Re:meat Emerges From Stealth Mode With World’s First Cultivated Swedish Meatballs

Swedish cultivated meat startup, Re:meat, has emerged from stealth mode with the world’s first cultivated Swedish meatballs.

Joining the bevy of cultivated meat startups, Re:meat is the latest to emerge from stealth mode with a novel product. The Swedish startup is working to develop what it says will be Scandinavia’s first large-scale cultivated meat facility and the world’s first cultivated Swedish meatballs.

Re:meat’s rocket to Mars

Re:meat was founded last year by Jacob Schaldemose Peterson, Marie Gibbons, and Gittan Schiöld — a team experienced in cell biology, bioprocess engineering, business development, and large-scale capital
investment projects. The company’s first product, cultivated Swedish meatballs, is a breakthrough, the company told Vegconomist.

Re:meat says in recent consumer tastings, the Swedish meatballs received “overwhelmingly positive” feedback on taste, texture, and flavor.

“The key to unleashing food’s immense climate potential lies in the intersection of new technologies and products that hack/overcome human behavior change — which has proven more difficult than flying a rocket to Mars,” Schaldemose told Vegconomist.

FBS alternatives

Re:meat says it has developed a fetal bovine serum alternative that it says will allow it to direct its resources toward increasing production and to launch its large-scale production pilot facility next year. This is particularly timely following the recent USDA approval of cultivated meat from Upside Foods and Good Meat last month as well as Singapore’s approval of Good Meat in 2020. And, it says, with cultivated meat now a reality, scalability is critical.

“The cultivated meat industry is still heavily focused on R&D,” Schaldemose said. “History shows across industries that companies born as pure R&D companies later struggle to transform into manufacturing companies, since that type of organization requires a totally different mindset, skillset, and leadership. Re:meat does not have this legacy, but is born focusing on scaling production from day one.”

The news comes after another cultivated meat startup, California’s Omeat, emerged from stealth mode last month. Omeat says it has developed an innovative alternative to fetal bovine serum that also allows it to dramatically cut costs and scale quickly to meet consumer demand.

“The approach we uncovered and are currently scaling is a simple and elegant solution that taps into the natural biology of animals to let nature do its work,” Founder and CEO of Omeat, Dr. Ali Khademhosseini, said in a statement “The result is real meat that’s pure, delicious, and can satisfy a growing population’s demand for meat in a sustainable and humane way.”