Hampton Creek is now growing its own meat in labs—and it says it will get to stores firstHampton Creek—a company that built its name on plant-based condiments and vegan-friendly cookie doughs—today revealed that, for the last year, it has been secretly developing the technology necessary for producing lab-made meat and seafood, or as the industry likes to call it, “clean meat.” Perhaps even more surprising is that Hampton Creek expects to beat its closest competitor to market by more than two years.
“By the end of next year, we’ll have something out there on the marketplace,” Josh Tetrick, CEO of the company, tells Quartz. Until now, only one of the handful of global startups developing “clean meat,” Memphis Meats, has openly talked about getting a product to market and that was by 2021.
Since it was founded in 2015, Memphis Meats has raised at least $3 million from five investors for the development of its meat products, according to Crunchbase. By contrast, Hampton Creek—just a 20-mile drive from its Silicon Valley rival—has raised more than $120 million since 2011. It’s one of Silicon Valley’s unicorns—a company that has a valuation that exceeds $1 billion.
“The fact that Hampton Creek has so many resources at its fingertips is very promising for speeding up the commercialization of clean meat,” says Paul Shapiro, the author of a forthcoming book on meat alternatives and vice president of policy at the Humane Society of the United States.
Now that Hampton Creek has unveiled itself as the latest entrant in that space, competition to reach consumers first will heat up. And once these products do get to supermarkets, it will open the door for a three-way battle for meat-eater dollars, as consumers will have a choice between three different products:
Traditional meat, from animals that were raised, slaughtered, and processed.
Plant-based meats, made from plant proteins (including heme) to mimic the look, texture, and taste of traditional meat.
And lab-grown meat, which is being developed in industrial vats to look, feel, and taste like traditional meat and have the same molecular make-up.
In the eyes of the people pushing the development of plant-based and clean meat products, this new crop of foods will revolutionize how meat is made and offer a clear path to feeding people across the globe in a way that emits less greenhouse gas and ends animal suffering.
“Once we have clean meat that is cost-competitive with animal-based meat, that will be the beginning of the end of all the harms of industrial agriculture,” says Bruce Friedrich, who leads the Good Food Institute, which supports and lobbies on behalf of meat alternative companies.
