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The Nairobian

On the menu soon: Lab-grown steak for eco-conscious diners

Smart Harvest

By Reuters | Jul 20, 2019

**T-Bone steak isolated on a white background. [Courtesy]**

Diners in some upmarket restaurants will soon tuck into laboratory-grown steak, thanks to an Israeli startup that seeks to tap into consumer concerns about health, the environment and animal welfare.

While lab-grown hamburgers and chicken are already in development around the world, Israel’s Aleph Farms claims to be the first company to have developed steak in a laboratory and is in talks with some high-end restaurants in the United States, Europe and Asia to have it on the market in 2021.

It plans initially to offer minute steak developed from a small number of cells taken from a cow, avoiding the need to slaughter the animal in the process or use antibiotics which can be harmful to meat eaters.

Aleph Farms hopes to have its product on a limited number of restaurant menus from 2021 in a trial phase, aiming for an official launch in 2023, first in restaurants and then in stores.

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Its next product will be a thick steak with “the properties that we like and we all know,” said Neta Lavon, vice president for research and development.

A serving of its minute steak - a thin slice of meat that cooks very fast - currently costs around $50 but Aleph Farms says it hopes to bring that down by 2021 to only a slight premium to current prices of steak offered in restaurants.

Eventually it aims for mass production, bringing the price down further and making its steaks viable for sale in lower-priced steak houses.

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