Cultivated meat foodtech venture SuperMeat announced on Tuesday the results of the first-ever blind tasting of cultivated chicken compared to conventionally-produced chicken. The verdict? The two were indistinguishable.

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The testing took place at The Chicken, SuperMeat's Tel Aviv restaurant, which is the first dining venue to serve cultivated meat meals.

A panel of judges, including Michal Ansky from "MasterChef," were each given portions of ground chicken, one based on cultured chicken and one on chicken raised by traditional methods.

The meat was not treated or seasoned, and the judges found the samples to similar to be able to pick which was the cultured product.

Ansky expressed surprise when she learned which portion was cultivated chicken.

"I'm extremely happy I was wrong, for one of the first times in my life. This kind of breakthrough has been a long time coming. As someone who loves chicken and incorporates it into family meals regularly, it's inspiring to see a more sustainable future can be achieved via cultivated meat," she said.

SuperMeat's belief in the importance of transparency to the food industry prompted the company to open its pilot plan to the world. Visitors can watch the entire cultured chicken production process from start to finish. The plant includes an open kitchen that serves its products.

"Now that we've shown that cultivated meat and traditional meat can be indistinguishable, the potential impact on how companies develop and produce meat products today, and consequently potential impact on our planet, is monumental," said SuperMeat CEO Ido Savir.

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Peace of Meat, a Belgian subsidiary of Israeli foodtech startup MeaTech 3D, which is developing a suite of advanced manufacturing technologies for cultivated meat production, has cultivated just over 700 grams (1.54 pounds) of pure chicken fat biomass in a single production run, the company announced this week.

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This is believed to be the first public demonstration of growth in a single run of this quantity of 100% pure cultivated cell biomass, grown entirely outside an animal.

While many consumers enjoy plant-based meat alternatives, many find it falls short of replicating the flavor and mouthfeel of conventional meat. MeaTech believes that real cultured animal fats can potentially deliver signature flavors, aromas, and textures currently derived from conventional farmed meat, thus delivering an enhanced consumer experience when combined with plant-based ingredients. This new product category is referred to as hybrid meat.

MeaTech CTO Sharon Fima said, "The production capabilities we have demonstrated … are a successful step in line with our strategy of developing a pilot plant for cultivated fat production, which we are planning for 2022."

David Brandes, managing director of the Peace of Meat subsidiary, commented, "Producing this quantity of pure cultured material in one run is a breakthrough toward potentially manufacturing cultivated chicken fat at an industrial scale and cost parity."

According to Brandes, the product is designed to be "just like conventional chicken fat."

"Today's preliminary production success brings us one step closer to our longer-term goal of changing human diets towards more sustainable, yet equally savory, food choices," Brandes explained.

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With cultured meat production increasingly becoming a reality, Israel Hayom has set out to find out whether meat grown in a laboratory would be considered kosher even if the cells that were used for its production originate from swine.

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According to most interpretations of Jewish dietary laws, pigs are not kosher. But since Jewish law does not consider lab-grown meat as originating from a living animal, the normal rules of kosher slaughter might not apply. Also, if it is not considered meat, can it be eaten with dairy products despite the Halachic prohibition?  

Rabbi David Stav, the chairman of the Tzohar organization who serves as Shoham's chief rabbi, has studied the ramifications of cultured meat in an attempt to clarify how it may be consumed by observant Jews.

He told Israel Hayom that "there are several key questions" to consider.

The first, he said, was whether "Jewish law permits eating cultured meat despite the fact that the cells were taken from a living animal, one that has not been slaughtered yet." He said that if one assumes it does, "we then have to ask whether such meat, which is not considered as originating from a living animal, would be permissible to grow from non-kosher animals, such as swine."

Opinions on the matter differ, but Stav insists that "despite the fact that the meat was grown in a laboratory, Jewish law considers it proper meat, and it will therefore be forbidden to eat it with dairy.

"Therefore, in such a case, meaning because the meat is defined in Jewish law as actual meat, all laws, except for shechitah, will apply to it, and therefore cultured pork will not be permitted for consumption according to Jewish law."

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Israeli slaughter-free meat production startup Future Meat Technologies has opened the world's first industrial cultured meat facility in the city of Rehovot, home to the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Agriculture, the company announced Wednesday.

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With the capability to produce 500 kilograms (1,102 pounds) of cultured products a day, equivalent to 5,000 hamburgers, this facility makes scalable cell-based meat production a reality.

"This facility opening marks a huge step in Future Meat Technologies' path to market, serving as a critical enabler to bring our products to shelves by 2022," says Rom Kshuk, CEO of Future Meat Technologies. "Having a running industrial line accelerates key processes such as regulation and product development."

Currently, the facility can produce cultured chicken, pork and lamb, without the use of animal serum or genetic modification (non-GMO) with the production of beef coming soon. Future Meat Technologies' unique platform enables fast production cycles, about 20 times faster than traditional animal agriculture.

Professor Yaakov Nahmias, founder and chief scientific officer of Future Meat Technologies, explains that "After demonstrating that cultured meat can reach cost parity faster than the market anticipated, this production facility is the real game-changer."

"This facility demonstrates our proprietary media rejuvenation technology in scale, allowing us to reach production densities 10-times higher than the industrial standard. Our goal is to make cultured meat affordable for everyone, while ensuring we produce delicious food that is both healthy and sustainable, helping to secure the future of coming generations," Nahmias says.

Future Meat's cruelty-free production process is expected to generate 80% less greenhouse emissions and use 99% less land and 96% less freshwater than traditional meat production.

Future Meat Technologies aims to reach shelves in the United States in 2022 and is currently in the process of approving its production facility with regulatory agencies in multiple territories. The company is eyeing several locations in the United States for its projected expansion.

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