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| Uma Valeti, Upside Foods, Memphis Meats, cultivated cell meat, Califorornia, Emeryville, epic, lab, biomeat, biotech meat, scandal, scam, con, venture capital, Nicholas Genovese, fda, cultured meat, lab grown meat, cultivated meat, |
UPDATE: 05/28/2023 Lab grown meat industry and not yet a possible commercial venture. It currently takes too many resources and energy to produce the meat. It will not be a commercial product until they find a way to make it more easily, cheaply and with less of an environmental footprint. In the meantime we should just be eating plants or already commercially available plant made "meats." Impossible Foods makes the best burgers, grounds and they have great chicken nuggets.
https://futurism.com/new-study-lab-grown-meat-worse-environment
04/28/23 Upside is now making ground chicken with plant base and a few lab meat cells thrown in. That sounds like Impossible chicken nuggets with a dash, a pinch of cells. If we're talking .0001% cells, that makes the product commercially viable now. As it's just plant based chicken nuggets, what is the point? The point of lab meat is an entire piece of meat indistinguishable for real meat, a chicken breast, a cut of steak. We already have great ground chicken substitutes. Who would pay $20,000 for ground lab meat? There's no market for that.
https://www.fooddive.com/news/upside-foods-cultivated-ground-chicken-pdgf-independent-cells/648266/
04/23/23 I haven't read this because of the pay wall. https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-struggle-to-make-lab-grown-meat-12cf46ab
ORIGINAL: Dr Uma Valeti has been churning out press releases about his company Upside Foods for years now. The company will allegedly produce, already produces bio meat. Dr. Uma Valeti is a cardiologist in California. Upside Foods used to be Memphis Meats. Bio meat is meat cultured from animal cells that doesn't involve raising and killing animals.
Bio meat is a hot hot hot industry because it could cut down on greenhouse gases from animal farming, reduce water consumption and reduce the cruel treatment of farm animals. Many have tried to cultivate animal cells but so far the process is too costly. Upside claims to have found a way to produce bio meat affordably. For this reason many want to invest in the company so they can make millions of dollars. The company has raised over $500,000,000 based on the promise of being able to currently manufacture bio meat at a reasonable cost.
November 2022 the FDA sent Upside Foods a letter stating they reviewed their data and their bio chicken would be safe for consumption. https://www.virgin.com/about-virgin/virgin-group/news/upside-foods-receives-green-light-for-cultivated-meat-from-fda This of course is very different than having an actual product which can be commercially produced. This is not an approval of the final or any product.
The new manufacturing facility is called EPIC. It's located at 6201 SHELLMOUND ST, EMERYVILLE, CA 94608-2119. It's currently zoned for retail shopping center anchor store, storage or shipping facility. Approved uses are retail, food/beverage, office, gym, entertainment, life science i.e. lab space. It's not approved for manufacturing. Previously there was a sports gym and a market bar at this location. It's located near apartments and retail properties. There is no application for a zoning or planning variance to manufacture bio meat. May 2021 they stated the "facility will produce, package and ship cultured meat at a larger scale than any other company in the industry." The company claimed in late 2021 they currently can and are(?) producing 50,000 lbs of bio meat per year and are testing production runs.
December 2022 they applied for a "pilot production plant" permit which expires November 2023. This was after they stated they already built the manufacturing plant and were manufacturing bio meat. I'll call tomorrow and update the article. I checked with Alameda County, California Building and Safety using their address https://permit.acgov.org/ You would need a lot of permits and variances from many different agencies to be able to operate a meat for human consumption operation at this site.
I managed to find this from the city of Emeryville. It's for "research and development" only and not production or manufacturing. "Memphis Meats – 6201 Shellmound Street; tenant improvements for research and development. Building permit application for Memphis Meats biotechnology company submitted on July 29, 2020. Issued building permit to install structural mezzanine in Parcel C1 for mechanical equipment for Memphis Meats on September 23, 2020. On November 18, 2020 received building permit application for Memphis Meats tenant improvements." https://www.ci.emeryville.ca.us/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/5105
I also found this from November 2021, "Upside Foods (formerly Memphis Meats) – 6201 Shellmound Street; office, and research and development lab; valuation $30.5 million; building permit received final inspection on November 10 and certificate of occupancy was granted on November 23." "Upside Foods (formerly Memphis Meats) – 6005 Shellmound Street, Suite 175; interior tenant improvements; valuation $5.4 million; building permit application for expedited plan review submitted on November 5." Status was listed as zero completion. This is when they had their building ribbon cutting grand opening. Looks like it was the grand opening of the office.
Initially the cost of Upside's cellular meat was $18,000/lb then $9,000 and now it's allegedly $2,400/lb. Real animal meat sells for $2-$20/lb. Plant based meat sells for about the same. Upside is a long ways off. If you don't want to eat animal meat today, makes more sense to eat plant meat like Impossible or Beyond. Impossible meatballs, burgers taste fantastic and don't have unhealthy animal fat, cholesterol like real meat. 12 oz Impossible ground beef is $5. Gardein has wonderful affordable options as well. I've vegan and eat mainly unprocessed beats, nuts, seeds besides fruits, veggies, rice, grains. I have no investment in any food or other company.
A few of Upside's legal woes.
Many suspect the company is an investment scam. "Will Biotech Meat Become the Next Tech Scandal? Everything about the biotech meat industry is premature. The entire sector is essentially one massive PR campaign disguised as food tech pretending to save the world. When you’re spending more time chasing media than ensuring your company is financially successful, the house of cards will inevitable fall."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelesimon/2023/01/10/will-biotech-meat-become-the-next-tech-scandal/?sh=b753e142c96c
Another red flag is the company sued one of their founders Nicholas Genovese. Two other key employees resigned after Genovese was fired.
https://www.wired.com/story/upside-foods-blue-sky-trade-secrets-lawsuit/
https://thecounter.org/upside-foods-lab-grown-meat-cultured-uma-valeti-nicholas-genovese-firing/
More red flags is CEO, GMs who have never successfully run a real active business that makes products. Dr. Uma Valeti is just a cardiologist. He's never run any business before yet alone a multi million dollar business. They have no real product in the market even though they claim they made their first bio meat over a decade ago. All they do is churn out PRs and raise funds. Most board members are venture capitalists. This company reminds me of the scam bio fuels companies. They claim to take waste and turn it into bio fuel or as a replacement for plastic like Xyleco which I outed. Just fyi I predicted the failure of investment scams NPCT, UMCC, ASTN, EZR, TMOT, Theranos, Enron... I was sued twice for defamation for my 100% factual statements about the companies ASTN and their stock promoters NPCT. I represented myself pro se and won both cases.
About Upside Foods: "Upside Foods, based in Berkeley, Calif., was founded in 2015 by Uma Valeti, MD, the company’s CEO, and William Clem. Formerly known as Memphis Meats, the company – a pioneer in the lab-grown meat business -- underwent a name change in May 2021. On November 16, the Food and Drug Administration announced that lab-grown chicken developed by Upside Foods is safe for human consumption. The company anticipates being able to bring its products to market once its facilities have been inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture."
"Among Upside Foods’ investors have been Abu Dhabi Growth Fund, Softbank, Tyson Foods, Norwest Venture Partners, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson. The company has raised at least $520 million, the latest of which was a Series C round in April 2022. Its last known valuation was $1.3 billion and has not publicly communicated an intention to IPO."
Other investors Kimbal Musk, Cargill, Khalifa Al Suwaidi of Abu Dhabi Growth Fund,
SEC filings
Form D Exempt Offering of Securities
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1668780/000156761922009601/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml
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