LOS ANGELES — Omeat has announced its entry into the cultivated meat market and revealed a new method it said reduces input costs with scalability. The company has worked for four years on its technology and believes it will meet the global demand for beef and other types of animal protein. The process uses regenerative factors extracted humanely from healthy, living cows to derive growth media, a major cost driver in producing cultivated meat. The media can be used to cost-effectively grow any kind of meat, such as beef, pork, chicken or fish.

Ali Khademhosseini, PhD and engineer, leads Omeat as founder and chief executive officer. Through his research into conventional meat production and cultivated meat production Khademhosseini began to understand the challenges involved and shifted focus from growing human tissues for medical applications to developing a scalable method for growing cultivated meat.

“The conventional approach to meat production comes with major adverse effects on the environment, public health, and animal welfare,” Khademhosseini said. “We saw an opportunity to leverage our expertise to discover a scalable way to grow cultivated meat. The approach we uncovered and are currently scaling is a simple and elegant solution that taps into the natural biology of animals to let nature do its work. The result is real meat that’s pure, delicious, and can satisfy a growing population’s demand for meat in a sustainable and humane way.”

Omeat’s freely grazing herd of cows on the company farm in California provide the growth media. The farm’s ultimate goal is carbon neutrality and already employs a number of regenerative practices for soil health, including no tilling, planting cover crops, rotational grazing, and natural fertilization by Omeat’s free-roaming herd. Watering is provided by about 30,000 gallons of rainwater per acre, minimizing runoff or the need for watering.

Omeat employs a full-time veterinarian on board and animal-welfare scientist Kristina Horback, PhD at UC Davis designed the farm with a focus on animal care. This work entailed the development of processes for collecting plasma, a nutrient fluid that is the source of Omeat’s proprietary growth media and collection practices that use positive reinforcement and are designed to ensure the holistic well-being of the animals. Omeat collects plasma weekly similar to the way humans donate plasma. Because plasma regenerates quickly, it does not deplete the animal.

“With one cow providing plasma weekly, we can create many cows’ worth of meat annually,” Khademhosseini said. “This means we can feed the planet with only a fraction of the current number of animals used in beef production. We see ourselves as a meat company, and our goal is to be a bridge to the future of the meat industry. We’re perfecting a sustainable operation that existing farms and ranches can implement, generating the same volume of product but with a fraction of the overhead. It’s way more efficient, and we don’t have to sacrifice the cow.”

The company chose beef because it aligns with Omeat’s vision for positive impact and near-term consumer accessibility. Additionally, in research conducted by the Good Food Institute, ground beef is the cultivated meat for which consumers expressed the greatest interest.

Omeat raised an oversubscribed $40 million Series A in 2022. Backers include the prominent VCs S2G Ventures, Google Ventures, Bold Capital Partners, Tyson Ventures, the venture capital arm of Tyson Foods Inc., Rethink Food, Trailhead Capital and Cavallo Ventures. The company is currently building a pilot plant and rapidly expanding its team toward commercial readiness. Also, the company is in direct conversations with the Food and Drug Administration and the United States Department of Agriculture moving toward regulatory approval.