Dutch cell-cultured meat producer Mosa Meat has announced a partnership with Nutreco to develop a cell feed supply chain that can expedite production and scalability while reducing cost.

The company claims that it has successfully substituted 99% of base cell feed by weight with food-grade ingredients which it believes will reduce the cost of production significantly. Currently, the majority of cell-cultured meat production approaches use pharma-grade ingredients as the identified cell feed is a key challenge in bringing price parity with traditional meats. 

Nutreco is also an investor of Mosa Meats with the most recent investment being a Series B round in early 2021 . In October 2021 , Nutreco and Mosa Meat received a grant from REACT-EU aiming to bring cellular agriculture a step closer to commercial viability.

Analyst QuickTake : The high cost of pharma-grade cell feed, which is the nutrient-rich medium in which cells are grown, is the biggest challenge faced by cell-cultured meat startups when achieving cost parity with traditional meats. The company claims that cells grown in food-grade feed exhibit similar cell density to cells fed with pharma-grade material. Mosa and Nutreco estimate the use of food-grade feed rather than pharma-grade feed can lower costs of basal media by a factor of at least 100x . If this approach is commercially viable and scalable, it will be a significant milestone in scaling cell-cultured meats to the mass market.