Corporates tuck into Mosa Meat’s series A

Mosa Meat, a Netherlands-based cultured meat developer spun out from Maastricht University, obtained €7.5m ($8.7m) on Tuesday in a series A round co-led by meat processing group Bell Food and pharmaceutical firm Merck.

GlassWall Syndicate also participated in the round. Merck took part through its corporate venturing subsidiary, M Ventures.

Founded in 2016, Mosa Meat is developing a commercial production process to generate synthetic meat grown from cultured animal organisms such as cells rather than by slaughtering livestock.

The approach works by collecting muscular stem cell samples from an animal before housing the fragments within an in vitro environment, which enables them to exponentially multiply as if they were still in their host organism. The cells can be differentiated further into the process.

Mosa Meat was co-founded by chief scientific officer Mark Post, a professor of physiology at Maastricht who presented a beef burger manufactured from cow cells in 2013.

The spinout will use the series A capital to formulate a less costly production process for its meat, with the aim of establishing a pilot manufacturing plant by 2021.

Mosa Meat’s earlier backers include angel investor Sergey Brin, president of internet technology conglomerate Alphabet, who injected $330,000 in 2013.

Alexander Hoffman, principal at M Ventures, said: “Replacing traditional meat production with cultured meat would have a huge impact on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, it would free up a large amount of resources that are now used for meat production worldwide and will completely disrupt an old-established and currently unsustainable industry.

“We are incredibly excited to be leading this investment into Mosa Meat, a company at the unique cross-section of food and biotech.”