Dider Toubia of Aleph Farms Returns to the Cultured Meat and Future Food Podcast
Didier Toubia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aleph Farms, a cultivated meat company that is shaping the future of food by growing slaughter-free beef steaks directly from cow cells, preserving natural resources, and avoiding the use of antibiotics. Prior to Aleph Farms, Didier co-founded and led IceCure, which went public in 2010, and served as the CEO of NLT Spine, which was acquired by SeaSpine in 2016. Didier was trained as a Food Engineer and Biologist at Agrusup (Dijon, France) and holds a joint executive MBA from Kellogg (IL, US) and Recanati (Israel).
This episode is sponsored by the Black & Veatch NextGen Ag Team. Learn more about Black and Veatch at www.bv.com.
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Alex (00:04):
Thanks for joining us on the Cultured Meat and Future Food Show. This episode is sponsored by the Black and Veatch Next-Gen Ag team. Learn more about Black and Veatch at www.bv.com.
We’re excited to have Didier Toubla back on the show. Our first episode with Didier was recorded back in June of 2018, almost three years ago. Didier Toubia is the co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms, a cultivated meat company that is shaping the future of food by growing slaughter-free beef sticks directly from cow cells, preserving the natural resources and avoiding the use of antibiotics. Prior to Aleph Farms, Didier co-founded and led IceCure, which went public in 2010 and served as the CEO of NLT Spine, which was acquired by SeaSpine in 2016. Didier was trained as a food engineer and biologist at AgroSup Dijon in France and holds a joint executive MBA from Kellogg and Recanati. Didier, I’d like to welcome you to the Cultured Meat and Future Food Show.
Didier (01:11):
Thanks a lot, Alex. I’m super glad to come back to this great show.
Alex (01:14):
Didier, for listeners that might not be familiar with Aleph Farms, please give us a quick introduction to the company.
Didier (01:20):
Aleph Farms has been co-founded with the Strauss Group, which is a food company here in Israel. And with the Technion, the Israeli Institute of technology in 2017. Actually we started working on the platform approximately one year before and in mid 2016, and the purpose was really to adapt the technology platform originally developed at the Technion for regenerative medicine to growing steaks for human food. And until today, the collaboration we have with Prof. Levenberg and her lab is really a cornerstone of Aleph Farms’ competitive edge assisted with the growing steaks (and structured) meat versus minced meat. Since then, of course we have added additional expertise and capabilities, (other than these to the led by,) and we have twenty-five researchers supplementing one another, but this is how we started.
Alex (02:17):
Great. And we’ve definitely come quite a ways since we last spoke in our first episode, you were alluding to an upcoming kind of proof of concept announcement or a tasting. Can you tell us about that initial tasting that your team hosted at the end of 2018 with that video?
Didier (02:36):
Yes, of course it was super exciting. We have actually released in December, 2018, the testing of a first prototype based on the first technology platform. We have developed using a scaffold. It was released by the (Wasi German) at the time. And since then, we’ll have obviously turned this early prototype into a commercial prototype, which is very similar to the actual product. We aim at releasing at the end of next year. And this first testing was about a beef steak. It was actually a slice of beef steak and incorporating three different cell types onto a plant-based scaffold.
Alex (03:15):
And there were actually a couple tastings or kind of continuous announcements after that, anywhere from like celebrities tasting the product to the more, the recent ribeye announcement. How was that experience?
Didier (03:31):
Yes, Aleph Farms is developing two different platforms. One which relies on the plant-based scaffold and this first platform is based on which we will release our first product line. And in parallel, we are developing additional products and they will have developed a second technology platform, which relies on 3D bioprinting for thicker and fattier steaks. Overall, we intend to provide a full range of products to grow Aleph’s to become one of the three largest meat publishers in the world. So we’re not a single product company and the second platform will be released probably a few years later, as the scale-up will require more time. We’re definitely working on a, on a range of different approaches and different applications of the cultivated meat concept. And you’re right, we released, I think it was in January of this year, a few months ago, a couple of months ago, the pictures of cultivated ribeye, which was the first product we’ve developed, and that’s on the second platform. And in general, all the testing we’ve had so far have been very positive. And I must say that daily working day and night 24x7 on developing something. And you have external people coming, which are (completely independent), and then testing the meat and providing you great feedback, that’s very satisfying. At the end of the day, we believe that for cultivated meat to be a real option in the market, it’s not enough for us to be able to produce meat more efficiently or more ethically. Our meat should of course be tasty, but it should also fit into the food culture of the different regions and geographies well active in. At the end of the day, meat is an emotional product. It’s a non functional product, which is just intended to fuel the body or to provide proteins. We don’t like the term alternative proteins. I think that being considered the protein, it reduces very much, the depth of what we do. Meat is about emotions; Meat is an experience and providing this experience to independent external testers and successfully delivering this set of emotions is very important for us.
