Rehovot-based foodtech startup Redefine Meat has launched of the first-ever category of plant-based whole cuts that achieve a level of product quality comparable to high-quality animal meat, the company announced Tuesday.

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Initially available at select restaurants in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Israel, this marks the first time that high-end restaurants will offer plant-based whole cuts as part of their menus. The range of New-Meat products includes beef and lamb cuts, as well as premium-quality burgers, sausages, lamb kebabs, and ground beef.

Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, co-founder and CEO of Redefine Meat said: "Over the past few weeks at COP26, we've seen world leaders commit to landmark goals such as the elimination of all deforestation by 2030, which requires a significant reduction in global meat consumption. Redefine Meat has its eyes set on the real problem – not meat, but the way it's produced. We have a genuine solution that today, not in 2030, preserves all the culinary aspects of meat we know and love, but eliminates cattle as a means of production.

"We've achieved a level of superiority in taste and texture that surprised even some of the most recognized chefs in the world, and our unique technological capabilities enable us to replace every part of the cow for the first time. By continuing our close collaboration with the top-tier culinary world, we will accelerate our product rollout in the coming months – beginning with Europe and followed by the USA and Asia – and launch within multiple distribution channels next year," Ben-Shitrit added.

Redefine Meat's products were recently served at a private blind-tasting event for top UK chefs, where they received further praise.

British chef and restaurateur Marco Pierre White, the youngest chef to be awarded three Michelin stars, said: "When I first tasted Redefine Meat, I was mind-blown. The world needs to eat less meat, but the reality is that until now plant-based meat products have fallen way short in terms of the quality and versatility required for our menus. Redefine Meat's New-Meat products are pure genius, giving you all the sustainability and health benefits of plant-based, without the compromise on taste and texture."

Michelin-starred Dutch chef and TV personality Ron Blaauw, added: "Honestly, I was so surprised by the texture and structure of the meat. The first time I tried it, I remember closing my eyes and appreciating the chewiness and mouthfeel like I would a great cut of meat. For me this is a gamechanger, as we can now serve another variety of high-quality meat to our customers that just happens to be made from plant-based ingredients. Even now my head is still spinning with the possibilities this meat creates for our menu."

Joachim Gerner, head chef at Restaurant FACIL in Berlin (two Michelin stars) also added: "While we've seen the quality of plant-based meat products increase in recent years, this by far comes the closest to animal meat. I see huge potential for these products with meat lovers."

Israeli chef Shahaf Shabtay said, "My cuisine is truly global, inspired by my favorite influences from kitchens across Asia, Europe and Latin America. Redefine Meat has created an ingredient that allows me to unleash full creativity and create dream menus whatever the cuisine. As a chef, the ability to cook for every type of diner – vegetarian, vegan, kosher and more – without barriers or compromise, using a variety of techniques including roasting, grilling, and slow cooking, is quite simply incredible."

New Meat is currently available at the following fine dining establishments:

Marco Pierre White's Steak Houses (22 restaurants across the UK)

Chotto Matte (London)

Brigadiers (London)

Burger Bear (London)

Ron Gastrobar (Amsterdam)

Ron Gastrobar Oriental (Amsterdam)

Ron Gastrobar Indonesia Downtown (Amsterdam)

Ron Gastrobar Indonesia (Amstelveen)

NENI Amsterdam (Amsterdam)

RDM Hospitality Group's Coffee Bar (Tel Aviv)

RDM Hospitality Group's Herzl 16 (Tel Aviv)

Hotel Montefiore (Tel Aviv)

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It technically meets all the criteria for kashruth certification, but Impossible Foods' new "Impossible Pork" product will not be labeled kosher, JTA reported this week.

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The company's meatless pork substitute is made from plant-based ingredients such as coconut oil, sunflower oil, and soy protein. The resulting quasi-pork product does not include hormones or antibiotics, and is advertised as being low in cholesterol.

The US Orthodox Union, however, has withheld kosher certification – not because the product is not kosher, explained OU head Rabbi Menachem Genack, but because of the need to take "consumer sensitivities" into account."

According to Genack, observant Jewish customers would find it "difficult" to accept even a meatless "pork" product being labeled kosher.

"We're still getting calls about a previous attempt to certify a meat similar to bacon. Customers simply don't accept it, and are uncomfortable with it," the rabbi explained.

Genack pointed out that the OU's decision did not pertain to all offerings from Impossible Foods, and had certified the company's version of a hamburger, which was a commercial success.

Impossible Foods said it planned to market the new product, with or without a stamp of kashruth.

