In California, cultivated meat maker Novel Farms has claimed production of the world’s first lab-grown, marbled pork loin.
Many cultivated meat companies focus on making sausages or burgers because producing meat that mimics conventional meat cuts, with marbling and muscle fibers, is currently extremely difficult. Novel Farms claims to have solved the problem by developing a proprietary microbial fermentation approach to produce low-cost, edible, and highly customizable scaffolds.
“Our goal is to accelerate the widespread adoption of cultivated meat and its benefits by producing ‘hard-to-resist’ whole muscle cuts,” says cofounder Nieves Martinez Marshall in a press statement. “Therefore, we need to be able to fulfill consumer demand by delivering cultivated meat with the same fibrous texture and mouthfeel as conventional cuts from an animal.”
Novel Farms has raised US$1.4 million in a pre-seed round with participation of Big Idea Ventures Joyance, Social Starts, Sustainable Food Ventures, Good Startup, CULT foods and strategic angel investors.