US and India-based Demolish Foods has unveiled its “high precision” Gen4 commercial platform to produce plant-based whole cuts that replicate conventional meat’s taste, texture, and juiciness. It says the need for whole cut substitutes is “urgent” when challenges like bird flu, climate change, and trade agreements are “threatening” poultry and meat supply chains and prices.

“Plant-based meats have focused on ground and shredded formats, leaving whole cuts, which is how the majority of meat is consumed, almost entirely unexplored,” notes the company.

The platform advances the firm’s earlier Gen3 platform, with improvements like a sixfold increase in production throughput and a 35% reduction in operational costs, multi-vendor ingredient flexibility, and cost efficiency. It also has a minimal impact on final product quality.

The platform is fully certified for commercial manufacturing, sale, and export and can produce whole cuts in both chilled and frozen form.

Recreating meat texture and nutrition

The Gen4 platform mimics meat’s hierarchical structure — from microscopic muscle fibers to chunky complex whole cuts, to replicate “all perceptible components and structures of conventional meat.”

It can also customize meat beyond the species level and capture the “natural variations” found in conventional animal cuts. Additionally, it “precisely” engineers both juicy and chewy sections within the same piece, recreating the authentic texture complexity of traditional meat.

“Gen4 cuts are also able to fuse multiple muscle structures, such as combining the major and minor pectoral muscles of a chicken breast. The Gen4 platform also has accurate sustained juiciness, which matches conventional meat from the first to the last chew,” underscores the company.

It also claims its flagship chicken breast is gluten-free, non-GMO, and uses “just eight clean label ingredients.” Its nutrition profile matches conventional meat in protein, fat, sodium, and caloric content.

According to the company, most meat consumers cannot distinguish between its plant-based whole cuts and conventional meat in appearance or mouthfeel.

Eyeing alt-protein transformation

Demolish Foods believes the alt-protein sector has reached a “make-or-break point” and needs a transformative whole cut manufacturing platform that delivers on taste, texture, nutrition, price, and scalability. 

“The Gen4 platform is the type of breakthrough that has the potential to revive the sector by enabling the large and unexplored category of precision plant-based whole cuts,” says the company.

Earlier this year, scientists in Israel and Palestine used metamaterials and injection molding to create whole cuts of meat, which constitute 54% of the global market, but face challenges due to the lack of scalable technology.

Previously, Canadian company New School Foods also replicated whole cuts in salmon, from plant-based ‘muscle fibers,’ to replicate fish fibers’ diameter, length, and strength for a similar mouthfeel.