11 ms·

Insiders reveal problems at Upside Foods

88 points by dtagames 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jareklupinski 3y ago
> Another former employee confirmed that staffers at the company would make jokes comparing Upside to Theranos. that's taking it a little far... their goal is providing an ethical food source, not revolutionizing human diagnoses can't wait for meat-less meat tech to get through its paces and take the time to mature. humans took hundreds of years to figure out how to herd cattle; what's another few years to make it in a lab?
- catgary 3y ago
  Honestly, the roller bottle approach seems pretty reasonable when they’re making sure that the process is making good chicken. They’ve at least reduced the problem to making giant sheets of chicken-paper.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  Yeah, I agree. Honestly, as long as the product isn't contaminated, the consumer doesn't care if it made in roller bottles or futuristic machines. At worse they are misleading investors, but are not endangering the health of consumers. Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just investors but the end consumer by promising them blood tests that did not actually work.
  - brightlancer 3y ago
    > At worse they are misleading investors, but are not endangering the health of consumers. > Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just investors but the end consumer by promising them blood tests that did not actually work. Elizabeth Holmes was _acquitted_ of defrauding patients; her convictions were only for defrauding investors. This looks a lot like Theranos.
    - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
      Balwani was convicted of defrauding patients though.
- flangola7 3y ago
  It's a time sensitive issue unfortunately
- crooked-v 3y ago
  Also, there's a significant difference between "the process works on a small scale, and would work at a large scale if we can solve the reliability/consistency issues" versus Theranos' "the process literally isn't physically possible at any scale and we've been outright lying about it the whole time".
  - civilitty 3y ago
    I think lab grown meat is closer to a Theranos type scam than most people realize. The problem with Theranos wasn’t that their tech didn’t work at any scale; it’s that blood drawn from finger capillaries is useless for most diagnostic tests that they claimed to do. It’s a very subtle problem that only investors with proper scientific advisors with diagnostic experience caught onto (aka all the biotech VCs, who stayed far away). “If only” Theranos took regular blood samples from the arm instead of a few droplets from a finger prick, it could have worked but then it’d be just another unsexy competitor in onsite diagnostics. Lab grown meat is full of those kinds of caveats and while no company has committed as egregious a fraud as Theranos, they’re all going to eventually find themselves in the position where they either have to lie to keep getting investments or admit that it’s not feasible and fold. Personally, my bet is that without advanced bioengineering that can design entire artificial immune systems that protect the growing tissue, bioreactors will just be too expensive to scale up and compete with animals. IMO the only way it’ll work is if we have giant (semi-)open vats like salt evaporation pools that convert solar energy directly into protein and fat, with an engineered biome that responds to contamination like an immune system. And that's probably decades if not centuries ahead of us.
    - jareklupinski 3y ago
      > the only way it’ll work is if we have giant (semi-)open vats like salt evaporation pools that convert solar energy directly into protein and fat if we could replace the typical cattle pastures of today with this other system (basically the same idea without needing an organism that has a nervous system attached to it), I think we'll be closer to "making it" > with an engineered biome that responds to contamination like an immune system I saw a farmer once demonstrate how their barn has an automatic ventilation system that kicks in when the temperature gets too high :)
- smegsicle 3y ago
  i suppose "we're getting the cell growing procedure worked out so that we're ready for when we can make our own stem cells" is a bit more believable than "we're getting the blood pinprick transport device worked out for when we have the sensor technology to do anything with it"
datavirtue 3y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I find myself having zero patience for introductions that set me up with a story. I just glanced over the first two paragraphs, rolled my eyes, and started reading at the third.
- PlunderBunny 3y ago
  When I read a Wired article on Ars Technica, I can tell (without looking at the byline) that it’s a Wired article simply because of this.
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  On September 34th, Johnny decided to get up from his chair, head outside for some fresh air after sitting in his pajamas at home “working” all day, and do some Satvic Yoga. That’s when a key line of code triggered on an errant latest-generation DJI Mavic Pro. This drone, manufactured by a “private” Chinese company, then descended 90 feet in only 4.2 seconds, and subsequently crashed. Directly into Johnny’s ass.
sshine 3y ago
Why not just grow mushrooms? Their cells are meaty, super high in protein, and they already exist / the “tech” has already been developed! There is an extremely large selection, some with additional health benefits.