Alex (05:37):
That’s right. I guess if you’re going grocery shopping and you have protein on your checklist, that’s just what you do to satisfy requirements. But when you actually crave something, you’ll never say that I’m craving protein. It’s more of, I want this type of food or that type of food. So the 3-D bioprinting technology platform, that was used to create the ribeye proof of concept, is that correct?
Didier (06:02):
Exactly. And that’s correct.
Alex (06:04):
Okay. And will that technology, the 3-D bioprinting be used in the large-scale manufacturing process once we do start working on large scale quantities or is 3-D bioprinting something that will only be used in the research and development phase?
Didier (06:22):
While working on commercial applications of 3-D bioprinting for cultivated meat and our intention is to incorporate those technologies into a scalable production process. And again, we expect that the time to market for this type of products would be a slightly longer than with product based on scaffolds, but we’ll definitely have a clear path to get there as well.
Alex (06:46):
Great. And I really liked how you said that when your team is working 24x7 on something you’re very passionate about really great progress happens. And that’s a really the startup way. In our first episode, I had asked about when Aleph farms might come to market, and you mentioned that 2021 was the goal. Are we still on schedule for some sort of limited commercial release sometime this year?
Didier (07:12):
I think we’ve talked about completing the R&D, the research and development phase for first product at the beginning of 2021. And we actually advanced this date to November, 2020. We revealed the pictures of our first commercial prototype in November last year. We’re currently in the process of building of pilot production facility here in Israel, which would be operational before the end of 2021. So we’ll have some production capabilities already available by the end of this year. But we do expect that a first commercial launch would probably be during the course of 2022. And if I remember well at the time we talked about commercial launch beginning of 2023. So overall we are a bit ahead of our initial roadmap. Sticking to the plan and advancing our tasks begun a bit quicker than initially as scheduled.
Alex (08:03):
Great. And for those listening in, we’ll be putting links to videos and photos of that initial announcement and links to articles for some of the other announcements in the show notes. So if you haven’t seen them be sure to check them out. Didier, we had a great discussion about the Aleph Farms’ experiments in space at the last CMS. Can you give us a quick overview of really how that entire space experiment came to be?
Didier (08:32):
Yes, of course! First, our test program, which we have had launched formally last year is named Aleph-Zero is part of a long-term strategy to advance food security on earth. And the vision of Aleph Farms is to provide unconditional and high quality nutrition for anyone anytime and anywhere. And by that providing unique solutions for providing food locally and locally produced, (anchoring) the communities, food production, which would be resilient to climate change, but also independent to the local availability of natural resources, such as land and water. And we do see space for us as a lab for developing the most advent supporters in terms of (sift law) production and closed loop production systems in terms of producing meat with near zero resources. So same as some common (structures) might have formula one team, which is testing new technologies, new materials in the most demanding environments. And then once that they did it, those some inventions are transferred into the day-to-day car where we’re using privately. We do see our (split) system as a kind of formula one team for system (ability). We’ve been very lucky to partner early on with the 3D Bio-printing technologies, which is a company which has a 3-D bioprinter at the international space station. And the very first experiment where we have conducted in September of 2019 has been actually operated by all partners. And since then we have developed a much more structured plan for the next six to seven years.
Alex (10:14):
So, one thing I really like about that is the idea that if you can create something with very limited or even zero resources, then you could create that really anywhere in the world. And I think when it comes to food, that is very important. And I love the reference to the formula one team, and it actually gives a lot more weight to the name Aleph Zero. It sounds pretty cool. You know, you mentioned the team is about 25 researchers. Now, what would you say is the company focus at this time?
