You know things are hot when celebrities are signing term sheets. While helpful, it’s not their money that’s propping up the food-tech ecosystem. So the question here is this: Do VCs have the fortitude to continue supporting the more than 150 startups seeking to design a cell-cultured analogue to cheap meat? Perhaps the better question is: Should they?
Read MoreCell-cultivated meat may appear to be proceeding ever closer to being on sale in the United States, but production, cost, and formulation issues are still bedeviling the one-time disruptors.
This month, the USDA approved labeling of the food once called lab-grown meat. In quick succession the regulatory agency granted Eat Just and then Upside Foods approval of what the startups could call their product. The verdict: cell-cultivated meat.
Read MoreOn a recent Monday morning in a Shanghai conference room, four executives from a major Chinese food producer and distributor sat socially distanced from one another, pulled down their masks, and tried some fake eggs. In a makeshift basement office in San Francisco, 15 hours behind, Josh Tetrick, the chief executive officer of egg-substitute maker Eat Just Inc., watched via Zoom.
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