Meatable: Revolutionizing the Meat Industry in Asia and Beyond

Meatable is a biotechnology company that specializes in the development of cultivated or lab-grown meat. They focus on creating sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional meat production. Their overall goal is to address the challenges of traditional animal agriculture, such as resource consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and animal welfare concerns, by providing a more sustainable and ethical way to produce meat. With that, why don’t you join me in learning more about Meatable.

What made you interested in diving into the world of PR & Communications? Most especially, what made you interested in joining Meatable? 

Hi, My name is Bo de Koning and I started off in politics actually. I've always been interested in making an impact on what's going on in the world. I started off working for the Dutch government actually at the Dutch Ministry of Justice. I figured out that I was a very small piece of the puzzle there and I could explain it to myself, but I couldn’t really see the effect of what I was doing. Over the years, I've tried out different things. I’ve always moved between politics, public affairs, and communications because I think the three are very much intertwined. If people don't know what you're doing, then you're not actually doing anything. You need to be able to explain to your neighbor and the person next door why what you’re doing is important. I've moved between public companies like Airbnb, LinkedIn, and the government before. Then I figured, what are the big trends that are going on in the world? What is the next big thing?  That's when I came across cultivated meat, a year or two ago. No one had even heard from this 10 years ago. Then, I saw this position at Meatable. Five years ago, we started off as a tiny company. Now, we're almost 90 people. There's really a need to communicate what it is that we're trying to do as Meatable. I really believe that cultivated meat and especially the way that we are doing that can be the future and can be a solution to a lot of the problems that we're facing now.

Can you give us an overview of Meatable's mission and what inspired the creation of this company?

Our official mission is to satisfy the world's craving for meat, the world's appetite for meat, but without harming people, animals, or the planet. Because what's happening in the world is that everyone likes meat, everyone's eating meat, and the demand for meat is growing. This is asking a lot for our planet because you need a lot of land, water, and energy to do that. Additionally, there’s a lot of animal suffering involved. One third of the surface of our planet is used to grow food for the animals we're eating afterward. We just think it's not sustainable. 

So we want to be part of this solution and find something that people can still enjoy, but in a responsible way. What we're doing is not creating something that tastes like meat. We’re creating something that is real meat.  Five years ago, our two co-founders met. They ideated together and figured out, what can they do to solve this problem? Daan had been involved in the first cultivated meat burger that was developed 10 years ago. He was on a project and he already knew that this had great potential, but he just needed someone in the business side to help him out in setting up a company around that. That's how we were born five years ago.

Meatable is at the forefront of cultivated meat technology. Could you explain how the technology works and its potential impact on the future of food production?

What we're doing is we take one cell from an animal. In our case, that's a pig. What we do is we program that cell to multiply. Basically, to grow those cells and make sure that those cells develop only into muscle and fat cells. A traditional piece of meat would normally have mostly muscle and fat cells. That's the taste and the texture you want to get. We use a specific technology to do that. In that way, we can make a lot of burgers or sausages or whatever kind of meat from that one cell and use it indefinitely. We don't need to kill an animal. We don't need a lot of space. We don't need a lot of water. We are able to eliminate all these consequences and still create a piece of meat.

The cultured meat industry is rapidly evolving. How does Meatable differentiate itself from other players in the field?

There's a couple of companies now that are doing that, which is actually great because we can all learn from each other. We all need each other's technology. There is a lot of infrastructure that still needs to be built in any kind of startup industry, basically. What differentiates us I think is a couple of things. We work with pork and there's not a lot of companies that work with pork. There are a lot of companies that work with beef or with chicken, but for us, we specifically focus on pork at least for now. The second thing is, and I think the most important thing is that we can do this whole process from a cell to a sausage very quickly, quicker than anyone else can. Now, we can do it in about a week, say eight days. Normally, to raise a pig for pork, you would need eight or nine months. So it saves a lot of time, which means our process is a lot more efficient and it costs less. We need a lot less resources and it's easier to scale up.

What is the role of collaboration in the field of meat cultivation? Could you discuss any partnerships or collaborations Meatable has formed?

I think partnerships are a very important part of what we're trying to do because we cannot do this alone. This is a whole new technology, it's a whole new industry. We need new value chains and new facilities to produce this. We need partners to distribute and develop these kinds of things. I think for us, the two most important partnerships that we have right now are actually in Asia, in Singapore. We have a partnership with Esco Aster. They're the only licensed production manufacturer of cultivated meats in Asia. For us, they're very important because that means we can work together to start production on the ground in Asia.

The second partnership that we have is with a company called Love Handle in Singapore as well. They have historically mostly worked with plant-based needs. But, together we're developing hybrid products. So you would have a product like a sausage that is part plant-based and part real, cultivated meat to get people used to the idea, to get the texture that people are familiar with. We also want to ensure that we can introduce it in a way to the market and it's a little bit less costly as well. It's a very innovative company that really knows flavors, knows texture, and really knows what people want, especially in Asia.

Could you give us a glimpse into the future plans Meatable has?

We want to become a viable alternative to the traditional piece of meat and the plant-based piece of meat. Ideally, if you go to the supermarket in 5 to 10 years from now, you have an aisle with traditional meat, an aisle with cultivated meat, and you have a plant-based alternative. As a consumer, you can really make a conscious choice of what it is you want to buy. We don't want to take over, we want to be that viable alternative. Our plan is to go to Singapore and expand from there. We're planning on being in restaurants and selected supermarkets next year already. Afterward, we’re planning on going to the US, mainly because there are two chicken-cultivated meat companies that have just been cleared to sell on the ground in the US. This is very promising for us as well. This means that we can apply to start doing as well in the future. It's Singapore, the US, and then afterward, the rest of the world.

Visit www.techshake.asia if you would like to know and connect more with Meatable.