Ever since Dr. Katie Kam stopped eating meat in 1990, she said conversations with her non-vegetarian friends and family about becoming vegan brought a common theme to light.

“They’re less concerned about animal welfare and just find meat to be an enjoyable sensory experience, and they’d like that in their diet,” Kam said. “This is why cultured meat is the win-win. We provide the meats that people want, but in a way that’s much more respectful to communities and to the environment.”

BioBQ, co-founded by CEO Kam and CSO Janet Zoldan, a UT biomedical engineering associate professor, specializes in making cultured meats more accessible to the public, especially in Texas barbeque. Currently researching and developing potential products, the pair hope their Austin-based startup will be the pioneer of cultured meat in Texas. 

“BioBQ is a company that creates meat from culturing muscle and fat cells taken from live cattle,” Kam said. “It’s an alternative that we hope will displace the slaughtering of animals for meat.”

After creating the name and concept in 2018, Kam, a UT alumna, partnered with Zoldan in 2019, whose research helped guide BioBQ.

“My lab focuses on engineering human tissue,” Zoldan said. “Some of the technology that we developed in the lab to create aligned heart muscle tissue can be very easily applied to creating meat, which is basically bovine-based tissue.” 

BioBQ faces the challenge of communicating the benefits of cultured meat to the general public, a challenge encountered with many novel food innovations. Jean Parrella, a Texas A&M doctoral candidate researching consumer choices in the context of novel agritechnologies, said that subjective social norms, perceived benefit, perceived risk and knowledge are the key factors in consumer responsiveness.

“The most important thing at this stage is for food manufacturers, scientists working with these types of products to be on the forefront of communication, and strategically disseminate these messages to consumers,” Parrella said, “So that once these products do hit the market, they’re profitable and can have an impact at retail.” 

Another factor to public acceptance comes from food technology neophobia — the idea that new agritech is not necessary, Parrella said. Dr. Matt Baker, Texas A&M Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications department head, points out that the implications of food technologies are beyond just American consumers.

“It’s a big planet with a lot of mouths to feed and food insecurity is a huge deal,” Baker said. “Although as a consumer, I may have the luxury of saying no, I’ll pass on that, there are others that might need protein that would come from this.”

The concept of cultured meat provides a more sustainable option for meat production, Kam said, because it cuts down on cattle transportation costs, reduces animal deaths and more efficiently contributes to the growing meat demand.

“The biggest challenge we are facing is with the growing population and how (we can) feed all these people in a sustainable manner,” Zoldan said. “This is why I’m trying to convince whoever I can that we need to start solving this problem now, and not when it hits us.”

The startup’s Texas roots add to the appeal of  BioBQ, Kam said. BioBQ seeks to be the first cultured meat company to open in Texas, and Kam said the team would like their first product to be brisket.

“There’s something special about (being) based in Austin,” Kam said. “We’re also working with professors from Texas Tech, Texas A&M and UT San Antonio. We’ve created this Texas ecosystem to make the future of barbecue meats happen in Texas, and it’s really exciting.”