Heritage Meat, Cultivated
Early on in her life, it was a passion and love for food that brought Patricia Bubner to the field of science. Through her journey as a researcher in chemical engineering to working on food sustainability initiatives such as the Millet Project, it was only time until Patricia made her way into the cultivated meat space. Today she is the co-founder and CEO of Orbillion Bio, a startup focused on cell-based heritage meats, and the first company to bring premium products to the market. In this week’s episode we chat more about Patricia’s journey, and get a deeper dive into Orbillion and their mission. We also discuss their recent taste testing event, biggest learnings in the journey so far, and the role of farmers in a re-imagined food system.
Before diving deeper into Patricia’s work with Orbillion, I was curious to learn more about her time with the Millet Project. Set up during her postdoc at UC Berkley, Patricia found herself talking about the grain with a fellow chemical engineer.
Patricia: “When we talked about how this grain has an innate biodiversity and has been around for ten thousand years, but also is very drought-tolerant … we thought why are people growing rice in California … why aren’t they growing millet?”
Patricia: “We worked on popularising millet in the US, and we wanted to address all sides; educating customers and the people about what millet is, how tasty it is and how you can prepare it. We connected with farmers to make them grow millet, and also with food producers to make millet products.”
Patricia: “We were even thinking of spinning some of the products in the Millet Project out to become a startup. We developed millet beer and millet patties, and even millet sausages.”
So what was it that drove Patricia away from the world of plant-based meats and into the cultivated space?
Patricia: “The thing is - I love science. And plant-based meats are great, and plant-based alternatives are great but it just isn’t where my main strength lies. I’m a scientist, I’m an engineer, and I wanted to use these strengths.”
Patricia: “Cell cultured meat … is a difficult engineering and science problem, it’s also something I’ve been dreaming of since I started thinking about studying chemistry because I wanted to build food from scratch.”
We also chatted about the influence of being in San Francisco, and the effect that the environment has on fostering an entrepreneurial mindset.
Patricia: “In the Bay area, people encourage you to pursue your passions, even if they seem like a very wild dream.”
For Patricia and her co-founders, this dream is slowly becoming a reality through the fruition of Orbillion, a startup principally based around the recognition of two gaps in the cell-based meat space.
Technology gap (e.g. scale-up and cost)
Connection to the farmers, and heritage of meat
Patricia: “The more we talked about and had these ideas of how we could address this technology gap… the more we came up with fantastic ideas and realised we had the technology… and founded Orbillion.”
Patricia: “We are a product company, and we’re very focused on bringing that product out as soon as possible, and we’re addressing scale-up directly. Cell-line development is necessary for that, but it’s also something that you can accelerate a lot in the early stage.”
It’s for that reason that Orbillion’s team was primarily focused on identifying the cells that work best in a bio-reactor process during their first year of founding. They did this through developing a HyperPlex bio-platform which enables them to screen cells and therefore allows the selection of cell lines at a much faster pace than other companies.
Patricia: “That’s important because when you initially get your sample of cell lines … you have a lot of different cells that have different properties, and your goal is to get a single cell out of that pool of cells, that performs best.”
Patricia: “The best way to do that is to look at a lot of these cells in parallel, and find the ones that perform best in a bio-reactor setting. We have a good way of mimicking that setting on a small scale, and thereby selecting cell lines faster than others.”
The company also made it clear that they’re focused on bringing their own products to market, rather than taking a B2B approach.
Patricia: “We always wanted to make a product … it’s the ultimate way not only to get high margins, but also to see your work and the impact that it has on the world.”
Patricia: “The cell cultured meat ecosystem is still very young, and not very mature. So right now the B2B opportunities are not that big; they will be there in the future, but right now it’s still very nascent.”
Patricia: “That said I think there are a lot of untapped opportunities that we will see other startups, and other bigger companies tackling soon, to build that supply chain and that ecosystem. It’s just not something we think we’re built-up for, since our goal and our mission is really to create flavourful craft meats that we want to sell to consumers.”
This aspect of flavour is one of the things that truly seem to define Orbillion Bio. Rather than exclusively focusing on structure, or the texture of a product, most of the emphasis is on flavour; primarily for two reasons.
