The Emeryville facility can produce up to 50,000 pounds of cultivated meat products a year, though the goal is to expand to 400,000 pounds per year, Upside officials said. Good Meat cells grow into large masses, which are shaped into a range of meat products.īoth firms emphasized that initial production will be limited.

After about three weeks, the sheets of poultry cells are removed from the tanks and formed into cutlets, sausages or other foods. At Upside, muscle and connective tissue cells grow together, forming large sheets. Inside the tanks, called cultivators, the cells grow, proliferating quickly. Once the cell lines are selected, they’re combined with a broth-like mixture that includes the amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, salts, vitamins and other elements cells need to grow. Good Meat products are created from a master cell bank formed from a commercially available chicken cell line. Upside experts take cells from live animals, choosing those most likely to taste good and to reproduce quickly and consistently, forming high-quality meat, Chen said. The Good Meat chicken product will come pre-cooked, requiring only heating to use in a range of dishes.Ĭultivated meat begins with cells.

He followed it with a chicken “thigh” served on a bed of potato puree with a mushroom-vegetable demi-glace and tiny purple cauliflower florets. Good Meat, based in Alameda, operates a 100,000-square-foot plant, where chef Zach Tyndall dished up a smoked chicken salad on a sunny June afternoon. “The most common response we get is, ‘Oh, it tastes like chicken,’” said Amy Chen, Upside’s chief operating officer. Otherwise it looked, cooked, smelled and tasted like any other pan-fried poultry. The finished chicken breast product was slightly paler than the grocery store version. On a recent Tuesday, visitors entered a gleaming commercial kitchen where chef Jess Weaver was sauteeing a cultivated chicken filet in a white wine butter sauce with tomatoes, capers and green onions. Upside, based in Berkeley, operates a 70,000-square-foot building in nearby Emeryville. Globally, more than 150 companies are focusing on meat from cells, not only chicken but pork, lamb, fish and beef, which scientists say has the biggest impact on the environment. Company officials are quick to note the products are meat, not substitutes like the Impossible Burger or offerings from Beyond Meat, which are made from plant proteins and other ingredients.

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