From Lab to Table: The World’s First Bioprinted Ribeye Steak

By Mark Miller

Aleph Farms, a company in Haifa, Israel, is serving a ribeye steak unlike any you’ll find in a grocery store. Instead of being raised and butchered, their ribeye is printed using tissue engineering technology, a process called bioprinting.

Brioprinting

Bioprinting is like 3D printing, but instead of using layers of plastic to build an object; it prints with cells and biomaterials grown in the lab. They are a sort of “living ink,” reports Stephen Ornes in Science News for Students.

The process starts with collecting pluripotent stems cells from cows. As they are incubated in a temperature-controlled growth medium, the cells multiply until there is enough material for the bioprinter to layer them.

Bioprinting also involves the development of tiny channels that allow nutrients to reach the growing cells. As part of the overall process, the layered product is placed into a tissue bioreactor where the cells and channels form a single system, completing the process.

Cultured Meat

Aleph Farm’s ribeye looks, cooks, smells, and tastes like meat from a real animal because it’s developed from real animal cells. Researchers refer to these new products as “cultivated” or “cultured” meats. Aleph Farm’s ribeye is the latest addition to a growing number of cultured meat products.

The origins of cultured meat can be traced back to 2013 when scientist Mark Post introduced the first “lab-grown” hamburger. A cultured meatball came later from a company called Memphis Meats in California, and Aleph debuted a thin-cut steak in 2018.

Meat to Market

Currently, it costs more to print a steak than it does to harvest an animal. In 2018, Aleph Farms priced a serving of cultured meat at $50.

“The technology will require drastic reductions in cost before cultured meat will be widely available,” Kate Krueger, a cell biologist at Helikon Consulting, told Science News for Students reporter Stephen Ornes. The cell-growth medium is one of the most expensive ingredients. It contains growth factors essential to the process. Kreuger predicts that until the cost of growth factors goes down, “cultured meat can’t be produced at comparable prices to animal meat.”

Production time is a likely factor, too, but Aleph Farms hasn’t revealed how long it takes them to print a steak. Neta Lavon, vice president of research and development at Aleph, said that while the process works, they can’t produce their steaks in quantity yet. But she believes they may be more widely available in about three years.

It might be worth the wait. For many, there is real appeal to enjoying a delicious steak that hasn’t had a negative impact on the environment or ended the life of an animal.