Governments are finally starting to see the potential of cultivated meat for the environment. Spanish start-up BioTechFoods will lead the CULTUREDMEAT project, with the goal of investigating the production of meat products that can prevent colon cancer and high cholesterol.

CULTUREDMEAT was selected by the CDTI and will receive €5.2 million in funds from the Spanish government through the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology. A total of the 128 ideas were submitted to CDTI's program. Of these, only 24 were selected, with CULTUREDMEAT receiving the highest evaluation.

BioTech Foods will be the technological leader with 7 other entities: cured meat producers Argal and Martínez Somalo; research company DMC Research; BDI Biotech, a provider of biotechnological services and solutions for the Agrifood sector; spirulina producer Neoalgae; BTSA, a producer of natural antioxidants; Agrowingdata, a consultancy firm specialized in developing big data and advanced analytics solutions for the agri-food industry.

Ten research bodies will also participate in the project: Food Technology Centre Ctic Cita; Universidad de Oviedo; Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; Tecnalia; Barcelona Scientific Park; Universidad de Sevilla; Vicomtechm, a Technological Centre specialising in Artificial Intelligence, Visual Computing and Interaction.; Universidad de Granada; Biodonostia Health Research Institute, and The Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials- CIC biomaGUNE.

Located in San Sebastian in the Basque region, BioTechFood was founded in 2017 and was the first Spanish company to develop cultivated meat, called Ethicameat. This is not the first time the startup has lead a publicly funded project..

A few months ago, the European Union granted its first funding to cultivated meat (more than 2.7m Euros) to ‘Meat4All, an international consortium led by BioTechFoods. The purpose of both projects is to increase the production of animal meat and to tackle the issues of intensive animal farming.