- malfist 3y ago
  2-3 percent of the population has a mushroom allergy, myself included
  - smegsicle 3y ago
    that's too bad, they taste great with beef maybe better than worcestershire
- kaycebasques 3y ago
  I think I looked into the protein amounts back in my vegan days and was disappointed to discover that the amounts are fairly low. Maybe it depends on the type. Lots of other reasons for us to cultivate more mushrooms though. Mycelium Running outlines a lot of cool ideas.
- housemusicfan 3y ago
  Because mushrooms are NOT "super high in protein". A comparable serving of beef has about 12x the amount of protein as mushrooms.
  - xnx 3y ago
    12x? Isn't beef approximately 2/3 protein and mushrooms 1/2 protein?
    - pjscott 3y ago
      Mushrooms are about 90% water, but the non-water part is indeed roughly half protein.
ggm 3y ago
Some kind of partial surface rotation inside a horizontal or near horizontal drum Reactor? Combine the best bits of a single surface grow and a large production run with a helical feed surface emitting sheets of the stuff?
radar1310 3y ago
Another scam, imagine that.
- fbdab103 3y ago
  I only skimmed it, but nothing in the article said scam? More just that they are facing enormous problems scaling production. Both at producing macroscopic quantities of chicken (vs thin chicken sheets) and how to productionize the process so it could produce the mega tons required to be a commercial product.
  - Animats 3y ago
    > I only skimmed it, but nothing in the article said scam? Employee: "the startup could be the next Theranos".
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Employee in-jokes are not at all proof of misbehavior. Lots of teams poke fun at their shortcomings. They obviously don't look great, but you're excerpting that as if it's employee testimony. It wasn't.
raylad 3y ago
I'm not sure about chicken cells but my experience with growing human cells (WI-38 fibroblasts)[1] is that they want to grow in a monolayer. The way we grew them normally was in those roller bottles [2]: you have some tissue culture medium in the bottle (containing fetal calf serum, which is still required to grow mammalian cells AFAIK, another reason most of these companies can't do what they say) and other components. Then the bottles are put on their sides on a roller mechanism, in an incubator with a controlled CO2 concentration. The cells want to grow in a one-cell-thick monolayer all over the inside of the bottle. What they won't do is to grow a double layer. This is because they have "contact inhibition" which is a major mechanism for preventing tumor-like growth: when cells are touching each other, they stop dividing. So these guys are trying to grow tissue and what they seem to be doing instead is growing monolayers just like this on the inside of roller bottles, scraping them off, then putting them together again. One thing that disturbed me was that they need to coat the bottles with porcine gelatin. In that case, a lot of those "chicken" cutlets are actually pork! [1] WI-38 cells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WI-38 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WI-38 [2] Tissue culture in roller bottles (yes, the medium is red at least for mammalian cells): https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-hgsfepq18i/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/3810/5921/580851__36040.1564441169.1280.1280__01908.1564441878.jpg?c=2 https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-hgsfepq18i/images/stencil/12...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- papertigerau 3y ago
  Your experience matches with what I've seen. If you give the cells something spherical [1] to adhere to then you can achieve a higher yield, but still only a monolayer. [1] https://smartmcs.com.au/what-is-microcarrier/ https://smartmcs.com.au/what-is-microcarrier/
- nicoburns 3y ago
  > The cells want to grow in a one-cell-thick monolayer all over the inside of the bottle. What they won't do is to grow a double layer. This is because they have "contact inhibition" which is a major mechanism for preventing tumor-like growth: when cells are touching each other, they stop dividing. How does that work inside the human body, where presumably they do form 3D structures?
Animats 3y ago
The real success in this area is the Impossible burger. It's made mostly from peas and soy, with heme added to produce the bloody meat texture. The heme is made in a fermentation process not much more complex than brewing. Impossible has no problems with volume production - they sell through Burger King and WalMart. Growth rate about 85%/year.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  As a long-time meat eater, I find Impossible to be a passable substitute for ground beef in a lot of dishes. If they can get the end user price under control, they could displace a whole lot of beef consumption. At the current price point, it’s not nearly worth it on a taste or economic value comparison with 80% ground beef.
  - Animats 3y ago
    It seems more like they price it high because they can. The process isn't expensive. A 68,000 square foot plant makes a million pounds a month, says the company. It's not like lab-grown meat, which is a slow, expensive process. Amusingly, Impossible's ground beef like product was getting rave reviews from prominent foodies at first. It first appeared only at expensive restaurants. Then they got Burger King to sell it. Only then was there criticism.
    - spondylosaurus 3y ago
