Mewery

Mewery, a Czech deep-tech biotech startup founded in 2020 by Roman Lauš, is pioneering the production of cultivated pork. The venture emerged from Lauš's extensive background as a serial entrepreneur and his role as Program Director at Future Port Prague, where his exposure to exponential technologies converged with his personal Buddhist values, sparking a mission to revolutionize meat production. Lauš, along with his partner and clinical biologist Kristýna Kvardová, embarked on this journey to create a more sustainable and ethical food source.

The company operates in the cultivated meat market, a sector of the alternative protein industry, aiming to provide a solution to the environmental, ethical, and health issues associated with traditional animal agriculture. Mewery's core innovation is its proprietary co-cultivation technology, which combines non-GMO porcine cells with microalgae in a serum-free growth medium. This approach is a world-first, creating a scaffold-free, 3D structure that enhances cell growth, reduces production costs, and enriches the final product with nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and fiber that are not present in conventional pork. By eliminating the need for fetal bovine serum (FBS), a costly and ethically contentious component, Mewery significantly lowers expenses.

Mewery's business model is centered on licensing its co-cultivation technology to established food manufacturers and meat producers through joint ventures, enabling them to leverage their existing infrastructure for large-scale production. The company has already developed several prototypes, including meatballs and a burger composed of 75% pork cells and 25% microalgae cells, which it showcased at a tasting event to a receptive audience. Having established a stable cell line and a cell bank, the company is scaling up from lab volumes to a pilot facility at Mendel University in Brno. With over €4 million raised from public grants and venture capital firms like Credo Ventures and Big Idea Ventures, Mewery is advancing toward industrial testing and aims to launch pilot projects in the EU.

Keywords: cultivated meat, cell-based pork, microalgae, co-cultivation, alternative protein, food-tech, sustainable food, cellular agriculture, biotechnology, serum-free media, food production, ethical meat, non-GMO, joint venture, food technology licensing, bioreactor, cell line development, sustainable protein, meat alternative, Czech startup