Ivy Farm Technologies is based in the suburbs of Oxford, UK. Only, it’s not a farm as we know it.
The company, founded in 2019 as a spin-off of the University of Oxford, produces lab-grown meat. Its headquarters houses laboratories and production facilities.
Artificial meat is made through a process of extracting cells from animals and “feeding” them a nutrient-rich solution. These cells grow and multiply. They are then put into a bioreactor (a large tank) to continue growing.
Ivy Farm is currently focusing on beef, and CNBC’s The Edge visited the company’s labs and learned about the process.
The startup currently harvests cells from animals that have been slaughtered for food. It then goes through the process of growing those cells and then placing them into a bioreactor called a “Betty.” The tool can produce three tons of meat per year.
The end product is like a paste, which Ivy Farms says can be mixed with real meat or other plant-based proteins to make something like a burger or teak. One product seen by CNBC is a small steak-like product made from 10 percent artificial meat and 90 percent plant-based protein.
Caitlin Doran, associate scientist at Ivy Farms, explained that currently the process requires harvesting cells from dead animals. But that won’t happen in the future.
“In the future, we really don’t want to go back to anything that’s dead,” Dolan told CNBC. “Once we get those cells, we don’t need to go back to that animal.”
Ivy Farm this year formed a partnership with Finnish company Synbio Powerlabs to produce cultured meat on a larger scale. The company hopes to launch a product in 2025.
In the UK, regulators now allow lab-grown meat to be used in pet food, but not for human consumption. However, Singapore and the United States have approved some artificial meat for human consumption.
While scale and regulation are challenges, Ivy Farms and its competitors still have a lot of work to do before consumers accept the idea of lab-grown meat.
“This will ultimately educate consumers…that this is no different than real meat,” Ivy Farm CEO Harsh Amin told CNBC.
Watch the video above for the full interview and tour of Ivy Farm Technologies.
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