Visiting the Future: Wild Earth, Wildtype

Visiting the Future is the start of a new series of brief interviews with cellular agriculture companies as Ahmed Khan visits their facilities as they share more about how they’re to produce the future of food.

On my first visit to California in four years to attend the Cultured Meat Symposium 2022, I had the opportunity to meet several cellular agriculture companies and see how they’ve grown since my last visit. 

Wild Earth

Wild Earth is a pet food startup looking to use cellular agriculture to produce sustainable pet foods. Founded in 2018, Wild Earth currently sells koji-based pet food and treats for dogs. Koji, a type of fungi, is commonly found in miso soup and soy sauce, and Wild Earth plans to use it as the source of its clean protein.

In November, the company recently showcased its latest cell-based innovation for dog food and will look to commercialize that soon. 

Wild Earth is based in Cell Valley Labs, a community lab in Berkeley home to a community of companies working on the future of food and agriculture.

I had the opportunity to speak with Abril Estrada, Wild Earth Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, to learn more about the company’s facility in Cell Valley Labs in Berkeley.

Can you please tell us about your company and the product you’re working on making?

We are Wild Earth and focus on sustainable, cruelty-free pet food. We are currently in the market with our line of plant-based dry dog food, treats, and supplements. We are working on developing cultured meat pet food products as well. 

Our hope is to provide cruelty-free options for pet parents looking to feed healthy, nutritious food to their pets that are better for the environment. 

We’re currently at your HQ, where we saw some of your production facilities! Can you please tell us about what we saw? 

We toured Cell Valley Labs, a community lab in Berkeley that is home to a community of companies working on the future of food and agriculture. Cell Valley Labs houses our cell line development lab, and we are currently building out a small pilot-scale facility. 

As we wrap up 2022, what has been a highlight or milestone you’re happy the team achieved this year?

This year we were excited to unveil our Cultured Chicken Broth Topper - a tasty broth made from cultured chicken cells that provides a boost of protein and flavor to any dry pet food (or a healthy snack on its own). We had both human and doggie taste tasters at our event!

Moving forward, what are your team’s plans for 2023? Are you aiming to achieve any particular milestone next year?

Our goal for 2023 is to continue to scale our cultured chicken and follow through with regulatory approval for our cultured product.

Wildtype

Wildtype is a cell-cultured seafood startup harnessing cellular agriculture to produce salmon meat. Founded in 2018, Wild type is the first cell-cultured seafood company to announce moving into a pilot scale in June 2021. In February 2022, Wildtype raised the largest funding round to date for a cellular agriculture seafood company.

Wildtype launched its pilot facility in June 2021

I had the opportunity to speak to Wildtype co-founders Justin Kolbeck and Arye Elfenbein to learn more about their facility in San Francisco and their plans moving forward.

Can you please tell us about your company and the product you’re working on making? 

Wildtype is on a mission to create the cleanest, most sustainable seafood on the planet, starting with salmon. 

We’re currently at your HQ, where we saw some of your production facilities! Can you please tell us about how your pilot plant facility? 

We've used our initial pilot plant to rapidly iterate on scaling up our technology. There is still so much to learn about how we can most affordably make cultivated seafood at a large-scale, and this facility has been absolutely instrumental in quickly testing hypotheses and preparing our products for market launch.

As we wrap up 2022, what has been a highlight or milestone you’re happy the team achieved this year? 

While we've been able to grow our seafood cells without serum for some time now, we recently started achieving very high yields in our serum-free cultures. This milestone paves the way for much more affordable cultivated salmon sushi in the very near term!

Moving forward, what are your team’s plans for 2023? Are you aiming to achieve any particular milestone next year? 

The biggest goal on our agenda for 2023 is to introduce our salmon sushi products commercially in the United States. We're working hard with our food regulators and launch partners to prepare for this momentous occasion. 

Is there anything else we should discuss about the future of food?

This is a great time to discuss cultivated seafood and meat. With planet Earth hitting an 8 billion population and COP 27 underway in Egypt, we need to move as quickly as we can together as an industry to bring these products to market in a way that will delight customers. I hope that means much deeper collaboration with other companies around the world in our young industry.