Reducing Time-to-Market Challenges for Alternative Meat & Dairy Products

Plant-based and alternative meat and dairy consumption has risen dramatically in the last several years throughout the world.

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Industry experts point to five key factors driving this change: 

• Sustainability – consumers are more aware of how their food choices contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, a major contributor to climate change.
• Health – consumers are also more aware of links between red meat consumption and cancer risk and other chronic health conditions.
• Ethics – people have typically given little thought to the process of getting food to a grocery store to purchase. Still, there is a growing awareness of poor animal treatment in food production, causing people to shift away from animal products.
• “Flexitarian” diet trends – people who do not want to go completely vegetarian or vegan are still adjusting their diets and occasionally eating meat.  
• Taste – the final factor contributing to higher plant-based and alternative meat and dairy products is the dramatic improvement in the taste and texture of plant-based alternatives.

In addition to the hundreds of startups exploring the meat and dairy alternative industry, some of the world’s largest food manufacturers, including Nestlé and Unilever, are also testing the waters of consumer demand. Analysts at Barclays are predicting a 1,000% increase (or more) in this market by the end of this decade. From small manufacturers to multi-billion-dollar companies who want to enter this space, reducing time-to-market and total production costs are essential to success in a growing, lucrative market.

As competition heats up in this industry, the ability to get to market sooner with delicious and clean plant-based and lab-grown alternatives hinges on having the right partners that will help you go from investigating and innovating clean meat alternatives to manufacturing sustainable foods.

Key Challenges for Alternative Meat and Dairy Production

Most current cultured food production methods cannot easily scale to meet changing needs for industries looking to take these alternatives to a mass market in an affordable way. The high cost of meat and dairy alternatives remains a barrier to many consumers, so reaching a critical inflection point for wide adoption requires the ability to cut overall production costs.

To complicate things further, the regulatory and production demands for manufacturing in this industry are rapidly changing. Go to market too soon—with subpar manufacturing processes, poor formulations, or inadequate safeguards against contamination—and you risk alienating potential customers. Coming back from a bad brand launch or product recall is difficult, especially with many competitors entering the market. However, if you wait too long, you risk getting left behind as other fast-moving competitors overtake market share.

Traditional food and beverage equipment manufacturers are often unable to meet plant-based, and lab-grown food production needs. Products designed to ensure the safety and efficacy of animal proteins are not always equipped for: 

• Clone selection
• Media optimization
• Early-stage process optimization
• Screening for stable clones under perfusion mimics conditions
• Fluid management

You need a solution provider who can help you through all these steps. 

Gaining a Competitive Edge in Clean Meat Production

Thriving in the highly competitive cultured meat and plant-based alternative market requires advanced tools to analyze data, meet safety standards, and manufacture food in a highly specialized environment. This includes:

Bioreactors and Fermenters

Cell-cultured meat production requires scalable multi-use or single-use bioreactors for every stage of development, from clone selection and process development to pilot and full commercial production, including perfusion processing. Scalable, multi-parallel, systems based on your needs help you quickly move from the early stages of clean meat discovery and development to mass production. In addition to high throughput systems and scalability, you need an easy-to-use platform that will automate much of the process to control oxygen levels, pH, temperature, in addition to advanced PAT such as Raman, cell capacitance, and off-gas concentrations, and higher-level recipe control.

Cell Culture Media and Buffers

Regulatory hurdles are another challenge in scaling up cultured food production. Even highly regulated industries, like pharmaceuticals and medical devices, don’t come close to the regulatory scrutiny that lab-cultured meat and dairy alternatives encounter. U.S. and European regulatory bodies are scrambling to figure out how to oversee and approve what is a multidisciplinary effort that includes:  

• Chemists  
• Mechanical and chemical engineers
• Food scientists and chefs
• Biologists, and more

There are significant challenges when determining suitable cell culture media and buffers, which are not typically part of food production. You need a combination of expertise in the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry that uses this type of equipment, with the flexibility to adapt the equipment for food manufacturing. Having a customizable solution to meet specific packaging, media, and buffer formats or release assays for proprietary media formulations that meet regulatory requirements in the U.S. and Europe can help you scale up quickly.

Data Analytics

Efficient production of lab-grown meat and dairy alternatives requires integrated data analytics capabilities so that you can monitor your entire process in real-time. Seeing data in real-time can help you accelerate the time to market with new products, moving them quickly from the development phase to production. Then you can optimize the manufacturing process for:  

• Higher yields
• Better utilization
• Greater sustainability

Real-time monitoring helps you spot potential deviations before they happen, preventing unforeseen downtime or stoppages. 

Fluid Management

Proper fluid management is an essential part of safe production for cultivated meat and dairy products. That requires a range of equipment specifically designed to prevent contamination that also meets regulatory requirements, including:  

• Storage and shipping bags
• Mixing bags
• Tubing welders and sealers
• Connectors and disconnectors

Expert Analysis and Support

Companies new to lab-grown and plant-based food production may not have the right expertise in-house to understand what tools and methods will help you scale up production safely and efficiently. For that help, you need a partner that can advise on the proven processes, helping you translate them to large-scale production to take food to a wider market.  

Sartorius Can Help You Quickly Scale Clean Meat and Dairy Production

Find out more about how Sartorius can help you accelerate time-to-market, improve yields, and reduce production costs for plant-based and cultured meat and dairy alternatives. Talk to our experts today about the range of products, solutions, and expertise available to give you a competitive edge in bringing meat-free and dairy-free food innovations to a wider market.