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Israel's Aleph Farms, which grows steaks directly from animal cells that are not genetically engineered and not immortalized, has signed Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with two of Asia's largest food companies, global protein leader Thai Union and Korean food and lifestyle company CJ CheilJedang, the company announced this week.

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Asia is leading the global food industry in supporting and adopting cell-cultured meats. Singapore is the first country in the world to approve cultivated meat and to offer it on a restaurant menu.  Cultured chicken had its global debut in Asia, a region of the world that, while vulnerable to food insecurity and struggling with scarcity of natural resources, is also seeing increased meat consumption thanks to rising income, growing populations and increased urbanization.

Thai Union and CJ CheilJedang are expected to help to accelerate Aleph's scale-up, go-to-market activities and elevate distribution of cultivated meat in existing marketing channels across the APAC region. Aleph Farms announced a similar agreement with Mitsubishi in Japan.

Recently, Aleph Farms raised $105 million in a Series B round led by L Catterton, the largest global consumer-focused private equity firm, and DisruptAD, ADQ's venture platform, and included participation from Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore.

"We are excited to partner with key players in the Asia market and establish a new category of meat products to address increasing consumption in the region," said Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms.

"We carefully consider partnerships that reflect our core values and sustainability commitments, and both Thai Union and CJ share our resolutions for achieving carbon-neutrality and enhancing food security for all people of Asia and around the world. Temasek is an ideal investment partner with an intrinsic understanding of the Asian market," Toubia said.

"We are highly excited to deepen the relationship with Aleph Farms to explore the market potential of alternative beef produced from cultured cells," said Sze Cotte Tan, CTO of Food R&D at CJ CheilJedang. "We are at the forefront of a trend in Asia food industry as Asian consumers show increasing interest in alternative proteins, and we have the opportunity to lead consumption patterns toward a more sustainable, resilient future that benefits all of Asia and the world."

Beef is Southeast Asia's second fastest growing meat category, with consumption expected to increase as much as 16% by 2022 in a region that, historically speaking, has primarily consumed fish and other seafood. Research from Thai Union and Aleph Farms reveals that 74% of Singaporeans and 97% of Thais are willing to try cultivated meat. In Singapore, a key motivator for trying cultivated meat is the environmental benefits, while in Thailand, diners favor the ability to trace the meat's origins.

Thai Union is closely tracking changing consumer demands and the need to find new, sustainable ways to meet increased global protein demands to respond to the growing population of the world. Thiraphong Chansiri, President and CEO of Thai Union, said "Following our investment, we are excited to work with Aleph Farms, which is already well known for its technological advancement and strong commitment to sustainability, to further explore collaboration opportunities in Asia."

Aleph Farms revealed the world's first cultivated beef steak in 2018, produced meat in space in 2019 and cultivated the world's first ribeye steak earlier this year. The company is planning an initial market launch in 2022, pending regulatory approval.

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A food truck serving up a variety of alternative meat dishes to unsuspecting carnivores managed to fool hundreds of Israelis into thinking they were eating the real thing.

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With a goal of attracting 200 tasters over a span of two days, alternative meat company Redefine Meat joined forces with meat distributor Best Meister in setting up a blind taste test in the guise of a food truck in the central moshav of Kidron.

The experiment proved to be a success when over 600 people visited the truck, ordering over 1,000 meals. A whopping 90% of customers said the alternative meat on offer was comparable to the real deal in both taste and texture.

All of the revenue from the food truck's sales went toward local restaurants impacted by government restrictions imposed to rein in the coronavirus pandemic.

Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, who heads Redefine Meat, said, "We believe Alt-Meat should taste as good as animal meat – simple as that. Redefine Meat has achieved that with every product it has put to the test, transitioning the Alt-Meat conversation from health and sustainability and the view that 'this is really close' to 'wow this meat is super delicious.'

"The incredible results of the food truck exemplify this. We initially only expected 100 visitors a day, as the event was held in a small village due to COVID-19 restrictions. But through word of mouth, we ended up receiving over 600 customers in one day – with queues as long as 50 minutes. What this has shown is that meat lovers can enjoy our alternative meat because it tastes and feels like meat – not solely because it is better for the environment or animals," Ben-Shitrit added.

Following the success of the blind taste test, the alternative meat company formed a strategic partnership with Best Meister, which will distribute Redefine Meat's products in the first half of 2021.