Patricia: “Texture is something that we have a really hard time describing, in terms of sensory experiences. Flavour is easier, because with flavour there’s something that you can measure.”
Patricia: “We have an ambitious goal, our goal is to make sure that the world transitions to preferring cell-cultured meat over regular meat. I think the only way to do that is to create a better product, and a better product for me … is [one] with that particular flavour that we love.”
Patricia also went on to talk about how for the short-term, Orbillion’s products will be ground, as this form of meat makes up 80% of the current US meat market.
Patricia": “I’m not certain that it would make sense to pursue the more complicated, more long-term and difficult to scale structured meat market initially; later on - of course, I mean this is something that we want to pursue, but our first product we want to get out as soon as possible.”
And it seems like the team are getting there at a rapid pace, with their first taste testing event having been already held in March. They developed 4 different meats: wagyu, lamb, wild elk and American bison.
Patricia: “I wasn’t initially supportive of making a tasting event … man I was wrong.”
Patricia: “First of all, the entire Orbillion team was there, including some of our close supporters, investors, but most importantly the people that did the work in the lab. And it is so important for everyone to see how people react to the product that they’ve worked so hard on.”
Patricia: “Plus getting the feedback, one person said that our lamb tasted better than the real lamb they had afterwards… I mean for us that was just showing us that we are on the right way, and focusing on exactly what we said; flavour and on really crafting meat.”
In order to get to where they are, it requires not just great advisers but additionally great teamwork and organisation. As the CEO of the company, we asked Patricia what some of her biggest learnings were in the journey so far. They came down to:
To make sure that the people that you hire, fit the culture that you want to create
Patricia: “Especially when you’re a small company, it’s so important to have the right people on board and know what you’re looking for, and when there’s not a fit.”
2. Building a company is difficult, so the best thing you can do is ask for support when you need it, and be very honest with each other, especially the founding team.
Patricia: "It’s no secret that a lot of startups fail because the founding team just can’t work with each other anymore, so having this very open discussion, being vulnerable with each other and recognising that each of you is not only your coworker, but also a human being.”
Whilst Orbillion is currently working on bringing a premium product to market, the startup also firmly believes in the power of its technology to bring about the democratisation of meat.
Patricia: “In general, I think we need to think about how can we make sure that the growing population of the world has access to nutritious food.”
Patricia: “With cell-cultured meat, we have the advantage that we’re not dependent on availability of land, or availability of certain other things that countries need … so democratising means that we can build a bioreactor, in say Singapore … and have people that usually cannot produce meat in their own country get access to meat.”
Patricia: “The broader implication of that is that these countries are no longer dependent on other countries … which gives people access to nutritional food without being subject to political pressure.”
One of the things that also sets Orbillion apart is their relationship to farmers and involving them in their early-stage messaging. We decided to explore this deeper, and understand what Patricia sees as the potential role of farmers in the cultivated meat space.
Patricia: “It’s a very complex system, and farmers are often overlooked, are talked down to, are looked down upon, while they are the ones providing food for people … and they’re not getting the recognition or money that they deserve.”
Patricia: “So when we re-create this food system that we have … how can we make sure that these people are part of that rising tide? And I’m sure if we fight for fair meat prices, then they will benefit. There are regenerative farmers out there, who are selling their meats at a premium.”
Patricia: “As a cell-based meat company, we’re very careful to see what knobs we’re turning and what’s the influence there. So I ask farmers for their thoughts and advice on it, and their criticisms, because it’s very important to have open discussions.”
Patricia also spoke about the potential role of farmers in animal husbandry, and rather than breeding species for food, breeding them for providing the best possible cells. She also spoke about the potential that this and cultivated meat more broadly has for retaining biodiversity, and encouraging farmers to conserve heritage breeds.
So what are the next steps for the company?
Patricia: “We are now really focusing on our product development, we want to bring a product out within the next two years; 2023 is our target, but of course there are regulatory hurdles, scale-up and cost reduction parts.”
Patricia: “We also recently joined AMPS (Alliance for Meat Poultry and Seafood) to have a say in the regulatory process for cell-cultured meat in the US which is super important.”
To learn more you can head to Orbillion’s website, or reach out to Patricia personally here.