, which in turn calls into question the “cleanliness” of the meat. This will bring the cost of the end product down as well.
Cells secrete metabolic waste into the medium that they live in.
In a regular culture setup, cells literally swim in their own waste. Increasing concentration of wastes in the medium creates a toxic effect which inhibits the cell growth.
Replacement of the entire medium is an option to restore the nutrient, pH, and osmotic balance, however, it is not feasible at large scales such as cultivated meat production lines.
Biftek’s plant based culture medium supplement formulation to grow muscle stem cells decreases related expenses by 80%.
Therefore, this is a technologies that can remove the waste product from the growth medium itself which is crucial to establish a feasible cultivated meat production method.