5,000 burgers a day: World’s first cultured meat-production plant opens in Israel

The world’s first industrial cultured meat facility has opened in the city of Rehovot, home to the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Agriculture, Israeli slaughter-free meat-production startup Future Meat Technologies announced on Wednesday.

With the capability to produce 500 kilograms (1,102 pounds) of cultured products a day, equivalent to 5,000 hamburgers, this facility makes scalable cell-based meat production a reality.

“This facility opening marks a huge step in Future Meat Technologies’ path to market, serving as a critical enabler to bring our products to shelves by 2022,” said Rom Kshuk, CEO of Future Meat Technologies. “Having a running industrial line accelerates key processes such as regulation and product development.”

Currently, the facility can produce cultured chicken, pork and lamb, without the use of animal serum or genetic modification, with the production of beef coming soon. The company claims its unique platform enables fast production cycles—about 20 times faster than traditional animal agriculture.

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Professor Yaakov Nahmias, the company’s founder and chief scientific officer, said that “after demonstrating that cultured meat can reach cost parity faster than the market anticipated, this production facility is the real game-changer.”

“This facility demonstrates our proprietary media rejuvenation technology in scale, allowing us to reach production densities 10-times higher than the industrial standard. Our goal is to make cultured meat affordable for everyone, while ensuring we produce delicious food that is both healthy and sustainable, helping to secure the future of coming generations,” he added.

Future Meat’s cruelty-free production process is expected to generate 80 percent less greenhouse emissions, and use 99 percent less land and 96 percent less freshwater than traditional meat production.

The company aims to reach U.S. shelves in 2022 and is currently in the process of approving its production facility with regulatory agencies in multiple territories. It is eyeing several locations in the United States for its projected expansion.

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.