      You know how the working conditions in so many meatpacking plants are abysmal, like how Tyson Foods is always making headlines for some heinous shit? I wonder if conditions in Impossible plants are better by default. Fewer occupational hazards or whatever.
      - katbyte 3y ago
        It is likely far more automated requiring fewer people then butchering
      - 3y ago
workfromspace 3y ago
https://archive.ph/UEn8h https://archive.ph/UEn8h
zvmaz 3y ago
I really wish them to succeed. Imagine centuries from now, a future civilisation where human-inflicted cruelty towards billions and billions of sentient beings is ended...
- dkarl 3y ago
  Not to mention the benefits for us: all the space dedicated to pasture could be dedicated to wildlife or outdoor recreation, and all the high-density facilities fouling air and waterways could be closed. If it works for fish, we could stop scouring the ocean like an Old Testament-style god angry with our creation. Even the food snobs would be happy, since responsible wildlife management practices would yield a certain amount of expensive, hard-to-get wild meat that they could build a culinary mystique around.
  - jononomo 3y ago
    Space that is currently dedicated to pasture is already currently dedicated to wildlife. In fact, grazing cattle on land serves to rejuvenate the land, since the cattle's hoove's serve as little plows, and the cows walk around and poop and pee, which fertilizes the land and allows for insects and bugs to thrive, which helps the bird population, and the little rodents.
    - harvey9 3y ago
      In some cases that land was recently deforested. It was previously dedicated to wildlife but now it's dedicated to agriculture which happens to benefit some different wildlife.
      - jojobas 3y ago
        Forests are full of trees and trees tend to convert sunlight into wood, something that very little wildlife can eat. There's typically more food available to wildlife on pastures even when farmers try to fend off wildlife. For example, deforestation in Australia combined with a general reluctance of Australians to hunt brought about a kangaroo population explosion that requires government-mandated culls.
diziet 3y ago
Key takeaway paragraphs for me: "But roller bottles aren’t just problematic due to their miniscule output. They’re also expensive and wasteful, according to numerous biopharma and cultivated-meat industry sources. Each flask is made from sterile, single-use plastic, which must be discarded or recycled once it has generated its 2 to 3 grams of tissue. Given that an ordinary 2-liter plastic drink bottle can easily weigh 30 grams, Upside’s current production method likely produces plastic waste more than 10 times faster than it makes meat. “Can you imagine how much landfill waste you’re actually generating?” says one former employee, who was disturbed by the volume of single-use plastic being used at Upside. Roller bottles also require a lot of tending by human beings, says David Humbird, an independent analyst and bioprocess scale-up expert and author of a comprehensive economic assessment of cultivated meat. Before it can produce its 2 to 3 grams of tissue, each bottle will need to be individually prepared, filled with cells, then periodically opened and filled with new media over the course of several days—a painstaking process that staffers must repeat under sterile conditions with hundreds of bottles before finished cell sheets can be carefully squeegeed out. It’s an approach that requires many hours of work by trained scientists to yield a tiny serving of food. But the chicken served at Bar Crenn uses multiple animal-derived ingredients. The roller bottles in which the tissues are grown are coated with porcine gelatin to help the cells stick to the plastic surface. An FDA safety dossier submitted by Upside also confirms that it might use bovine serum to grow its cells. The current employee also said that bovine serum—derived from the blood of adult cattle—is being used in the roller bottle process for Bar Crenn."
- s0rce 3y ago
  I'm not sure the plastic use is super relevant at lab scale, as someone who has worked in lab cell culture the amount of plastic waste is enormous from all the single use individually packed sterile equipment. However, I don't think anyone is planning to scale up plastic single use tissue culture equipment to make food, its just not going to make economic sense. I can't comment on if they are claiming the current product is made in a scalable fashion or in a lab.
  - 3np 3y ago
    > I can't comment on if they are claiming the current product is made in a scalable fashion or in a lab. Seems pretty clear from TFA that unless WIRED are grossly misrepresenting facts, current product is made in a lab using roller bottles: > WIRED sent a detailed list of questions to Upside based on our reporting. In an emailed statement, Chen, the company’s chief operating officer, claimed that our reporting contained a number of factual inaccuracies but did not directly address any of the points raised. Chen went on to say that Upside’s current process for producing chicken fillets was not one the company intends “to scale in its current form.” > "All breakthrough innovations and transformative technologies, including scaling our cultivated meat products, will take time," Chen wrote in the emailed statement. "Cultivated meat is no exception. Not every research avenue, cultivator, or idea we explore will materialize exactly as we expected."
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

