Higher Steaks

Although pork has nearly half the carbon footprint per pound as beef, we eat twice as much of it. Pork is now the world’s most popular meat, accounting for 35% of global consumption. And it’s growing, driven up by Chinese demand, which accounts for roughly half of all pork sales. Industrial pork production is also tied to infectious diseases like Swine Fever that killed nearly 40% of China’s pig population in 2019. Higher Steaks produces non-genetically modified bacon and pork belly from cultured cells, without losing the taste or texture of meat from animals. Using a novel approach involving induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), they can efficiently convert minimally-invasive blood samples into full-fledged muscle, fat, and skin tissues without needing to genetically modify any cell DNA. The novelty of their approach is to succeed in using iPSCs without genetic modification. It allows for more efficient cell differentiation, or the process of turning stem cells into muscle, fat, and skin tissue. This points toward a more scalable path to meat production while preserving a quicker path to regulatory and consumer acceptance in key geographies, particularly in the UK and European Union.