The First CRISPR Gene-Edited Meat is Coming

“Most companies are trying to create lab-grown meat with little to no genetic engineering, which despite shifts in attitude is still frowned on,” writes Fast Company. And other companies “think that modifications like this will complicate getting regulatory approval,” especially in Europe, which considers CRISPR to be a form of genetic modfication. But then there’s the cultivated meat startup SciFi Foods (formerly Artemys Foods). Fast Company reports that its CEO/cofounder Joshua March became “obsessed” with cultivated meat “after reading about it in The Player of Games, a 1988 science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks that is beloved by techies.” For a while, March sat on the sidelines running other startups. “I didn’t think I had to do anything,” he says, “that it would happen on its own.” But years ticked by, and there was little advancement in what was then usually referred to as lab-grown meat. “I honestly became pretty disenchanted with the companies in the space and all the arm waving about how the costs would be solved.” If he wanted it to be a real thing in the world, he’d have to do something. He’d have to play the game. Unlike virtually every other startup in the space — and according to the Good Food Institute, there are 152 cultivated meat companies as of the end of 2022, operating in 29 countries — March and SciFi are using CRISPR (the technology that makes gene editing as easy as using a 3D printer) to hasten its advances. To Kasia Gora, SciFi’s CTO, it’s merely an engineering challenge. “We take a synthetic biology approach to figuring out how to make scalable beef cell lines,” she tells me. The key is engineering cycles that enable rapid prototyping. The best cell lines will go on to create the next round of modifications…. SciFi is betting that the only way to economically scale cultivated meat is with CRISPR, and that by making iterative tweaks they can create dependable cell lines with rich, meat-y flavor. “We have an eventual target of $1 per burger at commercial scale,” March says. Once harvested, beef cells will be formulated into a blended burger that is mostly like the plant-based burgers you may already know — soy protein and coconut oil. SciFi’s secret sauce is adding a small percentage of SciFi cells (5% to 20%, according to March) to reward our taste buds with the beef-y notes we may think are missing from competitors like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Read more of this story at Slashdot.