88 points by dtagames 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

> Another former employee confirmed that staffers at the company would make jokes comparing Upside to Theranos. that's taking it a little far... their goal is providing an ethical food source, not revolutionizing human diagnoses can't wait for meat-less meat tech to get through its paces and take the time to mature. humans took hundreds of years to figure out how to herd cattle; what's another few years to make it in a lab?

catgary 3y ago
Honestly, the roller bottle approach seems pretty reasonable when they’re making sure that the process is making good chicken. They’ve at least reduced the problem to making giant sheets of chicken-paper.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Yeah, I agree. Honestly, as long as the product isn't contaminated, the consumer doesn't care if it made in roller bottles or futuristic machines. At worse they are misleading investors, but are not endangering the health of consumers. Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just investors but the end consumer by promising them blood tests that did not actually work.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  > At worse they are misleading investors, but are not endangering the health of consumers. > Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just investors but the end consumer by promising them blood tests that did not actually work. Elizabeth Holmes was _acquitted_ of defrauding patients; her convictions were only for defrauding investors. This looks a lot like Theranos.
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    Balwani was convicted of defrauding patients though.
flangola7 3y ago
It's a time sensitive issue unfortunately
crooked-v 3y ago
Also, there's a significant difference between "the process works on a small scale, and would work at a large scale if we can solve the reliability/consistency issues" versus Theranos' "the process literally isn't physically possible at any scale and we've been outright lying about it the whole time".
- civilitty 3y ago
  I think lab grown meat is closer to a Theranos type scam than most people realize. The problem with Theranos wasn’t that their tech didn’t work at any scale; it’s that blood drawn from finger capillaries is useless for most diagnostic tests that they claimed to do. It’s a very subtle problem that only investors with proper scientific advisors with diagnostic experience caught onto (aka all the biotech VCs, who stayed far away). “If only” Theranos took regular blood samples from the arm instead of a few droplets from a finger prick, it could have worked but then it’d be just another unsexy competitor in onsite diagnostics. Lab grown meat is full of those kinds of caveats and while no company has committed as egregious a fraud as Theranos, they’re all going to eventually find themselves in the position where they either have to lie to keep getting investments or admit that it’s not feasible and fold. Personally, my bet is that without advanced bioengineering that can design entire artificial immune systems that protect the growing tissue, bioreactors will just be too expensive to scale up and compete with animals. IMO the only way it’ll work is if we have giant (semi-)open vats like salt evaporation pools that convert solar energy directly into protein and fat, with an engineered biome that responds to contamination like an immune system. And that's probably decades if not centuries ahead of us.
  - jareklupinski 3y ago
    > the only way it’ll work is if we have giant (semi-)open vats like salt evaporation pools that convert solar energy directly into protein and fat if we could replace the typical cattle pastures of today with this other system (basically the same idea without needing an organism that has a nervous system attached to it), I think we'll be closer to "making it" > with an engineered biome that responds to contamination like an immune system I saw a farmer once demonstrate how their barn has an automatic ventilation system that kicks in when the temperature gets too high :)
smegsicle 3y ago
i suppose "we're getting the cell growing procedure worked out so that we're ready for when we can make our own stem cells" is a bit more believable than "we're getting the blood pinprick transport device worked out for when we have the sensor technology to do anything with it"

datavirtue 3y ago

Maybe it's just me, but I find myself having zero patience for introductions that set me up with a story. I just glanced over the first two paragraphs, rolled my eyes, and started reading at the third.

PlunderBunny 3y ago
When I read a Wired article on Ars Technica, I can tell (without looking at the byline) that it’s a Wired article simply because of this.
syndicatedjelly 3y ago
On September 34th, Johnny decided to get up from his chair, head outside for some fresh air after sitting in his pajamas at home “working” all day, and do some Satvic Yoga. That’s when a key line of code triggered on an errant latest-generation DJI Mavic Pro. This drone, manufactured by a “private” Chinese company, then descended 90 feet in only 4.2 seconds, and subsequently crashed. Directly into Johnny’s ass.

sshine 3y ago

Why not just grow mushrooms? Their cells are meaty, super high in protein, and they already exist / the “tech” has already been developed! There is an extremely large selection, some with additional health benefits.

