China inks $300 million lab-grown meat deal with Israel

With the increasing needs of its citizens, China has signed a deal with Israel over the lab-grown meat.

Beijing has inked a trade agreement with Israel worth $300 million that will see the country import lab-grown meats produced by three companies: SuperMeat, Future Meat Technologies, and Meat the Future.

According to report, the Chinese government move is part of country’s ongoing effort to address its most pressing environmental problems.

The Israel Innovation Authority and the Israel Export Institute were involved in brokering the deal with China. Both organizations were in attendance at the inaugural lab-made meat conference, which took place in Haifa, Israel last May.

Israel is emerging as a major player in the nascent lab-grown meat industry, but plenty of research is also going on in the US.

Talking more on meat industry, Memphis Meats recently received investments from Sir Richard Branson and Bill Gates, while Hampton Creek expects to sell its products commercially as early as next year.

The fight in the industry includes mainstream brands like Tyson foods who are making “active” plays to get in on the ground floor or the direct consumers.

This particular kind of lab-grown meat is produced using animal cells, so it’s not completely slaughter-free — even if it does reduce the number of creatures killed for food overall.

Experts are still researching a completely synthetic substitute. For the time being, lab-grown meat is poised to at least reduce the strain on the environment that’s caused by the farming of livestock.

As of now, citing some scientific report, about 14.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to livestock, with cattle being the biggest culprit.

The thing is, if a nation didn’t need to farm so many cows to produce beef products, it could reduce the emissions considerably and significantly.

Just in 2016, when the Chinese government announced plans to encourage citizens to eat less meat, in an effort to reduce the country’s consumption by 50 percent. As it stands, around $13.5 billion worth of meat is imported into the country every year.

“This could put [lab-made] meat onto the radar of Chinese officials who have the capacity to steer billions of dollars into this technology,” commented head of the Good Food Initiative, Bruce Friedrich, according to a report by Quartz.

In the end, Lab-grown meat is a cheaper and healthier than traditional meat.