Didier (10:41):
Close to getting the name of our space program, Aleph Zero is a symbol in math, which is the smallest infinite. And the idea is to make infinite closer and to allow deep space exploration and to allow building human colonies on the outer space, closer to the infinite. So that’s the rationale behind the name Aleph Zero.
Alex (11:03):
That’s really cool. And the original company name Aleph Farms is that related to Aleph Zero as well?
Didier (11:11):
Not necessarily, but that connects very well. The name Aleph Farms, if you’re asking Aleph is the first letter of an ancient alphabet, which was Phoenician alphabet, but also became the alpha in Greek, Aleph in Hebrew, and is also the origin of the Arabic alphabet and the symbol for Aleph, the first letter of this ancient alphabet was the head of an ox. All the ancient languages, the letters were written as drawings of different people or animals. And Aleph is the head of an ox. And we liked the concept of connecting innovation with the origins of civilization. What we do, actually at Aleph Farms is really to start a new era of domestication. The way we look at cultivated meat is like the culture in general is that same as 12,000 years ago. People found a way to incorporate into a (compound) environment, spontaneous phenomenon for animals to reproduce and grow in the wild and started to domesticate those animals, to get a better access to the food with less resources and more control . We’re implementing exactly the same idea at the level of the edible part of the animal. So we can see Aleph Farms is very much connected to the audience of agriculture. It was I think the turning point in developing structured civilizations and the societies for humanity. (So we want to present them) this combination of collecting, you know, vision with the roots of what we are, is very much connected to the concepts behind Aleph farms.
Alex (12:44):
Well, and I’m looking at the logo now and now I totally get it. And it’s like an ox and, maybe I’m reading too far into it, but it also looks like a steak too. Whereas before I didn’t even put this connection together, that’s great.
Didier (12:56):
Actually the logo of Aleph Farms is the ancient letter Aleph, which is (elephant hooks.) Yeah. But thanks for your question. Aleph Farms, we focus on developing quality products, meaning steaks. We don’t produce processed food or minced meat, which can also be of high quality, but is more commoditized today, in the market. And we believe that for cultivated me to become successful, we really need to focus first on higher end type of products and higher selling price, but also quality products at positioning. That’s why we make only steaks. And we’re so focused on beef for two reasons. The first one is the same focus on quality meat and beef is definitively regarded as the highest quality of meat to come find in the market today, but also because of the environmental impact of cattle and beef production and Aleph farms has a strong focus on sustainability, which connects us back to the space program. So we also work only with the natural cells, which hadn’t been neither, genetic engineered nor immortalized, but still should be developed for mass production and scalable and looking at the large scale cultivation facilities. And third, we also developed a proprietary mass cultivation process based in five different modules, which are highly proprietary to Aleph Farms. I found some believe it’s not enough just to assemble existing by one toxicologist, which have been developed for the pharma industry, to use serum free growth mediums can be developed by third parties, to use different types of cell lines, to put all those pieces together, to scale it up. We believe that for cultivated meat to really reach its goals in terms of scalability and terms of cost production, but also in terms of product quality, we really need to rethink cell cultures and not necessarily to rely only on what has been developed for the pharma industry. So that I would say the three (co-trustees) of Aleph farms from the technology standpoint and focusing on steaks and pieces of meat and natural cells proprietary production platform. And to achieve that we have built a great team. I’m very lucky to work with some of the smartest people I know. And at the end of the day, everything comes back to the quality of the team you work with.
Alex (15:17):
Is the company exclusively focusing on beef then?
