Name: The future of meat? Inside the Oxford-based startup turning cells into 'steaks'
Uploaded: 2025-09-02T17:54:21.000Z
Duration: 5 min 52 s
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Ivy Farm Technologies was created in 2019 as a spin-out from the University of Oxford.

On the outskirt of the city is the company's headquarters, and as you'd expect from a cell cultivator, it doesn't look like your typical farm.

Ivy Farm's head of product development, cooked a beef prototype made with 90% plant-based protein and 10% cultivated meat cells.

Smells a little bit different to what you would get in the supermarket with a farmed cut of meat, but the texture looks very similar.

So Manuela, how much testing do you usually have to do to know that this is safe to be eaten?

So we look if there is any microorganism inside our cells.

At the moment, of course, until we are not regulated to approve, we can't really give people to eat ourselves.

Can you describe to me the taste of it, though?

The taste is really meaty and really brings back the umami flavor that you have usually with meat, and it covers really well the typical plant-based aftertaste that you have on a pure plant-based product.

It also produces bao buns, burgers, meatballs, and gyozas.

I took a tour of the labs to see what goes into making them.

We kind of start with getting a very small tissue sample.

At the minute, we're really going with a beef product, so Aberdeen Angus Wagyu, and we kind of go through a process of extracting the cells out of that tissue.

Out of all of that tissue, there's really only a small number of cells that we're actually really interested in that really have that ability to thrive in our environment that we put them in.

We go through a process of training the cells, putting them through a bit of stress to really work out which are those really top performers that we have.

And where are you getting the initial tissues from?

So currently, we have a really great partnership with a company in Northern Ireland.

So the tissue that we get is actually animals that they are already taking for slaughter for their own meat purposes.

In the future, we really won't be hoping to go back to anything that's dead.

But also, ideally, once we've kind of got those cells, we really don't have need to go back to the animal anyway.

Once the cell lines have been selected, they are grown in suspension in a culture media.

Sharath Warrior is head of Cell Culture Media R&D.

Cell Culture Media, think of it as a soup and essentially has all the nutrients the cells need.

Different cell types have different requirements.

For example, our beef has high levels of omega-3 and omega-6.

That's because of our engineering of the cells.

Before we go into production, what we need to ensure is that the population cells and the cell culture media is absolutely sterile.

And essentially, everything is antibiotic-free.

Sterilization and testing complete, the cells grow on a small scale in plates or flasks before being put into these big mixing tanks called bioreactors.

The largest one is called Betty and she used to make insulin.

Now though, she's been repurposed to hold up to 600 liters and make around three tons of meat per year.

You can think of what comes out of our bioreactors as something like a pâté, essentially.

Minced product, and then we're experimenting with a plant protein to make it look and feel and taste a lot like beef products you would buy in a supermarket today.

Ivy Farm estimates that the process from cell sample to mince will eventually take around three weeks.

There isn't a price tag yet for its products, but the expectation is that it will take a while for cultivated meat to reach price parity with traditional meat.

I think to start with, just like any other nascent industries, you know, this cultivated meat industry also goes through a cost curve.

So when you, for example, go to buy Aberdeen Angus, typically costs $10 to $15 a kilo.

Our process and our R&D is focused to achieve that kind of a cost matrix.

And only then we can really make a true difference on the sustainability goals when you go full scale.

But first, the company will need to seduce consumers.

Ultimately, this is going to go down to educating consumers, essentially, that, look, this is not different than the real meat.

Ivy Farm's goal is to sell its products to food companies for them to mix with farmed or plant-based meat.

The way we envisage is it's a generation one paste that can be mixed with the plant-based meat.

As we scale up, then essentially that should have a gen two, gen three, and the texture and so on.

Despite Betty's impressive output, it will still take a lot more like her to satisfy the demand of, say, an average city's meat consumption.

Another hurdle to overcome is regulatory approval.

Ivy Farm has submitted its products for consideration by food governing bodies in the US, the UK, and Singapore, and expects to be able to go to market by the end of 2025.

It can be mixed with the plant-based meat.

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The future of meat? Inside the Oxford-based startup turning cells into 'steaks'

ultimately

essentially

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