Best Meister CEO Ori Zaguri, said, "We've been excited by Redefine Meat's unique alternative meat offering for a while, but the food truck event cemented it for us. Not only was consumer feedback overwhelmingly positive, but Redefine Meat's technology will also provide us the scale to create a wide-variety of quality meat cuts for our customers on-demand from one single source. We believe the mass meat-eater market is ready for alternative meat of this quality, and we are excited to be the first to deliver it to them."

Founded in 2018, Redefine Meat uses proprietary industrial 3D printers to replicate the texture, flavor, and eating experience of beef and other meat products using plant-based ingredients.

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Israel's Aleph Farms food tech startup is nearing the transition of its cultivated slaughter-free thin-cut beef steaks into five proprietary modules for its mass production platform, the company announced Wednesday.

The Rehovot-based company's steaks are grown directly from non-GMO cells of a living cow. Aleph Farms says its product offers the nutritional, culinary, and sensory attributes of conventionally produced meat.

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The prototype of its commercial product will be first introduced at the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit in Singapore on Nov. 20 in a virtual cooking demonstration hosted by Aleph Farms' resident chef, Amir Ilan.

The move marks a major leap in Aleph Farms' goal of making cultivated meat widely available in the global community. The company is currently transitioning its commercial products to its pilot plant, and intends to launch at the end of 2022.

"One of the big challenges of cultivated meat is the ability to produce large quantities efficiently at a cost that can compete with conventional meat industry pricing, without compromising on quality," says Aleph Farms co-founder and CEO Didier Toubia.

"We have developed five technological building blocks unique to Aleph Farms that are put into a large-scale production process, all patented by the company," Toubia says.

Aleph Farms' technique for meat cultivation mirror the natural process of tissue regeneration processes that occur in an animal's body, in controlled conditions. The startup has designed patented tissue cultivators to facilitate the biological process occurring in vivo, providing the warmth and basic animal-free elements needed to build tissue in nature. This includes water, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals.

The process is designed to use a fraction of the resources required to raising an entire animal for meat, and without the need for antibiotics.

"Aleph Farms is establishing a new category of meat, imbued with its own culture and a new world of meaty experiences," enthuses Ilan, the company's chef-in-residence.

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Slaughter-free meat food tech startup Aleph Farms has announced a new program, Aleph Zero, which will make it possible to produce fresh meat grown from non-GMO cells at any location, making the supply of meat independent of climate change and available natural resources.

Aleph Farms is partnering with technology companies and space agencies on long-term collaborative R&D contracts that will help integrate its cell biology, tissue engineering, and food science innovations  into existing space programs through BioFarms in extraterrestrial environments. The company plans to apply the knowledge acquired from space sites to production facilities on Earth. 

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Aleph Farms co-founder and CEO Didier Toubia explained that "'Aleph Zero' represents the mathematical symbol of the smallest infinite number, and how Alph Farms brings space infinity closer by supporting deep-space exploration and colonization of new planets. The term also represents the company's vision for producing meat with near-zero natural resources." 

The Rehovot-based startup first experimented with producing  meat on the International Space Station a year ago, in collaboration with 3D Bioprinting Solutions. These trials resulted in new abilities to cultivate meat directly from various types of cow cells in microgravity environments. 

"The constraints imposed by deep-space-exploration − the cold, thin environment and the circular approach − force us to tighten the efficiency of our meat production process to much higher sustainability standards," Toubia noted. 

"The program 'Aleph Zero' reflects our mission of producing quality, delicious meat locally where people live and consume it, even in the most remote places on Earth like the Sahara Desert or Antarctica. Providing unconditional access to high-quality nutrition to anyone, anytime, anywhere," adds Toubia. "When people will live on the Moon or Mars, Aleph Farms will be there as well."

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While lab-grown hamburgers and chicken are already in development around the world, Israel's Aleph Farms claims to be the first company to have developed steak in a laboratory and is in talks with some high-end restaurants in the United States, Europe, and Asia to have it on the market in 2021.

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It plans initially to offer minute steak developed from a small number of cells taken from a cow, avoiding the need to slaughter the animal in the process or use antibiotics which can be harmful to meat-eaters.

Aleph Farms hopes to have its product on a limited number of restaurant menus from 2021 in a trial phase, aiming for an official launch in 2023, first in restaurants and then in stores.

Its next product will be a thick steak with "the properties that we like and we all know," said Neta Lavon, vice president for research and development.

A serving of its minute steak – a thin slice of meat that cooks very fast – currently costs around $50 but Aleph Farms says it hopes to bring that down by 2021 to only a slight premium to current prices of steak offered in restaurants.

Eventually, it aims for mass production, bringing the price down further and making its steaks viable for sale in lower-priced steak houses.

Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms, said the company has ambitions to be one of the world's top three meat producers within 20 years, challenging market leaders like Tyson Foods, which has invested in another Israeli startup developing cultured meat, Future Meat Technologies.

Toubia, however, did not give a revenue target for its product.

He set up the company in 2017 in partnership with Technion-the Israel Institute of Technology and food maker Strauss Group's incubator The Kitchen. In May, it raised $12 million from investors including Cargill, and it has now raised $14 million to date.

Demand for traditional meat substitutes is growing and analysts estimate the US plant-based meat market, for example, could be worth $100 billion by 2035.

The number of startups producing laboratory-developed meat has risen from four at the end of 2016 to more than two dozen by last year, according to market researcher the Good Food Institute.

Dutch startup Mosa Meat projects the cost of producing a hamburger will be about 9 euros ($10) once production scales up.

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Brazil is by far the world's largest exporter of halal meat, which complies with Muslim dietary rules. President-elect Jair Bolsonaro's plans to move Brazil's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, strengthening relations with Israel, has already upset Egypt and could soon stir trouble with other Islamic nations.

"The reaction will be given not only as an individual country but on behalf of the whole Muslim world," a Turkish diplomatic source said. "We are expecting Brazil to act with reason and not confront the Muslim world."

Brazil exports $16 billion annually to the Middle East and Turkey, with just 3% going to Israel, according to government statistics.

More than a quarter of Brazil's exports to the region are meat. Both Brazil's JBS SA, the world's top beef producer, and BRF SA, the No. 1 poultry exporter, have bet big on the growing demand for halal meat.

Brazil exports over $5 billion of halal meat per year, more than twice its nearest rivals, Australia and India, according to Salaam Gateway, a partnership between the Dubai Islamic Economy Development Centre and Thomson Reuters.

Bolsonaro's proposal for the Israel embassy is part of his overhaul of Brazilian foreign policy, cozying up to major powers such as the United States and undoing what he calls leftist predecessors' alliances based on "ideological bias."

Trump's decision to move the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem stirred a hornets' nest in the Middle East, and the United States had few allies follow suit. Guatemala did so in the days afterward while Paraguay has since reversed a similar decision.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Bolsonaro for the plan to move Brazil's embassy, calling him a "friend."

But after Egypt abruptly canceled a visit from Brazilian diplomats and business leaders this week, Bolsonaro said his decision on the embassy in Israel was not final.

Bolsonaro has shown already he is not afraid to give an important trade partner a poke in the eye, following the example of the U.S. president, whom he openly admires and emulates in both political style and foreign policy.

Like Trump, Bolsonaro railed against China on the campaign trail. He has softened his stance since the election last month, however, amid lobbying from diplomats and executives keen to protect relations with Brazil's largest trading partner.

The pressure from the Middle East may prove blunter.

BRF Chairman Pedro Parente said on Thursday that the Israel embassy issue was "cause for concern."

"We have a very important trade with Arab and halal markets. We are confident that when a discussion of the matter involves the relevant areas – the farm, trade and foreign ministries – they will certainly reach the best solution."

BRF's halal business segment contributed a quarter of its operating revenue and nearly half of its operating profit in the third quarter.

Halal chicken represented nearly half of Brazil's overall chicken exports of $7.1 billion last year, according to Brazil meatpacking group ABPA.

"There is a $2-billion trade between Egypt and Brazil, mainly in the food agricultural sector, and within that sector mainly in beef and poultry," Egypt's Ambassador to Brazil Alaa Roushdy said.

He declined to comment on a hypothetical move of the embassy or if it could have any impact on trade.

BRF has processing plants in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to meet growing demand for halal meat. The company aims to double its output of processed products in the Gulf by 2023, its head of halal operations said at an October event.

JBS sent more than an eighth of its exports to the Middle East and Africa in 2017, second only to the Greater China region.

Representatives for JBS declined to comment on the fallout from a potential embassy move.

The Arab-Brazil Chamber of Commerce expects Brazil's total exports to a grouping of 22 Arab countries, which excludes non-Arab Muslim nations such as Iran, to swell to $20 billion by 2022, up from $13.5 billion in 2017.

Rubens Hannun, the chamber's president, added that Brazil also stands to benefit from infrastructure investment from Arab sovereign funds. UAE's Mubadala Investment Company, for example, poured some $2 billion into Brazilian commodities empire EBX earlier this decade.

"We do not want any noise in this relationship," Hannun said. "We are afraid that would open a door for the competition."

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