A new international consortium has announced a pioneering project that aims to establish what is claimed to be the world’s first cultivated meat farm in the Netherlands.
The CRAFT Consortium comprises RespectFarms, Wageningen University & Research, Mosa Meat, Aleph Farms, Multus, Kipster, and Royal Kuijpers. The project will work to help farmers diversify their businesses through cultivated meat technology.
By integrating cultivated meat into existing farms, CRAFT aims to ensure production is farmer-led and locally embedded. The project will demonstrate that cultivated meat can co-exist with traditional agriculture, which could help to reassure farmers that cellular agriculture is an opportunity rather than a threat. The initiative is co-funded by EIT Food, and has already been awarded the first €2 million of a €4 million grant request.
“CRAFT involves farmers to create new ways of making food,” said Ralf Becks, co-founder of RespectFarms. “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.”
“Delivering consumers the best of both worlds”
Each member of the consortium is said to bring essential expertise:
- RespectFarms – A system integrator leading implementation on
- farms.
- Wageningen University & Research (WUR) – Will provide scientific leadership and R&D.
- Mosa Meat – Brings expertise in cultivated beef products and hybrid meat innovation, along with knowledge of product development and regulatory strategy to ensure compliance and market readiness.
- Aleph Farms – Also provides expertise in cultivated beef products and hybrid meat innovation, plus experience in product development strategy to ensure market readiness.
- Multus – A developer of scalable, resource-efficient cell culture media.
- Kipster – A pioneer of sustainable, animal-friendly agricultural concepts, offering expertise in agriculture and economics.
- Royal Kuijpers – A specialist in facility design for efficient, safe, and sustainable operations.
“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,” said Peter Verstrate, co-founder and COO at Mosa Meat BV. “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.”
