Dutch Pioneer Mosa Meat Opens World’s Largest Cultivated Meat Facility

Mosa Meat, a global leader in the cultivated meat industry, has unveiled a new 2,760 square-meter (29,708 square feet) facility bringing its total footprint to 7,340 square meters (79,007 square feet).

The Dutch-based cultivated meat producer says the Maastricht facility, dubbed C.A.M.P.U.S. (Center for Advanced Meat Production, Upscaling, and Sustainability), its fourth, readies the company for large-scale production once it receives regulatory approval.

The company was co-founded by Dr. Mark Post, the Dutch scientist who made history in August 2013 when he unveiled the world’s first cultivated beef hamburger.

The company has since been working to scale up production in a cleaner and more sustainable manner to help reshape the global food system. Last year, the company published research in the journal Nature Food detailing how it replaced the controversial growth medium, fetal bovine serum, without genetically altering cells in its meat.

According to the Crunchbase data, the company has raised $96 million in venture capital funding to advance its efforts.

Ready to scale

Mosa Meat is currently working to clear regulatory hurdles in Singapore — the only country that has approved cultivated meat to date.

California’s Eat Just remains the only cultivated meat player in the world to have earned regulatory approval earn anywhere; in 2020, the Singapore Food Agency granted the company a license to sell its GOOD Meat cultivated chicken.

A number of other cultivated meat producers are working to secure approval in Singapore and elsewhere. Eat Just along with Upside Foods, another California-based cultivated meat producer, have both received “no questions” letters from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — the first step in the country’s two-agency approval process.

In November of last year, Mosa Meat signed a partnership agreement with Esco Aster, a Singaporean cultivated meat manufacturer to help bring its cultivated beef to market. 

“When we introduced cultivated meat to the world, we predicted it would take 10 years to create a consumer product,” Mosa Meat Co-founder & CSO Dr. Mark Post said in a statement. “Now, almost exactly 10 years later, we have a consumer product that we can start making in larger quantities and that we can start serving to consumers in Singapore, pending regulatory approval.”

The new facility’s inauguration event included a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Maastricht’s Mayor Annemarie Penn-te Strake, Limburg’s Governor Emile Roemer, and the Mosa Meat team. Chef Hans van Wolde conducted a cultivated burger cooking demonstration, and guests toured the new facility. The event was attended by more than 50 investors, journalists, and value chain partners from around the world. The facility will initiate its first production runs within days, the company said.

‘Hundreds of thousands of cultivated hamburgers per year’

“As this scale-up facility comes online next month, we will have the capacity to make tens of thousands of cultivated hamburgers,” Mosa Meat CEO Maarten Bosch said of the launch.

“The facility is designed to grow as demand increases with regulatory approvals and regional market entries, up to hundreds of thousands of cultivated hamburgers per year. And in combination with our contract manufacturer in Singapore, even a lot more. We are excited to debut this great-tasting hamburger today that even hardcore carnivores will love,” Bosch said.

Renowned Chef Hans van Wolde said that when he first tried a Mosa Burger, he was “blown away” by the beefy taste and the “amazing mouthfeel of the beef fat.”

“It gave me goosebumps,” the chef said. “I genuinely believe this new way of making beef can delight connoisseurs and casual beef lovers alike while enjoying the positive benefits of cultivated beef from a sustainability perspective.”

As he cooked a Mosa Meat cultivated beef burger for a crowd of onlookers today, chef van Wolde told them: “This is really going to be the best f… burger you’ve ever tasted.”

“So I really wasn’t sure about any of this, but then I participated in my first tastings panel and I literally got goosebumps. I didn’t sleep all night as I was thinking about it.  The beef flavor was still in my mouth after an hour,” he added.

‘Beef needs a solution’

In a white paper published late last year, Mosa Meat’s CEO Maarten Bosch urged governments to back the cultivated meat industry.

“Beef needs a solution. Industrial meat production continues to accelerate the climate crisis, while the world’s demand for beef is steadily growing,” he said. “Animal agriculture accounts for nearly 60 percent of agriculture’s total global emissions. The sector is the second-largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are creating an alternative approach to producing real beef. With Mosa Meat’s rapid recent growth, creating the biggest scientific team in the industry and the largest cultivated meat campus in the world, I am very excited for what lies ahead as we help reshape the global food system,” he added.