Protein Pioneer: Joshua March

With widespread concerns surrounding the scalability of cultivated meat, SCiFi Food’s Joshua March is adamant that developing blended products is the fastest way to bring an affordable product to market. Here, he separates fact from fiction and explains how his company is achieving that feat

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Whether or not Joshua March can be classified as a cell-cultivated meat pioneer in the same vein as Willem van Eelen or Mosa Meat’s Mark Post is open to debate. Yet his company’s technical approach to ‘growing’ meat – and his longstanding belief that scaling will be a thorn in the side of the cultivated meat industry for years to come – sets him, and his company, apart in a sector that has seen two of its biggest players recently rethink their roadmaps.

A business needs to make an affordable product that consumers love at scale. Right now, blended products are
the only option that fit that description

“I just don’t believe the technology exists today to produce 100% cultivated meat at any kind of meaningful scale or cost,” insists March, CEO & Co-founder of the California-based SCiFi Foods, which is creating burgers made of real cultivated beef cells plus plant-based ingredients, primarily soy protein. “Sure, a company can release a tiny amount of product a month, but that’s not a real business opportunity. You’re losing incredible amounts of money on every single bite, and barely making a dent in the world. What’s the point? A business needs to make an affordable product that consumers love at scale. Right now, blended products are the only option that fit that description.”

But even with blended or hybrid products, there’s a hell of a lot of work ahead to make them affordable and widely available. “Howevere, if we can clear these hurdles, we’ll have a chance to introduce 100% cultivated meat in the future, as the technology improves,” March predicts. “Remember, this is a journey – not a destination!”

March, his influential co-founder, Kasia Gora (CTO), and his colleagues at SCiFi Foods, moved a step closer to realizing their ambitions in January 2024 with the completion of SCiFi Foods’ first 500-liter bioreactor run at its recently opened 16,000ft² San Leandro pilot facility. That’s enough to produce around 50,000 burgers a year at launch (a 90:10 blend of plant and cell-cultured ingredients). The startup is now aiming to complete regulatory approval and enter US food-service in early 2025.

But that’s the here and now. Let’s rewind a little…

Future leanings

March’s fascination with food tech began almost two decades ago. About the same time as reading Ray Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity Is Near, about AI and the future of humanity, he also read Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, his first exposure to cultivated meat. Both books really ignited his hope for technology’s potential to create a better world.

A serial entrepreneur with two exits to his name in the enterprise software sector, March became increasingly drawn to more ethical ventures, and was especially excited about the idea of growing meat outside of animals. “This concept resonated deeply,” he recalls. “A utopian future built on technology shouldn’t rely on deforestation, factory farming, and harming animals. Food security – especially considering climate change – felt like a crucial piece of the puzzle. To me, cultivated meat seemed like a necessary solution.”

Fast-forward to 2016, and March encountered the first cultivated meat scientists and entrepreneurs. “I attended one of the first-ever cultivated meat conferences [New Harvest] and became a donor and advisor,” he says. “Initially, I wasn’t sure if I’d start a company myself, but I was actively learning and supporting the field’s growth.”

Different thinking

The more he learned, though, the more concerned he became. He especially remembers the front-runners at the time being, in his words, “too overly optimistic” about cost reductions, as well as lacking a clear roadmap for overcoming some of the stark challenges that lay ahead. “I was disenchanted with what I was seeing from other companies in the space – a lot of hand waving about how these challenges were going to be magically solved,” he explains. “I felt the need to take a more commercially realistic approach.”

As March goes on to detail, though, the SCiFi Foods approach is not merely about producing a blended product. A key differentiator lies in the use of genetic engineering
– a combination of its proprietary high-throughput cell line engineering and CRISPR technology to address those troublesome cost and scalability challenges. “This was a highly unique approach at the time, but its effectiveness is now recognized by more and more companies in the field.”

Traditionally, adapting animal cell lines for bioreactor growth has relied on spontaneous mutations and chromosomal rearrangements. But such an approach can be slow and unpredictable. March suggests that CRISPR offers a more efficient and targeted solution. By making precise genetic edits, scientists can tailor cell behavior to thrive in the bioreactor environment.

When you look at the plant-based meat world, Impossible Foods is a great product. But a lot of the other products just aren’t

SCiFi Foods – which came out of stealth in 2022 – therefore stands out among the crowd with its proprietary cell line engineering platform, a unique combination of synthetic biology, and robotics. This powerful technology allows March and his team to generate hundreds of cell lines every month, far exceeding the capabilities of most competitors that struggle to create even a dozen.

Distinguishing features

A further aspect that distinguishes SCiFi Foods from other cultivated meat companies is that many others have relied on microcarriers – tiny plastic beads – for growing cells. These mimic a surface for cells (taken from animal muscle) to attach and grow on. But such a method is known to have limitations in terms of density, cost, and complexity. Microcarriers restrict how many cells can grow in a given space, while manufacturing and using these beads adds expense, not to mention that removing cells from the beads introduces an extra processing step.

“For a cost-effective, large-scale process, cells need to grow freely in liquid suspension within a bioreactor,” says March, detailing the company’s single-cell technique. “That’s what eliminates the need for microcarriers. Although some companies attempted this with chicken cells [which are easier to grow this way], it hadn’t been achieved for beef. So, our big breakthrough was developing the first beef cell lines that thrive in single-cell suspension, which improves efficiency and cost reduction during scaling.

