Aleph Farms, which grows meat from cattle cells, hopes to set up a consortium with space agencies to integrate its meat-growing innovations into space programmes.
The company says wants to ‘push the boundaries’ of its production process, according to a report in The Times of Israel.
The main aim of the new initiative is to find new ways for producing meat even in harsh and remote extraterrestrial environments.
The report said ‘BioFarms’ on Mars or on the Moon would enable Aleph to eventually apply the lessons learned in space to earthbound sites.
The programme comes on the heels of the company’s first experiment producing meat on the International Space Station a year ago.
The company said at the time that it had grown bovine cells harvested on Earth into muscle tissue under micro-gravity conditions using a 3D printer created by the Russian company 3D Bioprinting Solutions.
‘Last year we already produced meat in space,’ said Didier Toubia, Aleph’s co-founder and CEO. ‘We already delivered a proof of concept.’
He said space was ‘our Formula One to test new ways of creating meat with zero resources and reducing the footprint’.
The company hoped to build its first BioFarms on Earth for the pilot production of its meat in 2021 by partnering with food manufacturers in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
[Picture: Aynur Zakirov from Pixabay]