Li Ka-shing invests in US 3D printed meat firm

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-06-24

Li Ka-shing attends a press conference announcing his company's annual
financial report in Hong Kong, Feb. 28. (File photo/Xinhua)

Hong Kong business tycoon Li Ka-shing recently invested US$10 million in Modern Meadow, a company that uses 3D printing to make meat and leather in a laboratory, reports the Chinese-language Shanghai Commercial News.

It is the second such investment by Li's Hong Kong-based venture capital firm Horizons Ventures, following its support of Hampton Creek Foods, a startup that produces substitute eggs that almost have the same texture as real eggs.

Modern Meadow is a US-based startup and grows meat and leather in the lab which at present supplies leather to the fashion industry and leather-made product manufacturers, in response to the increasing demand for leather-made goods worldwide.

It involves 3D printing, a process that does not hurt animals or the environment, the paper said. The company's bioprinters use 3D tissue to grow meat and leather with the use of a tissue engineering technique called biofabrication. The American company is also developing fish and poultry from muscle cells.

Modern Meadow CEO Andras Forgacs said the biopsies used by the company to "brew" leather and meat were obtained from animals but the process does not hurt, injure or kill them.

Meanwhile, the technology is expected to help meet demand for animal protein. Aside from Li's company, Modern Meadow has received US$250,000 in financial support from the US Department of Agriculture and the Small Business Innovation Research, a US government program coordinated by the Small Business Administration.

The 3D printing program has been widely adopted as an emerging technology, similar to manufacturing medical equipment, hand-made automobiles and guns, the paper said.