Human Meat 3D Printing Startup Tabú Comes Out of Stealth with $1.7M in Funding
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE, May 31, 2022 - Tabú, the first startup dedicated to bioprinting ethically sourced human meat for human consumption, has come out of stealth mode upon completing an early seed funding round led by the Hammerhead Fund and undisclosed private investors. Raising $1.7 million in its first round, the company is poised to become a pioneer in the meat 3D printing space.
“We are grateful to our investors for believing in our mission to disrupt not just the technological landscape, but the cultural one,” said Tabú Founder and CEO Dr. Lauren Delroy. “By bioprinting human tissues for human consumption, we hope to expand the dining experience. Through the breaking of society’s most restrictive of taboos, the consumption of human flesh, diners may have a greater understanding of their own selves and the conceptual labels that dictate their worlds. We aim to provide this transformative experience in an ethical and sustainable way that also acts as an exotic alternative to the mass slaughter of animals via industrial factory farming.”
In 2020, the US averaged 264 pounds of meat consumed per person. The average European eats twice the global average at roughly 1.5 kg of meat a week. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects that Chinese citizens will eat over 53 million tons of pork and 10 million tons of beef and veal in 2022. Altogether, Our World in Date suggests that global meat consumption will grow by over 40% by 2050.
With this in mind, it’s crucial to understand the outsized impact that the meat industry has on the global ecosystem. Meat and dairy offer only 18 percent of calories consumed but produce 60 percent of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. With peak resource use likely culminating within the current decade, there is no doubt that alternative food sources will be required to sustain continued human population growth. Bioprinted meat will be just one key solution to this problem.
About the Hammerhead Fund
Founded by Julien Vernan, the Hammerhead Fund invests aggressively in future-forward startups in the medical, robotics, food, and wearables verticals. The Hanmerhead Fund is focused exclusively on seed stage funding at this time.
About Tabú
Offering bioprinted human meat, Tabú is an early stage startup focused on not only disrupting the ethical meat market, but human culture. By providing consumers with an ethical method for breaking taboos, Tabú aims to open new ways of looking at the world. What would it mean if you could eat something you were never meant to eat?
Hume™ Loin Chop: Cultivated from human stem cells and differentiated into thigh muscle, the Hume™ Loin Chop is designed to resemble a pork tenderloin.