Aleph Farms, the first company to grow cultivated beef steaks, announced it is adding collagen to its product line.

Conventional collagen is produced by boiling and processing cow’s hides and bones and is widely used as anti-aging component in skin care, health supplements, and other industries.

Aleph Farms' cultivated collagen offers attributes of natural animal-based collagen that are unmatched by plant or fermented recombinant-based alternatives.

“The cellular agriculture industry promised to replace a large part of intensive animal farming practices, which make up to 70% of the global meat production. Cultivated meat, however, is only part of the solution, as meat represents just 30-35% of a cow. The rest includes many other valuable by-products. To achieve our vision, we need to provide alternatives to the other animal parts as well, including collagen-based products,” said Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms.

Bringing to market cell-cultured collagen is in line with the company's vision is to provide unconditional nutrition for anyone, anytime, anywhere, and with its system-based approach to complex animal agriculture transition.

“Focusing on single categories of animal products does not account for the complexity of the animal agriculture ecosystem. For a more comprehensive, just, and inclusive protein transition we should rely on a systems-based approach,” says Toubia.

Aleph Farms' collagen is the first product to emerge from Aleph Frontiers the company’s incubator, which works as a research centre focused on the development of new technologies and products to bring to market. 

This announcement is in line with the company’s vision to supplement sustainable, but less productive, livestock agriculture practices, and follows 18 months of research by an expert team in stealth mode. Aleph’s collagen is now moving to full product development stage and should launch in 2024.

Recently, Aleph Farms announced the opening of a new cultured-beef steaks pilot production plant. Both platforms largely share similar inputs and equipment. “We are leveraging key components from our production method for steaks, including our bovine cell sources and animal-free growth medium, to produce several collagen types, as well as the entire extracellular matrix (ECM) of skin, bones and joints, which comprises several fibre-forming proteins," said Dr. Neta Lavon, CTO and VP of R&D at Aleph Farms. “Collagen is the most abundant protein in the ECM and is well recognized for its benefits.”

For more information, visit aleph-farms.com