VANCOUVER, BC – CULT Food Science Corp. (“CULT” or the “Company”) (CSE: CULT) (OTC: CULTF) (FRA: LN0), an innovative investment platform with an exclusive focus on cellular agriculture that is advancing the development of novel technologies to provide a sustainable, environmental, and ethical solution to the global factory farming and aquaculture crises, is pleased to announce that its portfolio company, Mogale Meat Co., (“Mogale“) has successfully created its first cultivated chicken breast product, which is the first of its kind in Africa. March 30, 2022 marked a major milestone for Mogale as its team showcased the first prototype to the public. The cultivated chicken breast, composed of real chicken muscle and fat cells blended with a mushroom matrix, is the first of many prototypes Mogale is planning to spotlight.
Mogale has been working over the past eight months to produce Africa’s first chicken breast prototype using cultivated meat technology to compete in the global $15million XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion (“XPRIZE“) competition. CULT management expects that 2022 will be an exciting year for Mogale with the team quickly expanding as it prepares to open a seed round of funding in the second or third quarter of the year. Mogale’s first cultivated wildlife meat prototype is also being planned to be revealed later this year. With cultivated game meat, Mogale is striving to improve the socio-economic and environmental impacts of consumer protein products in Africa, one meal at a time.
More information on XPRIZE can be found on its website: https://www.xprize.org/prizes/feedthenextbillion
Approximately thirteen million people across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia face severe hunger and, over the course of 2022, fifteen to twenty million people in those three countries could face serious food insecurity.1 The Mogale team is further working on prototyping a unique, modular, plug-and-play production plant that will allow cultivated meat to be made in specific locations, which will not only provide the people across Africa with affordable and nutritional animal protein but do so in a way that conserves the continent’s precious wildlife and biodiversity. Mogale is taking steps every day to complete these goals and CULT is honoured to support the venture in its endeavour to help solve the global food crisis.
Management Commentary
“Our next goal will be game meats, a variety of meats that are not only widely consumed in Africa, but also sought after as healthy lean meats in many countries around the world. Game Meats are also the tastiest of the venison meat family, due to the great variety of species found in southern Africa,” said Dr. Paul Bartels, Founder and CEO of Mogale. “Cultivated meat is destined to play a significant role in conserving biodiversity and wildlife species in Africa and beyond,” added Dr. Bartels.
“The opportunities presented by advancements in technology to allow for Mogale to be able to cellularly cultivate chicken in a more sustainable fashion is incredible and will undoubtedly lead to a better future in Africa and the rest of the world,” said Lejjy Gafour, President of CULT. “We are thrilled for Mogale Meat and its accomplishments thus far, and we look forward to it continuing to blossom in the cellular agriculture industry and beyond,” added Mr. Gafour.
Bird Flu Outbreak
The current outbreak of avian influenza, or bird flu, across North America is the worst in seven years and it is causing a significant increase in the price of eggs and poultry. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (“APHIS”), 21 states have confirmed cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza.1 The virus causes disease in both commercial and backyard poultry, which has resulted in over 17 million birds perishing on the continent to date. In Canada, the outbreak that began in southern Ontario has now spread to geese in neighbouring Quebec.2
In the view of CULT’s management team, each avian influenza outbreak serves as yet another reminder that cellular agriculture is the way of the future. Poultry and eggs, as well as other proteins and foods, produced in a controlled environment are much less likely to be susceptible to disease, viruses and harmful bacteria. The Company is devoted to developing its own intellectual property to foster the evolution of cellular agriculture, as well as investing in promising ventures in order to build its portfolio of investee companies and foster communication between them, for the benefit of the industry overall.
About Mogale Meat
Managing Partner of MeatOurFuture – an XPRIZE “Feed the Next Billion” semi-finalist – Mogale Meat is headquartered in South Africa and led by CEO and Founder Dr. Paul Bartels, a wildlife veterinarian with over 25 years of experience in biobanking, cell culture and assisted reproduction technologies. Mogale is focused on developing a vertically integrated food technology platform to make healthy and nutritious cell-based meat accessible to Africa’s rapidly growing population. More information about Mogale Meat can be found on its website: https://mogalemeat.com
About CULT Food Science
CULT Food Science Corp. is an innovative investment platform with an exclusive focus on cellular agriculture that is advancing the development of novel technologies to provide a sustainable, environmental, and ethical solution to the global factory farming crisis. The first-of-its-kind in North America, CULT Food Science aims to provide individual investors with unprecedented exposure to the most innovative start-up, private or early-stage cultivated meat, cell-based dairy and other cultured food companies around the world.
Additional information can be found by viewing the Company’s website at www.cultfoodscience.com or its regulatory filings on www.sedar.com.
On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Company,
CULT FOOD SCIENCE CORP.
“Lejjy Gafour”
Lejjy Gafour, President
Forward-Looking Information:
Information set forth in this news release may involve forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that relate to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address a company’s expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as “anticipate”, “believe”, “plan”, “estimate”, “expect”, and “intend”, statements that an action or event “may”, “might”, “could”, “should”, or “will” be taken or occur, or other similar expressions. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include but are not limited to the following risks: those associated with marketing and sale of securities; the need for additional financing; reliance on key personnel; the potential for conflicts of interest among certain officers or directors with certain other projects; and the volatility of common share price and volume. Forward-looking statements are made based on management’s beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made and except as required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. For further information on risk, investors are advised to see the Company’s MD&A and other disclosure filings with the regulators which are found at www.sedar.com.
Endnotes
- “East Africa’s Growing Food Crisis: What to Know”, Michelle Gavin, Council on Foreign Relations, March 16, 2022, https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/east-africas-growing-food-crisis-what-know
- “Egg prices spike amid worst US avian flu outbreak in 7 years”, ABC News, accessed April 5, 2022, https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Food/egg-prices-spike-amid-worst-us-avian-flu/story?id=83859058
- “Three cases of avian flu have been detected in Quebec geese”, CTV News, accessed April 5, 2022 https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/another-case-of-bird-flu-in-local-ontario-flock-1.5847812
