Israel’s Aleph Farms Launches Program to Grow Steaks in Space

‘Aleph Zero’ brings cultivated meat production to outer space, enabling human life to become multiplanetary with unconditional nutrition sources.

By Abigail Klein Leichman, ISRAEL21c

Even before commercializing its technology to “grow” beefsteak from isolated live animal cells, Israeli cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms is setting its sights on outer space.

The company’s Aleph Zero program aims to advance food security through the ability to produce fresh quality meat independent of local climate and natural resources – even in harsh and remote extraterrestrial environments.

To ensure the integration of its cultivated meat tech into leading space programs, Aleph Farms is pursuing strategic partnerships with technology companies and space agencies for long-term collaborative research and development contracts.

These programs will leverage the company’s knowhow in cell biology, tissue engineering and food science to establish outer-space BioFarms from which lessons learned could be applied to earthbound sites.

“Aleph Zero represents the mathematical symbol of the smallest infinite number, and how Aleph Farms brings space infinity closer by supporting deep-space exploration and colonization of new planets. The term also represents the company’s vision for producing meat with near-zero natural resources,” explains Didier Toubia, cofounder and CEO of Aleph Farms.

This program follows the success of the company’s first experiment of producing meat on the International Space Station a year ago, in collaboration with 3D Bioprinting Solutions.

“Aleph Zero reflects our mission of producing quality, delicious meat locally where people live and consume it, even in the most remote places on Earth like the Sahara Desert or Antarctica, providing unconditional access to high-quality nutrition to anyone, anytime, anywhere,” adds Toubia. “When people will live on the Moon or Mars, Aleph Farms will be there as well.”

Aleph Farms was co-founded with The Kitchen Hub of the Strauss Group and with Professor Shulamit Levenberg of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

The company, backed by food producers such as Cargill, Migros and the Strauss Group, plans a pilot commercial launch (on our own planet) by the end of 2022.