Growing steaks in space

Israeli food tech start-up Aleph Farms has launched a program that plans to bring local production of cultivated meat to outer space. Called ‘Aleph Zero’, the program plans to establish BioFarms in extraterrestrial environments.

With a good knowledge of cell biology, tissue engineering and food science, the company first experimented with producing meat on the International Space Station a year ago. This resulted in new capacities to cultivate real meat directly from various types of cow cells, under micro-gravity and far from any natural resources.

The core mission of the new initiative is centred on introducing new capabilities for locally producing fresh, quality meat even in the most harsh and remote extraterrestrial environments, such as space. It has a vision for advancing food security by producing fresh quality meat anywhere, independent of climate change and of availability of local natural resources.

To achieve this goal, Aleph Farms is securing strategic partnerships with technology companies and space agencies for long-term collaborative research and development contracts.

“The constraints imposed by deep-space-exploration — the cold, thin environment and the circular approach — force us to tighten the efficiency of our meat production process to much higher sustainability standards,” explained Didier Toubia, Co-Founder and CEO of Aleph Farms. “The program Aleph Zero reflects our mission of producing quality, delicious meat locally where people live and consume it, even in the most remote places on Earth like the Sahara Desert or Antarctica, providing unconditional access to high-quality nutrition to anyone, anytime, anywhere.”

Aleph Farms was co-founded with The Kitchen Hub of the Strauss Group and with Professor Shulamit Levenberg of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. In May 2019, the company raised a US$12m Series-A investment round participated by partners and venture capital.

Image caption: A 3D rendering of Space BioFarms.