Upside Foods, one of two companies approved to market cell-cultured meat in the United States, will locate its first commercial-scale plant in a suburb north of Chicago, said CEO Uma Valeti on Thursday. The 187,000-square-foot facility would begin with the production of ground cultivated chicken, with plans to expand to other species and whole-textured products in the future.
The plant, located in Glenview, Illinois, about 20 miles north of Chicago, would have an initial capacity of millions of pounds of cultivated — the industry’s preferred term — meat products a year and the potential to expand to more than 30 million pounds annually, said the company, which is based in Berkeley, California. It would be one of the largest and most advanced such facilities in the world, it said.
Valeti said the Chicago area was selected for the facility because of its central location, its role as a transportation hub, and its legacy as a meatpacker. Upside said its plant would create 75 jobs.
At present, companies producing cultivated meat face the challenges of bringing down costs and scaling up production.
Americans consume 226 pounds apiece of red meat and poultry annually, a U.S. total of more than 94 billion pounds a year, estimates the USDA.