Didier (15:20):
We decided to focus on beef first for the same reasons I mentioned before, meaning focus on higher quality of meat to start with and focus on environmental impact, but we might enter additional species down the road. And that’s, again, the whole goal is to become a very (low to mid company). We’re not a single product company. We’re looking and very widely at all the possibilities. If we talk about beef versus other, all those finishes first, the selling price of beef is four to six, sometimes even 10 times higher than minced chicken, for instance. Demonstrating both the higher positioning, that you can have with beef, but also the ability to get quicker to profitability because initially the production costs for cultivated meat will be relatively high and we’ll get done with a scale very similarly to other innovations, such as solar panels, PV panels, or electric vehicles you’ve used, or even digital cameras at the time, which are the expensive, or generally done with a scale. So a short decrease in production costs and today we have digital cameras in any basic smartphone. So cultivated meat will follow the same process and similar shape, of course, the curve starting relatively expensive and then moving mainstream as the scale increases. And we believe that the starting high end would be key on the environmental side as you probably know, most of the greenhouse gas emissions of the farming industry are actually emitted by the cattle industry, by beef and milk and dairy industries. The amount of water, of land use, you know, we were talking about 10 to 15 total litres of water for producing one single kilogram of beef and you can translate them in the US as the units. We can talk about the land used for producing beef, which is not only the land for grazing, but also the land used to grow the crops, which serve as animal feed, feeding the cows and the cattle and the loss of biodiversity as to say, that was one, look at your soil (MIS) or animal feed. The deforestation associated with that in,( in the Amazon on us or other possible). And beef is frankly the most impactful agricultural activity today. And we believe we can increase the efficiency of beef production much more than the efficiency of fruit tree production. The transformation rates of input to output is nine grams protein from feed to produce one single gram of protein from beef and meat versus one from four gram proteins in animal feeds to produce one gram of poultry of chicken and meat. That transformation rates of beef is not as (great) as other animals can definitely improve the ratio and much better than we can for those fishes. And that makes sense.
Alex (18:19):
Yeah, Absolutely. I think this is like a good transition to the next question, which is transparency has always been a big part of the Aleph Farm’s mission. And I think this is really important when we are talking about the idea of consumer acceptance. And so how do you think that consumer acceptance of cell cultured meat has changed since the company actually started back in 2017?
Didier (18:42):
Yeah, that’s a nice question. First that comes to mind is acceptance is evolving relatively quickly and positively the last the market. So there’s, we have to form in the US, but also in the UK, in France, Germany, Japan show great potential. What comes in the process of publishing. And I just know, (so base will )have the form in the US and you can see the expected acceptances growing steadily over time. And that we’ve seen in the constant improvement over the last few years, and especially with the younger generation and the generation Z, the younger generation is usually more clear on cultivated meat and environmental impact and animal welfare improvements. What the older generation is usually more open for cultivated meat for different reasons, primarily for health reasons and for food safety and food security motivations as well, which is interesting. But overall in the overall population, I think until a couple of years ago, the rule of thumb was that two thirds of the overall population was that interested to try and purchase cultivated meat (altogether to higher numbers). And yes, a bit of that to build on your question first, yes, Transplants would begin to actually transform is expected acceptance into actual purchasing act. Consumers want to know where their food comes from. They want to know what has been the inputs, how it has been produced. We’ll have to build trust in this new production method for meat. Aleph Farms has been the first and to the best of my knowledge, the only company in the space to open a visitor center, which is hard (for kin )currently because of COVID we expect we will open it completely, very soon, we started to operate this a visitor center one year and a half, one and a half ago, six months before COVID really started to hit us. But we also believe that it would be key to manage the consumer acceptance with a good product. And we believe that the expectations of the consumers are very high to them. And we’ll have to make sure that we don’t disappoint consumers with products, which do not meet their expectations. In my view is we shouldn’t rush to launch anything where they need to respect the consumer and to develop products for them and not just for checking boxes with investors. And that’s always you know for startups, pressure will have to be first to market to launch what is called time to market is critical. On the other hand, we believe that time to acceptance is even more important than time to market because at the end of the thing, what’s going to matter than this, is successful and a single company is successful as well. Individually companies will not be to be first to the market. The true that have built a strong, a robust infrastructure for budding acceptance. And we’ve seen that in many new industries I talked before about electric vehicles. There are electric vehicles in the U S since the seventies, but it was 50 years, which haven’t been successful. And this label came in with a different concept of better technology platform and more attractive products on actually concentrating the acceptance for electric costs through the day on the street. And I think that the value of Tesla today is probably (greater than the sum of the company, the dimensions of the most of the largest common factors altogether), because they’ve been the first to get the technology platform and the product. And we’ve seen that and currently sitting in front of my computer, and you should think of what Google, which hasn’t been the first search on time, but they got the technology improved and the product. I’m old enough to recall at the Vista or Yahoo. I don’t know if you would, we see this in many new industries, the companies which really drive acceptance and make this industry relevant, And at the end of the day also drive most of the value are not necessarily the first companies to come to market. Those are the companies which are the, the first companies to get the technology platforms that have the product is appealing and it’s positioned right to drive acceptance.
