What comes to mind when you picture a “mega farm”? A vast tract of resources on which thousands of animals are raised until they are ready to be slaughtered for meat while consuming resources and emitting greenhouse gases? This simple farm of the past is getting a much-needed makeover thanks to Meaty Foods, a company that makes meat from mycelium instead of animals.
This month, Matty opened “Mega Ranch,” the company’s first industrial-scale production facility in Thornton, Colorado, and is a blueprint for what the future of ranching could look like. Here, the mycelium replaces the cow and just one tablespoon of fungal spores is capable of producing the equivalent of hundreds of cows’ worth of whole food protein in a few days.
meat food
Meaty’s products include vegan whole-cut steaks and carne asada, along with plant-based alternatives to classic and breaded varieties of chicken cutlets — which are now being made more efficiently than their animal counterparts at the company’s new mega ranch.
Tyler Huggins, CEO and co-founder of Meti, knows a thing or two about ranching, as he grew up on a bison ranch himself. With $250 million in funding to date for Meati, Huggins is redefining what modern ranching can look like.
“Investors and consumers recognize that mayi is a new, different food,” says Huggins. “All they have to do is read our simple ingredient list and taste methi to realize that this is the cut-through option people are waiting for—something they see on their plates weekly, if not daily.”
Scaling mushroom meat at Mega Ranch
Mayte’s new mega ranch produces mushroom meat almost nonstop when the facility is fully operational in late 2023, with a target production of 45 million pounds annually. Although industrial production of animal meat involves many different players – from ranchers to feedlots to slaughterhouses to packers. —Meati’s Mega Ranch is vertically integrated, meaning vegan meats are grown, cut, processed and packed at the facility.
meat food
The facility was funded through Meti’s oversubscribed Series C round led by capital markets company Revolution Growth. Fazila Abdul Rashid, partner at Revolution Growth and Meti Foods board member, believes Meti’s new facility will put the company at the forefront of the inevitable protein revolution.
“The next few years will see a seismic shift in how we eat, and Meati’s state-of-the-art, scalable production capabilities and focus on meeting consumer demand for clean, whole-food protein make it clear where they stand. led,” Abdul Rashid said in a statement.
The mega ranch is Meati’s first industrial-scale facility where it plans to produce as much or more meat than any individual traditional animal farm in the United States and will help the company reach $1 billion in run-rate sales by 2025.
“Tyler and the team have a vision for a new food category with pure ingredients and flavors that don’t compromise,” he said. “We’re excited to continue working with them to reach the next level and bring Meati to even more consumers across the United States.”
the meat
In addition to its Mega Ranch, Metty is already teasing a larger “Giga Ranch” where it plans to produce tens of millions of pounds of mycelium-based meat annually in a way that’s far more efficient and ethical than traditional animal agriculture.
“Our belief that nature already has the answers to many of today’s challenges allows us to unlock a new food with methi at a time when consumers are demanding something different and better,” Huggins said. “Meati offers a food unmatched in its taste, texture, nutrition and purity, and we’re thrilled to open this first and next phase of the resource-efficient ‘Mega Ranch’ facility to help even more consumers add it to their diets.”
Mycelium makes better bacon
Meaty isn’t the only company currently scaling up its mycelium meat. In Green Island, NY, Swersey Silos began operating last year. The 120,000-square-foot vertical mycelium farm—the largest of its kind in the world—is owned by MyForest Foods, a subsidiary of Ecovative, a diversified company that uses the magic of mycelium to create more efficient ways to produce everything from packaging to food.
MyForest Foods
At the Sweresy Silos, MyForest produces the raw material for its MyBacon, a vegetarian mycelium-based bacon that is cured just like its animal-derived counterpart. At capacity, it will produce about three million pounds of mycelium annually.
“The way people raise pigs deforms pigs. We put them in these little boxes. We feed them grain. They can’t turn around,” Ecovative founder Eben Bayer previously told VegNews. “It’s the perversion of everything that makes a pig great.”
“Because putting the mycelium in a big box like we do in a vertical farm and feeding it wood chips and giving it mist and air flow is absolutely what the mycelium wants,” he said. “It’s completely capable of doing what it exists to do, and it’s much more efficient at making something like pork.”
Like Meati, MyForest is aggressively scaling its production capacity with a goal of serving vegan bacon to its 1 million customers by 2024.
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Anna Starostenetskaya is Senior News Editor at VegNews and keeps an eye on all things vegan in her hometown of San Francisco, CA and beyond.