Lighting THE WAY Cultivated BREAKTHROUGH BIOMANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY CAN PROGRAM CELL GROWTH WITH LIGHT, ALLOWING COMPANIES TO PRODUCE CULTIVATED MEAT WITH HIGHER PRODUCTION OUTPUT — AND WITHOUT COSTLY, UNSUSTAINABLE GROWTH FACTORS. By Jennifer Joseph, contributing editor 2013, it was lauded with much hype and hope. Industry experts and ven-ture capitalists saw cultivated meat as a future-looking solution to meet growing global demand for protein, increase food security and dramatical-ly reduce the carbon footprint of meat production. But while plenty of progress has been made in developing cultured meat products over the past decade, the same economic hurdle: Growing cells requires recombinant proteins or growth factors that can cost as much as gold, gram for gram — and this expense drives input costs too high for cultivated meat products to be priced competitively with conventional meat. Photography by Prolific Machines W hen cellular agriculture first made a splash in the mainstream media back in researchers and startups keep hitting Prolific Machines technology stimu-lates cell growth using light. 16 Alt-Meat August 2025
Alt-Meat August 2025: Page 16
