Aleph Farms shoots for meat making on the moon

Posted: 22 October 2020 | Mandy Parrett (New Food) | No comments yet

Aleph Farms, Ltd, based in Israel, has announced the launch of its ‘Aleph Zero’ programme, which it hopes will advance food security by producing fresh quality meat anywhere, independent of climate change and availability of local natural resources. 

The company – a leading light in growing quality steaks directly from non-GMO cells that have been isolated from a living animal – envisions that the project will also facilitate extraterrestrial food production, which has always been a significant barrier for long-term space missions.

To the achieve this goal, Aleph Farms is securing strategic partnerships with technology companies and space agencies for long-term collaborative research and development contracts that will ensure the integration of Aleph Farms’ innovations into leading space programmes. These programmes will leverage the company’s extensive knowledge about cell biology, tissue engineering, and food science to establish BioFarms™ in extraterrestrial environments. The company hopes to eventually apply the lessons learned in space to remote earthbound sites, too.

Commenting on the name of the programme, Didier Toubia, Co-Founder and CEO of Aleph Farms, said: “‘Aleph Zero’ represents the mathematical symbol of the smallest infinite number, and how Aleph Farms brings space infinity closer by supporting deep-space exploration and colonisation of new planets. The term also represents the company’s vision for producing meat with near-zero natural resources,”.  

The launch of this new programme follows the success of the company’s first experiment of producing meat on the International Space Station a year ago, in collaboration with 3D Bioprinting Solutions. This proof-of-concept marked a historic milestone in sustainable food production, resulting in new capacities to cultivate real meat directly from various types of cow cells, under micro-gravity and far from any natural resources. 

“The constraints imposed by deep-space-exploration — the cold, thin environment and the circular approach — force us to tighten the efficiency of our meat production process to much higher sustainability standards,” notes Toubia. “The programme ‘Aleph Zero’ reflects our mission of producing quality, delicious meat locally where people live and consume it, even in the most remote places on Earth like the Sahara Desert or Antarctica, providing unconditional access to high-quality nutrition to anyone, anytime, anywhere,” adds Toubia. “When people will live on the Moon or Mars, Aleph Farms will be there as well.”