A cellular agriculture research program has been awarded a €2.7 million grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 R&D funding framework. The project, Meat4All, is one of the first research consortiums on cellular agriculture to receive public funding from the EU, which the group says is a sign that European lawmakers are “effectively” committing to cell-cultivated meat.
The Meat4All project will focus on scaling-up cellular agriculture production to meet projected demand, maintaining the nutritional value of cultivated meat when grown at large in large-scale, developing an animal product-free cell culture medium and more.
The consortium underpinning Meat4All is made up of smaller organisations and led by Spanish company BioTech Foods, which is working to produce cell-cultivated pork under the brand Ethicameat. BioTech Foods CEO Iñigo Charola said of the grant, “Cultured meat will be a key ingredient of our future diet, and now we have it confirmed also by the institutions.””
The consortium noted the project would enable the EU “to leverage the high potential of this market,” and that the challenge for cultivated meat companies is “to reach the production capacity necessary to supply the meat processing industry.”
READ MORE: Lab-grown meat project gets first taste of EU public funds [Tech Crunch]