The CRAFT Consortium has begun designing and building the world’s first cultivated meat farm with €2 million in initial funding from EIT Food. The consortium comprises RespectFarms, Wageningen University & Research, Mosa Meat, Aleph Farms, Multus, Kipster, and Royal Kuijpers.
The CRAFT Consortium, consisting of RespectFarms, Wageningen University & Research, Mosa Meat, Aleph Farms, Multus, Kipster, and Royal Kuijpers, has started designing and building the world’s first cultivated meat farm, paving the way for commercialisation.
Co-funded by EIT Food, the project has been awarded the first €2 million of a €4 million grant request. This landmark initiative is expected to enable farmers to diversify their businesses with cultivated meat technology—reducing water consumption by 78%, land use by 95%, and societal cost by 56%.
“It is important for food innovations to stay as close as possible to primary food production, making use of local resources and waste streams,” says René Wijffels, Professor at Wageningen University, Bioprocess Engineering.
“This represents the first effort globally to merge cellular and traditional farming and promises to deliver consumers the best of both worlds: the unrivalled experience of real meat, through products produced and sold locally. The project will deliver a business model that is fundamentally new on one hand and centuries old on the other, and will add new perspective, also for farmers, to agriculture as we know it. Mosa Meat has been part of this development from the get-go and we are more than happy to support the project with our knowledge and experience across the various steps of this revolutionary technology,” remarks Peter Verstrate, Co-founder and COO at Mosa Meat BV.
FARMERS AT THE CENTER OF FOOD’S FUTURE
The consortium explains its mission as to integrate cultivated meat into real farms, ensuring production is farmer-led and locally embedded. The project will demonstrate how cultivated meat can coexist with traditional livestock and crops, creating resilient and sustainable food systems.
“CRAFT involves farmers to create new ways of making food. We use what works in agriculture and combine that with new technology. This will accelerate the path to market and to impact. CRAFT boils down a world problem to farm size. So we can solve it. And once it works, we scale this out to the world to increase impact. Let’s export technology instead of meat and animals,” explains Ralf Becks, Co-founder of RespectFarms.
“This grant enables us, together with RespectFarms and our partners, to pioneer farm-scale cultivated meat production, empowering farmers with viable, resilient, and sustainable models that align with Europe’s mission for healthier lives and fairer food systems,” comments Neta Lavon, Co-Founder & CTO of Aleph Farms.
“The consumption of the current amount of animal products is not sustainable within the planet’s capacity. So, we need to find other ways to provide for our food. Within the Earth’s capacity and with as little impact as possible on animals, humans, the climate and with a future for the (livestock) farmer. Et voila: the cultured meat farm,” says Ruud Zanders, Co-founder of Kipster and RespectFarms.
CONSORTIUM EXPERTISE
According to the announcement, each partner brings essential expertise to the project’s success:
• RespectFarms – System integrator leading implementation on farms.
• Wageningen University & Research (WUR) – Scientific leadership and R&D.
• Mosa Meat – Expertise in cultivated beef products, hybrid meat innovation. Offering expertise in product development and regulatory strategy to ensure compliance and market readiness.
• Aleph Farms – Expertise in cultivated beef products, hybrid meat innovation. Offering expertise in product development strategy to ensure market readiness.
• Multus – Developer of scalable, resource-efficient cell culture media.
• Kipster – Pioneer in sustainable, animal-friendly agricultural concepts. Offers expertise in agriculture and economics.
• Royal Kuijpers – Specialist in facility design for efficient, safe, and sustainable operations.
“Together with RespectFarms, we are building a future where food production is smarter, more sustainable and fairer. This collaboration within CRAFT empowers us to truly make an impact for the generations to come,” says Royal Kuijpers.
“I’m proud of Multus’ important role in CRAFT as the principal partner for cell culture media development within a highly collaborative consortium. CRAFT is a pioneering effort – bringing together leaders in agriculture and biomanufacturing to demonstrate the path towards a secure and resilient food system. Using our high throughput robotics and AI platform, the Multus’ team will create a series of novel high-performance and resource-efficient cell culture media to accelerate the transition of scientific breakthroughs to commercial production and real-world impact” adds Cai Linton, Co-Founder & CEO of MEng Molecular Bioengineering.
