SMALL CAP IDEAS: Are we ready for lab meat? BSF Enterprise hopes so

The race to commercial distribution of lab-grown meat has begun and is listed in the UK’s premier market BSF Enterprise has just entered the fray in a big way.

According to the Good Food Institute, by the end of 2021, there were more than 100 “cultured meat” companies around the world, spanning 25 countries, and venture capital investments in the industry were up 70 percent year over year.

Just this month, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared the way for California start-up UPSIDE Foods, which grows meat from cells from a healthy live chicken, to market its food.

UPSIDE Foods’ approval comes two years after fellow California competitor Eat Just’s petri dish-raised chicken nuggets received regulatory approval from the Singapore government.

Soon after, the world’s first cultured meat product was sold to consumers, albeit in the exclusive 1880 Members Club, where membership will set you back several thousand pounds.

Lab meat is also making significant strides here in the UK, and one of the companies leading the charge is BSF Enterprise’s wholly owned subsidiary, 3D Bio-Tissues (3DBT).

3DBT has recently made a major breakthrough towards its goal of producing the UK’s first fully cultured meat fillet.

Three small fillets of meat, about 30mm high and 15mm in diameter (smaller than a 5p piece), weighing five grams, were produced in the lab, and according to 3DBD’s chief executive Che Connon, these bite-size fillets “cooked really well and the smell was great’.

“It really reminds you of delicious roast meat!” boasted Connon.

Sounds great, but with such groundbreaking technology, the journey to the supermarkets won’t be easy.

While the technology has proven itself, scaling up is the biggest challenge of the fast-growing industry.

Admittedly, it’s come a long way since 2013, when the world’s first lab-grown burger came with a price tag of $330,000.

But according to recent studies, a kilogram of cell-cultured meat is estimated to cost $63/kg (£53) to produce in a large-scale facility.

Herein lies the problem, but within BSF’s intellectual property portfolio is City-Mix, a supplement that replaces expensive serums needed to grow flesh cells.

Connon says City-Mix cuts the cost of “serum-free media” by up to 15 times, making it a real asset against the competition.

3DBT now wants to make its animal-free lab meat by early 2023 while continuing discussions with manufacturers, positioning the company as a licensor of the technology rather than mass-producing the meat in-house.

Plant-based meat alternatives went mainstream towards the end of the 2010s, but recently there has been a noticeable downturn.

Indicative of this is that shares of Beyond Meat, the standard bearer of the meat alternative industry, have crashed nearly 80 percent this year, while U.S. retail sales are down 11 percent year-over-year, according to the company’s latest quarterly report.

International retail sales were significantly worse, falling from $21 million to $10 million year over year.

Decline in meat alternatives: Beyond Meat’s stock crashed nearly 80% amid falling sales

For more empirical evidence, all you have to do is head to the local supermarket; discounted Impossible and Beyond burgers are a common sight. Good news for hungry vegans, not so much for the plant-based meat sector.

But lab meat is a different game, as is the addressable market.

According to The Humane Society, “Lab-grown meat is not technically vegan because it contains cells that come from real, living animals. In reality, vegans and vegetarians are not the target audience for lab-grown meat.”

While lab-grown meat does not come from animal slaughter, it does come from harvesting the cells of a live animal.

According to The Humane Society, cells from a single cow can produce “an astonishing 175 million quarter pounds of hamburgers.”

There’s no question that lab meat is infinitely more humane and environmentally friendly than industrial farming, but veganism isn’t exactly known for compromise.

Rather, lab meat companies hope to lure your common carnivore away from cultured meat, and if they can tempt their taste buds, the addressable market is obviously huge.

According to official data, the total value of meat in the UK will increase by 5.9 percent to £9.1 billion by 2021, while the average American eats about 101 kilograms of red meat and poultry per year.

“We believe our prototypes are some of the first cultured meat fillets in the world, representing a groundbreaking development for the industry,” Connon said.

They are expected to go on display in the coming months, after which the regulatory approval process should begin.

As the UK Food Standards Agency has yet to approve a product of its kind, it’s hard to know where the decision will lie, so a risk factor certainly exists on this side.

As for 3DBT’s AIM-listed parent company BSF, shares (not of the live variety) rose 30 percent this week to 10.5 pence, giving the company a market value of more than £9 million.

Early days for sure, but one to watch.