Based in Leiden, Netherlands, Meatable is a new startup that uses cellular agriculture to grow cell-based meat. Cellular agriculture is the field of growing animal products, like meat, from cells instead of raising animals for the same products. Compared to the present animal agricultural system, cellular agriculture provides an alternative and sustainable way to produce the same animal products.

Daan Luining, Meatable’s Chief Technology Officer, has been involved with cellular agriculture from the very beginning. Luining was part of the research team under Dr. Mark Post that developed the first cultured meat burger in August 2013. Luining has also been a research strategist at New Harvest, the main nonprofit organization in the field that funds primary cellular agriculture research. Having been involved for so long, Luining is now the co-founder of his own company in the field.

According to Luining, Meatable is different from other cell ag meat startups due to their proprietary technique in using induced pluripotent stem cells to produce their meat. This is different from other startups, which typically use stem cells from animal muscle tissue. Using this proprietary technique, Meatable believes they can speed up cell growth from 60-day cycles to just 5 days.

Meatable plans to use the round of funding to expand their team and support their commercialization plans. Meatable will initially focus on producing cell-based beef and sausages before expanding into cell-based chicken and pork products. They aim to bring their first product from lab to market in the next three to four years, likely first in the Netherlands. Meatable is the second Dutch cell ag startup to raise funding this year. Mosa Meat, the startup founded by Dr. Mark Post, previously raised EUR 7.5M (US$8.8M) in a Series A financing in July.