malfist 3y ago
2-3 percent of the population has a mushroom allergy, myself included
- smegsicle 3y ago
  that's too bad, they taste great with beef maybe better than worcestershire
kaycebasques 3y ago
I think I looked into the protein amounts back in my vegan days and was disappointed to discover that the amounts are fairly low. Maybe it depends on the type. Lots of other reasons for us to cultivate more mushrooms though. Mycelium Running outlines a lot of cool ideas.
housemusicfan 3y ago
Because mushrooms are NOT "super high in protein". A comparable serving of beef has about 12x the amount of protein as mushrooms.
- xnx 3y ago
  12x? Isn't beef approximately 2/3 protein and mushrooms 1/2 protein?
  - pjscott 3y ago
    Mushrooms are about 90% water, but the non-water part is indeed roughly half protein.

ggm 3y ago

Some kind of partial surface rotation inside a horizontal or near horizontal drum Reactor? Combine the best bits of a single surface grow and a large production run with a helical feed surface emitting sheets of the stuff?

radar1310 3y ago

Another scam, imagine that.

fbdab103 3y ago
I only skimmed it, but nothing in the article said scam? More just that they are facing enormous problems scaling production. Both at producing macroscopic quantities of chicken (vs thin chicken sheets) and how to productionize the process so it could produce the mega tons required to be a commercial product.
- Animats 3y ago
  > I only skimmed it, but nothing in the article said scam? Employee: "the startup could be the next Theranos".
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Employee in-jokes are not at all proof of misbehavior. Lots of teams poke fun at their shortcomings. They obviously don't look great, but you're excerpting that as if it's employee testimony. It wasn't.

raylad 3y ago

I'm not sure about chicken cells but my experience with growing human cells (WI-38 fibroblasts)[1] is that they want to grow in a monolayer. The way we grew them normally was in those roller bottles [2]: you have some tissue culture medium in the bottle (containing fetal calf serum, which is still required to grow mammalian cells AFAIK, another reason most of these companies can't do what they say) and other components. Then the bottles are put on their sides on a roller mechanism, in an incubator with a controlled CO2 concentration. The cells want to grow in a one-cell-thick monolayer all over the inside of the bottle. What they won't do is to grow a double layer. This is because they have "contact inhibition" which is a major mechanism for preventing tumor-like growth: when cells are touching each other, they stop dividing. So these guys are trying to grow tissue and what they seem to be doing instead is growing monolayers just like this on the inside of roller bottles, scraping them off, then putting them together again. One thing that disturbed me was that they need to coat the bottles with porcine gelatin. In that case, a lot of those "chicken" cutlets are actually pork! [1] WI-38 cells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WI-38 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WI-38 [2] Tissue culture in roller bottles (yes, the medium is red at least for mammalian cells): https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-hgsfepq18i/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/3810/5921/580851__36040.1564441169.1280.1280__01908.1564441878.jpg?c=2 https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-hgsfepq18i/images/stencil/12...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
papertigerau 3y ago
Your experience matches with what I've seen. If you give the cells something spherical [1] to adhere to then you can achieve a higher yield, but still only a monolayer. [1] https://smartmcs.com.au/what-is-microcarrier/ https://smartmcs.com.au/what-is-microcarrier/
nicoburns 3y ago
> The cells want to grow in a one-cell-thick monolayer all over the inside of the bottle. What they won't do is to grow a double layer. This is because they have "contact inhibition" which is a major mechanism for preventing tumor-like growth: when cells are touching each other, they stop dividing. How does that work inside the human body, where presumably they do form 3D structures?

Animats 3y ago

The real success in this area is the Impossible burger. It's made mostly from peas and soy, with heme added to produce the bloody meat texture. The heme is made in a fermentation process not much more complex than brewing. Impossible has no problems with volume production - they sell through Burger King and WalMart. Growth rate about 85%/year.

sokoloff 3y ago
As a long-time meat eater, I find Impossible to be a passable substitute for ground beef in a lot of dishes. If they can get the end user price under control, they could displace a whole lot of beef consumption. At the current price point, it’s not nearly worth it on a taste or economic value comparison with 80% ground beef.
- Animats 3y ago
  It seems more like they price it high because they can. The process isn't expensive. A 68,000 square foot plant makes a million pounds a month, says the company. It's not like lab-grown meat, which is a slow, expensive process. Amusingly, Impossible's ground beef like product was getting rave reviews from prominent foodies at first. It first appeared only at expensive restaurants. Then they got Burger King to sell it. Only then was there criticism.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    You know how the working conditions in so many meatpacking plants are abysmal, like how Tyson Foods is always making headlines for some heinous shit? I wonder if conditions in Impossible plants are better by default. Fewer occupational hazards or whatever.
    - katbyte 3y ago
      It is likely far more automated requiring fewer people then butchering
    - 3y ago

workfromspace 3y ago

https://archive.ph/UEn8h https://archive.ph/UEn8h

zvmaz 3y ago

I really wish them to succeed. Imagine centuries from now, a future civilisation where human-inflicted cruelty towards billions and billions of sentient beings is ended...