“Recently,” March continues, “we also achieved the milestone of growing these suspension cells entirely serum-free. Fetal Bovine Serum is a common but expensive growth supplement – eliminating it further reduces costs and makes large-scale production more viable. I’m really proud that we’re at the forefront of developing efficient and affordable cultivated beef.”

SCiFi Foods’ technology pathway may not only act as an eventual springboard to 100% cultivated meat products but also address a major challenge for the plant-based sector that – despite its initial boom – has faced some criticism, particularly in relation to meeting consumer expectations on taste and price.

Does March believe the furore surrounding the plant-based sector over the past year has been justified? “Ultimately, I think that the plant-based category made some big mistakes,” he feels. “Those mistakes were primarily marketing the products by kind of moralizing on the environment, and pitching health benefits that simply weren’t there. And I think both kind of backfired.”

The difference is taste

What March believes matters most is, does a product taste great? Is it affordable and available? “People aren’t necessarily thinking about health when they’re buying a burger,” he says. “Taste remains the big problem. There was a lot of hype that plant-based meat was just like real meat, but then all the meat eaters tried it and were like, ‘Er, no, not really’. So, people were being asked to pay more for product that tasted worse. That’s unfortunate because there was a lot of good stuff happening. When you look at the plant-based meat world, Impossible Foods is a great product. But a lot of the other products just aren’t. And we saw a ton of investment, a ton of energy coming into the sector, yet most of the products were mediocre. What I think Impossible demonstrates is that if you can make a great-tasting product, people will be interested. Unfortunately, that cannot be said for the majority of plant-based meat products.”

We knew from day one that by opting to work on cultivated beef, we were choosing a much bigger challenge in terms of the science and technology required

The scrutiny of the plant-based meat sector, including the financial travails of its major players, has rumbled on way past that infamous Bloomberg piece by Deena Shanker. We are now seeing a similar backlash to cultivated meat – albeit for different reasons – including but not limited to protecting traditional agriculture, lobbying by farmers, limited understanding, and political affiliations. These factors have combined to create a climate where some US states and European countries are hesitant or even actively opposing cultivated meat through proposed bans or restrictions.

“The reality is conventional animal agriculture isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon,” says a pragmatic March. “Demand for meat around the world keeps going up every single year. We need to figure out how we can meet that growing demand without destroying the planet. Cultivated meat can play a really important role in achieving that. Do I think there is a future where cultivated meat is the norm, instead of conventional meat? That is where we’re eventually heading but it’s not a future that’s coming anytime soon. That’s a future we’re developing over the coming decades. And in the meantime, it’s going to take time to scale up production.”

Scaling, though, is not just a technical or engineering challenge. It’s a financial one – especially today. “Overall, VC funding has decreased significantly, and investors are very concerned about future financing risk,” confesses March, whose company is backed by Silicon Valley VC Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and other investors including Coldplay. “In a sector such as cultivated meat where large-scale facilities are crucial for profitability, that’s a big challenge. Add to that the general downturn in food tech, and cultivated meat companies are facing a critical question: how do we adapt our strategies to raise additional funding? Many companies developed plans during a time of easier fundraising. Now, in a tougher environment, can we shift our business models to reduce future financing needs? Optimizing production, strategic partnerships, targeted product launches, subscription models, R&D partnerships – these are all things that are top of mind right now.”

Does March think there’s a role for the major food brands in nurturing the sector? “Well, in an environment where capital is more constrained, there should to be a lot more willingness from startups to work with larger companies to partner on commercialization and engage in more B2B-style deals,” he says. “And ultimately, a lot of those big companies that have plant-based brands will be thinking about what they do next. What can really move the needle, and expand what they’re doing to a new batch of consumers, and increase and improve product quality. We believe blended products will make that possible.”

Coming soon?

The next hurdle for SCiFi will be securing approval to sell its cultivated beef products in the USA. But it should fancy its chances as its manufacturing facility has been designed from the ground up to meet the regulatory standards set by the FDA and USDA, so March is quietly confident about a green light to sell its cultivated beef soon.

And let’s not forget, precedent has already been set. “If you compare those approvals, the UPSIDE one was for a specific product, like chicken breast. However, the Eat Just approval was for chicken cells as an ingredient, allowing them to be incorporated into broader product applications.”

This, March believes, essentially opens the door for blended products. “Of course, we still need to go through our own approval process,” he notes. “Regulators go through a consultation procedure, granting approval for a specific cell line and production method.  But each successful case builds the knowledge base and clarifies the path for others. This is helpful, but securing approval remains a priority for us.”

With that approval, though, it’s all systems go. The goal for March is to make blended plant-based and cultivated meat burgers for under US$10 a burger in its pilot facility, which he reckons could drop to US$1 a burger in its first large-scale production plant. “We knew from day one that by opting to work on cultivated beef, we were choosing a much bigger challenge in terms of the science and technology required,” he concludes. “Beef is the ultimate prize, with the biggest market demand and the biggest climate impact. The breakthroughs we have achieved illustrate the power of our bioengineering strategy, and is a huge testament to our team and the platform they’ve built.”

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