Cultivated beef clears Singapore as 80 Acres folds, Big Chicken airs
Singapore's food safety agency approved Aleph Farms' cultivated beef steak, the first clearance for cultivated beef anywhere outside Israel, with a 2027 restaurant launch targeted.
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Singapore's food safety agency approved Aleph Farms' cultivated beef steak, the first clearance for cultivated beef anywhere outside Israel, with a 2027 restaurant launch targeted [115].
02
Vertical-farming pioneer 80 Acres Farms shut down after burning through more than $350 million, unable to raise the capital to keep five automated indoor farms running [98].
03
A two-year monitoring project found 74% of 21,904 online wildlife-trafficking ads worldwide ran on Facebook, with Meta's own algorithm surfacing most of them unprompted [142].
04
Mercy For Animals' Transfarmation Project helped an Iowa family finish converting an industrial hog barn into a working mushroom farm, its first full pig-to-produce transition [117].
05
Comedian Mo Gilligan ate fried chicken three meals a day for a month to make Big Chicken, a Netflix investigation into fast food and factory farming out August 5 [165].
06
A Cell study found dietary arginine restores the immune signal cells use to flag cancer and viruses, cutting colon tumors and easing flu and COVID severity in mice [39].
Singapore approves Aleph Farms' cultivated beef, the first outside Israel
Photo: AgFunderNews
“The fundamental questions of cost, scalability, and product quality [in cultivated meat production] have largely been answered.”
Didier Toubia, Aleph Farms co-founder and CEO · [97]
“Earning approval in Singapore meant meeting one of the most rigorous novel food frameworks in the world.”
Yifat Gavriel, Aleph Farms chief of regulatory affairs · [118]
By the numbers
Sixthcultivated product Singapore has approved, a tally that has now overtaken the US [115]
10% to 20%cultivated beef content in the Thin-Cut Steak, blended with a soy and wheat plant-protein base [152]
5,000-literbioreactors Aleph says its cost model relies on, rather than unproven larger formats [97]
Company claim"indicates that production can scale profitably with technology and equipment available today" (Aleph Farms CEO Didier Toubia, citing the company's own techno-economic analysis) [97]. The analysis, projecting a 47% gross margin at price parity with conventional beef and a $6.45-per-pound cost, was commissioned and described by Aleph itself and hasn't been independently published or audited.
Watch- Aleph targets a first-half 2027 foodservice launch in Singapore; approvals are still pending in the UK, Switzerland and Thailand [115]
FromGreen QueenAgFunderNewsvegconomist the vegan business magazineFoodNavigator.com
02▼InnovationStory
80 Acres Farms closes after raising $350 million for vertical farming
Photo: AgFunderNews
“After an exhaustive effort to find a way forward, 80 Acres Farms is winding down operations.”
Mike Zelkind, 80 Acres Farms cofounder and CEO · [98]
“Unfortunately, under current circumstances, we could not secure the capital required to continue that work.”
Mike Zelkind, 80 Acres Farms cofounder and CEO · [98]
By the numbers
More than $350 millionraised by 80 Acres Farms since its 2015 founding [98]
More than 18,000retail locations its automated indoor farms supplied at their peak [98]
Fivefully automated, renewably powered vertical farms it operated at peak [98]
Watch- The closure joins Plenty, InFarm and Bowery on the list of vertical-farming shutdowns since 2022, a run 80 Acres' own CEO says he still believes the industry will outlast [98]
FromAgFunderNews
03▲Activism & AnimalsStory
Mercy For Animals turns a hog barn into a working mushroom farm
Photo: vegconomist
“When farmers reach out to us, many of them are at the depths of their despair... many of them are deeply in debt and disconnected from their operations and land.”
1-5 yearsthe typical timeline Transfarmation says a converted farm needs to become profitable [117]
2021the year the Faaborg family's 1100 Farm conversion began in Iowa, the program's first industrial pig-farm transition [117]
Fromvegconomist the vegan business magazine
04▲Wins & CultureStory
Mo Gilligan's Big Chicken documentary lands on Netflix August 5
Photo: plant based news
“I thought I knew chicken. Turns out, I knew nowhere near enough... As a Black British comedian, it was important for me to challenge the stereotypes around Black people and fried chicken, unpack where those ideas came from, and reclaim a dish that's part of a much bigger story than the one we've been told.”
Mo Gilligan, comedian and presenter, Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy · [165]
By the numbers
28 daysthree meals a day, Gilligan ate fried chicken while making the documentary [165]
Watch- Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy streams on Netflix starting August 5, 2026 [165]
FromPlant Based News
Worth Knowing
Food & Recipes
Try this for dinner: Sam Turnbull's Crispy Tofu recipe anchors It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken's August cooking challenge, pan-fried, baked, or air-fried, then tossed into bowls, wraps or eaten straight from the pan [73].
Tyson Foods widened its 2026 beef-segment loss forecast to $500-650 million as cattle shortages keep squeezing supply, even as chicken and prepared foods keep growing [74].
Innovation
Spain's InsectBiotech raised €7.2 million ($8.3 million) to turn olive-oil waste into black soldier fly protein, oil and fertilizer at a new Andalusia plant [99].
Oatly's UK oat milk now beats dairy's climate footprint by 67%, up from 58% in 2021, after the brand switched to local British oats [114].
The Czech Meat Processors Association toured BeneMeat's cultivated-meat pilot plant to open dialogue on regulation and labeling with the traditional meat industry [100].
Artyzen Hotels pledged plant-based dishes will make up 30% of menus across its Asia-Pacific portfolio by the end of 2027 [121].
India's Arboreal Bioinnovations closed a $24 million Series A to scale up yeast-protein and other functional-ingredient manufacturing [122].
Beyond Meat launched a Josh Hart-fronted comedy ad series for its Beyond Immerse protein drink as it leans on beverages to reverse a sales slide [123].
US grocery meat volume fell 2.3% in June from a year earlier as beef prices rose almost 12%, pushing some shoppers toward cheaper chicken and turkey [111].
Ginkgo Bioworks licensed its engineered fungal protein-production strains to European biotech Acies Bio, giving customers a turnkey path from lab strain to industrial fermentation [120].
A Delhi roundtable of regulators, the World Bank and GFI India examined folding plant and fermented proteins into school feeding programs that reach malnourished children [119].
Research & Nutrition
A meta-analysis of prospective studies found vegetarians have 13% lower total cancer risk and vegans 23% lower than non-vegetarians, with the sharpest drops in stomach and pancreatic cancer [10].
Wins & Culture
An audit of Texas grocery stores found 81% of toddler foods are ultra-processed and 49% miss WHO nutrition standards, despite marketing built around toddler health [166].
One Good Thing
Someone looking into a dumpster behind a building on Burnside Avenue in East Hartford, Connecticut heard something: three kittens, three and a half to four weeks old, too young to climb out on their own. They were clean, sweet and clearly used to being held, someone's pets before they were someone's trash. Animal control is bottle-feeding them back to health, Desmond's Army is offering a $5,000 reward for whoever did it, and the town is using the case to remind people that surrendering an animal you can't keep is free, legal and one phone call away [86].
vegconomist the vegan business magazine