dkarl 3y ago
Not to mention the benefits for us: all the space dedicated to pasture could be dedicated to wildlife or outdoor recreation, and all the high-density facilities fouling air and waterways could be closed. If it works for fish, we could stop scouring the ocean like an Old Testament-style god angry with our creation. Even the food snobs would be happy, since responsible wildlife management practices would yield a certain amount of expensive, hard-to-get wild meat that they could build a culinary mystique around.
- jononomo 3y ago
  Space that is currently dedicated to pasture is already currently dedicated to wildlife. In fact, grazing cattle on land serves to rejuvenate the land, since the cattle's hoove's serve as little plows, and the cows walk around and poop and pee, which fertilizes the land and allows for insects and bugs to thrive, which helps the bird population, and the little rodents.
  - harvey9 3y ago
    In some cases that land was recently deforested. It was previously dedicated to wildlife but now it's dedicated to agriculture which happens to benefit some different wildlife.
    - jojobas 3y ago
      Forests are full of trees and trees tend to convert sunlight into wood, something that very little wildlife can eat. There's typically more food available to wildlife on pastures even when farmers try to fend off wildlife. For example, deforestation in Australia combined with a general reluctance of Australians to hunt brought about a kangaroo population explosion that requires government-mandated culls.

diziet 3y ago

Key takeaway paragraphs for me: "But roller bottles aren’t just problematic due to their miniscule output. They’re also expensive and wasteful, according to numerous biopharma and cultivated-meat industry sources. Each flask is made from sterile, single-use plastic, which must be discarded or recycled once it has generated its 2 to 3 grams of tissue. Given that an ordinary 2-liter plastic drink bottle can easily weigh 30 grams, Upside’s current production method likely produces plastic waste more than 10 times faster than it makes meat. “Can you imagine how much landfill waste you’re actually generating?” says one former employee, who was disturbed by the volume of single-use plastic being used at Upside. Roller bottles also require a lot of tending by human beings, says David Humbird, an independent analyst and bioprocess scale-up expert and author of a comprehensive economic assessment of cultivated meat. Before it can produce its 2 to 3 grams of tissue, each bottle will need to be individually prepared, filled with cells, then periodically opened and filled with new media over the course of several days—a painstaking process that staffers must repeat under sterile conditions with hundreds of bottles before finished cell sheets can be carefully squeegeed out. It’s an approach that requires many hours of work by trained scientists to yield a tiny serving of food. But the chicken served at Bar Crenn uses multiple animal-derived ingredients. The roller bottles in which the tissues are grown are coated with porcine gelatin to help the cells stick to the plastic surface. An FDA safety dossier submitted by Upside also confirms that it might use bovine serum to grow its cells. The current employee also said that bovine serum—derived from the blood of adult cattle—is being used in the roller bottle process for Bar Crenn."

s0rce 3y ago
I'm not sure the plastic use is super relevant at lab scale, as someone who has worked in lab cell culture the amount of plastic waste is enormous from all the single use individually packed sterile equipment. However, I don't think anyone is planning to scale up plastic single use tissue culture equipment to make food, its just not going to make economic sense. I can't comment on if they are claiming the current product is made in a scalable fashion or in a lab.
- 3np 3y ago
  > I can't comment on if they are claiming the current product is made in a scalable fashion or in a lab. Seems pretty clear from TFA that unless WIRED are grossly misrepresenting facts, current product is made in a lab using roller bottles: > WIRED sent a detailed list of questions to Upside based on our reporting. In an emailed statement, Chen, the company’s chief operating officer, claimed that our reporting contained a number of factual inaccuracies but did not directly address any of the points raised. Chen went on to say that Upside’s current process for producing chicken fillets was not one the company intends “to scale in its current form.” > "All breakthrough innovations and transformative technologies, including scaling our cultivated meat products, will take time," Chen wrote in the emailed statement. "Cultivated meat is no exception. Not every research avenue, cultivator, or idea we explore will materialize exactly as we expected."

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]