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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Israeli foodtech startup SavorEat on Tuesday launched a plant-based burger system personalized to each customer, one of the first companies to use 3D printing technology to cook food.

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Typically, vegan burgers from companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are frozen and later cooked on a grill.

SavorEat's technology, however, are made on site by a self-contained 3D printer with three cartridges containing oils and other ingredients. Customers can choose how much fat and protein they want in each burger, which takes about six minutes to cook.

"It's a mix of innovation of meat alternative and digital manufacturing where we can also cook the product," Racheli Vizman, SavorEat's chief executive, told Reuters.

She said the firm's burgers are made with a combination of potato and chickpea and pea protein.

Demand for meat alternatives by health and environmentally conscious consumers has jumped in recent years, while alternative protein startups raised more than $3 billion in 2020.

Another Israeli company, Redefine Meat, last month started to deploy meatless whole cuts in European restaurants.

SavorEat, funded mainly by Israeli institutions and whose Tel Aviv-listed shares rose 11% on Tuesday, said its products would initially be served at a local burger chain.

The company is also collaborating with food service firm Yarzin Sela that supplies Israeli high-tech companies and forged a deal with Sodexo to serve its vegan burgers to US universities.

"There is a growing segment of people called 'flexiterian' – people who are actively trying to look for meat alternatives to reduce their meat consumption," Vizman said, citing about one-third of the US population.

Oded Shoseyov, chairman and chief scientist of SavorEat, said the firm is also working on a plant-based version of a pork breakfast sausage for the US market.

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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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