Alex (22:43):
I think it’s interesting when you’re talking about a better technology for a search engine or even your car, but I think it’s even more important when you’re talking about food that you eat. So I really liked those examples and I think it makes a lot of sense. This next question, I like to call the time machine question. And so what are some things that you have learned and that your team has learned that if you could go back three years, you would definitely share with your team in the past.
Didier (23:13):
I would say that’s one of the most important things I’ve learned through my career of entrepreneur. I’ve managed two of those startups before Aleph Farms. One we took public in Tel Aviv. And another one has been acquired in 2016 when I started to work on Aleph Farms and especially with Aleph farms, is that you should be humble, Humility is the most important success factor in innovation, especially in food, because of what we said that food and meat in particular, is it so emotional, so cultural. It has so many social aspects into it. But if you just focus on making the best technology and thinking that you have the solution to solve the issues of the world, you can’t succeed. You really need to listen to the different stakeholders in all cases to the farmers, to the policymakers, to the consumers, and really learn from them. And I’d say that you don’t always know better than them, what they need, which is usually the case. If you don’t know better than them, what they need and make sure that the solution you’ve developed is not just a technological solution to a problem, but a solution which fits into an ecosystem, which really drives the right transition from within, you know. If we’re talking about alternative proteins, there had been many ways in the past to try and produce proteins more efficiently. It did not work because the issue is not just to produce proteins efficiently, the issue is to produce meat in (ochres), which would fit into the food culture of the consumers. The customers will want to incorporate into the diet, but also would fit into the agricultural ecosystem. To see cultured meat similar to agriculture in general as an integral part of agriculture, and we’ll have to analyze and understand the different forces in agriculture today the demographic issues and the difficulties of the farmers, the limitations of in this kind of agriculture and to work hand-in-hand with the players in the space to sort of issues together. And that’s for me, the key, and that has become more and more central in the way of the, is looking at small pockets as we’ve been progressing and moving forward to other launch next step,
Alex (25:28):
I couldn’t think of a better transition to really ask about the gen Z board. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Didier (25:34):
Yes, of course. That’s super exciting! Actually, at Aleph Farms, as I said, we’re very much focused on sustainability, which is about making sure that the world can continue and sustain itself moving forward, and the world will remain and will become a better place to live for our children. My children are my primary motivation for Aleph Farms. So we’re very much directed to the future generation and we can’t really develop our vision and our strategy and implement our plans without taking into account those central stakeholders, you know. We can’t build a better world for the future generations, without having those future generations involved in all the vision development and have their voice heard and incorporated into what we do. It wouldn’t make sense. That’s connected to what I said before about making sure that you listen to the stakeholders. So the Z-Board activity is an initiative intended to have leaders of the generation Z taking part in a nine month program together with us. In the previous cohort, we had members from New Zealand from Hong Kong, from Canada, from France, Israel, the U S. We’re just starting a new cohort now with a (similar presentation) from Brazil, for instance, and actually the greatest we have with those people I learn most from them.
Alex (26:54):
I love it. That’s great and exciting that they really do represent all parts of the world. You can learn more about Didier on LinkedIn and learn more about Aleph Farms at www.aleph-farms.com. Didier, do you have any last insights or announcements for our listeners today?
Didier (27:16):
Yeah, the thing is, what we were saying to them, the cellular agriculture ecosystem is a super exciting thing, but on the historical turning point of the recent human History. But we do see in the last 12–24 months, the agriculture companies really moving from R&D towards industrialization, where we see more and more interest from consumers, from the leading meat and food players of the world, but also more and more, validation of the economy by ability of cultivated meat and of the environmental benefits. And we’re really seeing in front of us with our own eyes, this vision being progressively transformed into reality. And that’s great. I’m super excited to be part of this new category or for meat. And I just invite the audience to follow after the developments of this industry to stay tuned. I believe there will be a lot of interesting events and interesting opportunities to really then get in the next couple of years.
Alex (28:21):
Didier, Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your insights on the Future Food show, once again.
Didier (28:26):
Thank you very much, Alex, and looking forward to doing it again soon.
Alex (28:30):
This is your host, Alex, and we look forward to being with you on our next Episode. This program was produced by H media. We’ll see you soon.
This transcript was generated by an automated service. Special thanks to Kamna Sreejith of California State University, Fresno for assisting with the transcription for this episode.
