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SCiFi Foods is a California-based food technology company focused on reducing the beef industry’s carbon footprint and improving public health through cell-based beef. The company is growing and hopes to launch its products in the next two years.
Co-founders Joshua March and Dr. Kasia Gora are working on SciFi Foods’ first product, combining plant-based ingredients with beef cells for burgers. This month, they will begin testing prototypes of their plant-based burgers at Michigan State University’s Center for Food Processing and Innovation.
“Value, taste and health are very important to us when it comes to our original and future products,” said Joshua March, co-founder and CEO of SciFi Foods.
SciFi Foods announced that it is the first company to produce beef cell lines grown in single cell suspension. Using gene editing technology using CRISPR, the SciFi Foods team harvests live beef cells to create meat alternatives that taste better than beef.
While SciFi uses real beef cells, co-founder and chief technology officer Dr. Kasia Gora says the cells come from “a safe, sustainable, cruelty-free cell culture process, not factory farms.” The burger’s nutrient composition, particularly the protein content, is “on par with a major plant-based burger,” Gora told Food Tank.
According to Gora, processed meat may be “much safer for consumers than conventional meat.” The reason for this is that processed meat has “a lower risk of contamination.” [and] zoonotic diseases.
Processed beef can overcome other risk factors associated with traditional beef production, Gora says, including rising costs. This year, the prices of meat, poultry, fish and eggs have increased by 14.3 percent compared to last year. Input prices for feed, fertilizer and fuel are at an all-time high.
Because SCFI Foods produces its beef in a lab, the company says it can combat “increasing labor, fuel costs and feed costs for farm animals.” What’s more, Domain, SciFi Foods products have the potential to “reduce the impact of animal agriculture.”
Livestock represent an estimated 62 percent of emissions from the livestock sector, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) Global Animal Environment Assessment Model.
According to the Good Food Institute’s Future Life Cycle Assessment, farmed meat uses less land and water, emits less greenhouse gases, and reduces agriculture-related pollution and natural meat than conventional meat.
Domain’s SciFi products will “appeal to a broad audience” and he stressed that promoting sustainable meat options will be “essential for impact”, especially as the climate crisis and supply chain shortages threaten the traditional beef supply chain.
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Photo courtesy of SciFi Foods
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