According to an internal email obtained by Wired, Upside Foods is halting plans to build a 187,000-sq-ft cultivated meat plant near Chicago—nicknamed Rubicon—that could produce 30 million pounds annually. The plant would be one of the largest cell-cultured meat facilities in the world, and Upside's second plant in addition to its Emeryville, Calif., location, which is also the company's headquarters.
In that email, Upside CEO Uma Valeti told employees that expanding operations in Emeryville would cost substantially less than starting construction on Rubicon. The news impacts 16 employees at Upside tied to the Illinois project. The facility is projected to employ 75 workers if it is built. In the memo, Valeti said Upside still planned to build a full-scale facility after the company had “delivered key proof points” through its Emeryville factory.
The news comes on the heels of politicians in Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, and others looking to ban and/or limit the sale of cultivated meat in their states. Last year, Upside Foods and Good Meat were granted USDA approval to sell cultivated chicken to the public. Soon after the approval, Upside's cell-cultured chicken debuted at Michelin-starred Bar Crenn in San Francisco, while Good Meat's cultivated chicken appeared at Chef José Andrés' China Chilcano restaurant in Washington, D.C. Both restaurants have recently paused serving cell-cultured chicken.
The cost of producing cultivated meat has been a longtime hurdle for the industry, as price parity with traditional meat in retail and foodservice is currently not close, and the funding to continue working towards that goal is not as robust as years past.
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In an interview I had with Lou Cooperhouse, president & CEO of San Diego-based cell-cultured seafood company BlueNalu, he predicted the 2030s would be the decade where cultivated meat would reach price parity as the industry figures out its supply chain for feed media and other expenses that keep it from immediately reaching wide-scale grocery distribution today.
Generally speaking, cultivated meat is grown from primary animal cells in cultivators similar to fermentation tanks for breweries, with some companies using edible scaffolding made of substances like soy or algae, for cells to latch onto and grow into an undefined piece of meat. Because cultivated meat doesn’t grow into specific animal parts, like chicken legs or thighs for example, the finished mass of meat is formed later into whatever the company wants to sell, like nuggets, tenders, or even whole-muscle slabs.
