Mewery Would Like to Change the Way We Eat Meat

Roman Lauš’ inner compass of Buddhist values, combined with his passion for exponential technologies and international business experience has given birth to the Mewery venture — a project intending to help sentient beings, the planet, and change the way we eat meat.

Mr. Laus has been an entrepreneur since he was in his twenties. One of his biggest ventures was the Future Port Prague conference — an international visionary futuristic event bringing the latest technologies under one roof. He was a member of the founding team and became a Program Director, bringing hundreds of speakers to Prague. Being responsible for the content of the whole event, he had to study different exponential technologies. That’s where he came across the emerging field of alternative proteins.

Mewery started as a merger of business skills, enthusiasm, and a wish to stop killing animals. When all conditions came together, Mewery was born. The company was founded by Mr. Lauš with the help of his partner Kristýna Kvardová and many enthusiastic like-minded people drawn to the project.

“We spent quite some time mapping the market and interviewing cultured-meat companies and major scientists in the field,” he says. “We put together a scientific team, started cooperation with the Czech Academy of Sciences and with Mendel U, built our own labs in Brno, appointed an advisory board, and assembled a network of mentors from the ‘alt protein’ scene in Berlin, the USA, and Singapore. We have also joined scientific and business communities that are dealing with alternative proteins all over the world.”

The company’s focus is to develop cultivated pork meat products using their own hybrid culture medium with microalgae extracts. They are also currently working on cell line optimization, their own growth factors, and developing the bioprocesses needed for scale up.

The Process of Making Mewery’s Meat

To make the pork meat, Mewery starts by taking a sample of cells — without harming the animal. They work with muscle cells as well as stem cells and isolate those best suited for cultivation.

As in the animal, their scientists mimic the conditions for cells to grow and divide into muscle and fat cells. They feed the cells with nutrients such as proteins, vitamins and growth factors using their proprietary microalgae serum-free medium. They will not use FBS (fetal bovine serum) which is ethically and economically unsuitable.

The company is co-developing bioreactors, called cultivators, to make the cells grow and divide in natural conditions, which helps to yield larger amounts. The final part, say the scientists, is harvesting the meat from the cultivator and “enjoying the result.”

Mewery’s future product line will include a variety of pork products: meatballs, sausages, ground meat, and tenderloin.

“Thanks to Mewery, I have finally found my passion,” says Mr. Lauš, “as it is completely aligned with my inner values. I have also been teaching Buddhist philosophy and personal development methods around the world for many years. Thus, my motivation is to create a beneficial business which saves many animals and even our planet.”