Downstream Processes for Cultivated Meat

Cultivated meat production is being developed worldwide and is gaining traction. Whether the technology becomes a staple in the food industry, becomes a niche application, or takes an unforeseen turn remains to be seen. Early research in the field showed the feasibility of small-scale culturing cells and transforming them into meat-like products. These lab-scale proofs of concept relied on the manual separation of cells using simple operations such as straining and centrifuging. However, industrial processing requires working with large culture volumes and recovering cells with minimal damage. This chapter presents the basics of cellular meat production from the point of view of downstream processing, overviewing culture propagation, cell differentiation, and suspension composition and discusses cell separation aspects. Although there are no industrial-scale cultivated meat processes to serve as examples, translational research from other cell culturing processes hints at centrifugation and membrane processes as starting points for cell recovery. The final step of forming meat-like products using 3D bioprinting is also discussed.