In Italy, a research project looking to grow cells from chicken feathers into chicken meat has concluded its first phase by generating a batch of cellular material ready for bioreactor scaling. The work is being conducted at University of Trento continue and is led by professors Luciano Conti and Stefano Biressi and researcher Nike Schiavo.
The work is also partially funded by the Save the Chickens Foundation, which is promoting cultivated meat as a sustainable and cruelty- and slaughter-free source of protein.
The team has found that the Feather-to-meat concept is efficient and economically viable. “We estimated that from a single feather, after only 40 days of culture, we could obtain about 700 g of cells,” Schiavo told vegconomist in a 2023 interview.