New Lab-Grown Meat Production Facility in California Brings Cell-Based Food Closer to Reality

Food technology startup Upside Foods is building a new production facility in the Bay Area that can produce an impressive 50,000 lbs of lab-grown meat every year. According to Futurism, this brings cell-based meat closer to reality, which could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from raising livestock.

The 53,000-square feet facility called Engineering, Production and Innovation Center (EPIC) is located in the urban area of the city northeast of San Francisco, California.

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A nugget made from lab-grown chicken meat is seen during a media presentation in Singapore, the first country to allow the sale of meat created without slaughtering any animals, on December 22, 2020. (Photo by Nicholas YEO / AFP) (Photo by NICHOLAS YEO/AFP via Getty Images)

New Slaughterhouse that Does Not Kill Animals

Upside Foods is the largest American company that makes cultivated meat from animal cells without slaughtering any animals, Food Dive reported. The long-planned California-based facility has opened its doors recently, and it is the first large cultivated meat facility to be completed in the country. Experts believe that this facility could herald a new era of meat production in the US.

Amy Chen, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Upside Foods, said that she loves the irony of a meat processing facility in the urban area. Typically, meat production facilities are located far from the neighborhood because of the unpleasant waste, sounds, and smells from slaughtering.

But since the lab-grown meat production facility does not slaughter, these things are not a problem. For now, EPIC can produce more than 50,000 lbs of meat per year. But the company is planning to expand and increase its production by up to 400,000 lbs every year.

"That's part of what's so exciting about this new chapter of food," the news outlet quoted Chen. "What we believe cultivated meat can bring to the world is that it can challenge a lot of the assumptions that you have around the way meat is made."

The company has taken over a building initially constructed for New Seasons Market in 2018. But Upside Foods had already received approval to move its production facility when the building remained vacant until last year.

As of now, the only pilot plant that is similar in size to Upside Foods is the Israel-based Future Meat Technologies, while most cultivated meat companies are purely small-scale R&D operations. With its latest facility, Upside Foods has fully cemented its place in the cultivated meat industry.

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Upside Foods' Lab-Grown Meat Not Yet For Sale

The US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has yet to comment on lab-grown meat. But even if they allow the sale and consumption of lab-grown meat in the US, experts said it would most likely be on a product-by-product basis. However, the pressure of novel meat sources minus the greenhouse gases emissions is mounting.

As ZME Science reported, this makes the factory so exciting because it offers a glimpse of how sustainable the practice of growing meat in the lab will be. Upside Foods' California facility uses 100% renewable energy to avoid similar problems as raising livestock.

But in regards to when the lab-grown meat will be available in the market, there is no word yet. The company has also not yet released how much it will cost, but probably not going to be the cheapest meat on the market.