Novel Farms: food science for the planet

By: Collaborative Team

Our reliance on industrial animal agriculture has strained food systems worldwide, but the path to more sustainable nutrition is becoming clearer.

Culturing cells has been around for over a century, but technical challenges, economic considerations, and regulatory hurdles have made the category difficult for start-ups looking to build venture-scale businesses. Recent breakthroughs like gene editing, AI and data analytics for cultured cell production are poised to revolutionize massive categories like meat production by overcoming the major barrier to entry: cost.

Novel Farms is a company on a mission to replace commodity meat with cultivated alternatives. Founded by Michelle Lu, Activate Berkeley fellow, Novel Farms is poised to lead the way in the high-quality production of cultivated meat. We recently invested in their vision to validate a compelling early market: pet food. We were excited to sit down with Michelle to learn more about their beachhead product and what got her personally so excited to work in this field.

What are cultured animal cells?

Cultured animal cells are cells isolated from animal tissues (e.g. meat/muscle, organs, bones) and grown in a nutritional broth in a petri dish, flask, or bioreactor. The animal cells have all the nutritional and flavor properties of the real thing, but with a smaller land and energy footprint, and without animal slaughter. This type of future food production can be decentralized and is less reliant on supply chains and trade, allowing food security for municipalities, states, and countries. Imagine being able to grow your own meat in a frozen tundra, arid desert, or even space!

Why do ingredients for pet food present itself as a compelling beachhead market?

We have chosen palatants - an ingredient blend that improves the flavor, aroma, texture, or appearance of pet food to make it more appealing to pets - for many, many reasons, and not just because we want to make sure our dog’s kibble tastes better.

Palatants are a low-volume, high-margin product that can be manufactured at competitive amounts with the existing biomanufacturing infrastructure. This market is high-to-middle/high on the cost curve and is perfect for testing consumer acceptance of cultivated animal products.

Because we will be able to manufacture meaningful amounts of palatants, we will be able to launch cultivated animal cell products to the general public, not just as limited-release tastings at fancy restaurants that the average American cannot afford. Understanding true consumer demand for cultivated animal cells will be critical for determining further investments into the space by governments and the private sector. As animal cell manufacturing efficiencies mature and biomanufacturing infrastructure grows, we will gradually step down the cost curve to manufacture commodities.

What got you personally so excited about working in this industry?

I have cultured plant cells, insect cells, microbes, and a variety of animal cells throughout my PhD and postdoc, but only as model systems to study complex biological processes. For basic research, we are culturing at such small scales it is not possible to see the cells without a microscope, so the thought of culturing tangible volumes of animal cells is crazy. I am excited to be one of the pioneers in creating a sustainable alternative method of manufacture of animal products for food. It will one day be possible to grow meat outside of the animal, I am sure of it.