Middle East, Asia likely to become biggest markets for cultivated meat: Aleph Farms CEO
DAVOS: With concerns surrounding intensive agricultural farming and its damaging role in climate change growing, progress in the field of cell-cultivated meat has sped up in recent years.
Companies and scientists behind creating meat, fish or dairy products using the cells of an animal in a laboratory, without harm coming to the animal, have received substantial backing over the past half-decade.
One such company, Aleph Farms based in Israel, raised more than $100 million in last year’s Series B funding round and counts actor Leonardo DiCaprio among its backers.
It is on track for market launch by the end of this year, or the beginning of 2023 at the latest, its co-founder and CEO Didier Toubia told Arab News at the World Economic Forum.
“It will depend upon regulatory approval, but we are working actively on making sure the approvals arrive as quickly as possible, it’s not an exact science,” he said.
With food security issues growing, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the disruption to global supply chains and increase in shipping costs, there is a strong political will to come up with more secure, local ways to produce high-quality nutrition, Toubia said.
He believes the Middle East and Asia will be considerable markets for the cultivated meat sector.