The food world is eager to offer new varieties of lab-grown meat to its customers, according to The New York Times. And cell-based chicken is the new kid on the block.
Upside Foods, which launched four months ago in the Bay Area, is on deck to be the first to sell chicken grown from animal stem cells to consumers in the United States and then globally. They hope other foods, including beef, duck and lobster, will follow.
“We just cannot take for granted that what we eat now is the gold standard,” said Dr. Uma Valeti, the cardiologist who helped start the company in 2015 after he became convinced that the same medical technology used to grow stem cells to repair a human heart could also grow food. “We are changing the paradigm. We are detaching the meat from the animal.”
There’s still a question about whether the technology will be commercially viable, but there’s enough consumer demand to try. According to the article, Upside Foods has signed a multiyear consulting contract with Dominique Crenn, whose San Francisco restaurant Atelier Crenn has three Michelin stars. She serves no chicken or red meat on her tasting menu, but has promised to add the company’s chicken and help promote it. Full Story
Related: Upside Foods Develops Animal-Free Cell Feed for Cultured Meat; Research: One-Third of Consumers Plan to Adopt Cultured Meat.