C2 THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2021
Fake meat goes beyond burgers
with money for printing steaks
BY AGNIESZKA DE SOUSA AND
IVAN LEVINGSTON
Bloomberg News
Juicy sirloin steaks hot off
a 3D printer are on the menu
this year as the booming faux
meat market bids to lure even
die hard carnivores.
Israel’s Redefine Meat Ltd.
is targeting steak houses
and other restaurants in Is-
rael, Europe and Asia with its
3D-printed facsimiles of beef
cuts, from fillet to rump and
brisket. The startup has just
raised $29 million in funding
to build a large-scale pilot fac-
tory and begin sales later this
year, it said Tuesday.
“We want to change the be-
lief that delicious meat can
only come from animals,”
Chief Executive Officer Esh-
char Ben-Shitrit said. “We have
all the building blocks in place
to make this a reality.”
Alternative-protein demand
has boomed in recent years
as environmental and health
concerns drive consumers to
Redefine Meat
The inherent advantages of 3D printing make it a perfect fit for solving
some of the most complex challenges in replacing animals as a source
of meat and the key to cracking the challenge of replicating beef steak.
products like faux burgers or
nuggets. That’s attracted ven-
ture-capital investors and food
giants from Nestle SA to Mc-
Donald’s Corp., although more
needs to be done to improve
the taste of products and lower
prices to compete with conven-
tional meat.
Redefine is trying to take
plant-based products to the
next level by giving diners the
same sensory experience as
eating prime beef. Last week,
another Israeli startup, Aleph
Farms Ltd., unveiled the
world’s first slaughter-free ri-
beye steak. Barcelona-based
Novameat Tech SL plans to
start selling 3D-printed vegan
WEDDINGS
meat to restaurants in Europe
this year as it raises funds for a
production scale-up, CEO Gi-
useppe Scionti said.
While Redefine is still work-
ing on flavor, 3D printers
loaded with plant-based “ink”
can print the meat countless
times and deliver a complex
layering of muscle and fat to
recreate the right texture.
“Our meat today versus
some other cuts of meat are the
same,” the Redefine CEO said
in an interview. “You cannot
distinguish.”
The company has distribu-
tion partners in Israel, Ger-
many, Switzerland and Sin-
gapore. Redefine’s financing
round, led by Happiness Capi-
tal and Hanaco Ventures, is the
highest Series-A funding for
any alternative protein startup,
data from researcher Deal-
room show.
The funding is “a major step
toward becoming the world’s
biggest alternative meat com-
pany by 2030,” Ben-Shitrit said.
Submitted photo
Jeffrey Stoefen and Whitney Beck
Jeffrey Stoefen
and Whitney Beck
Jeffrey Stoefen and Whit-
ney Beck, of Portland, were
married Dec. 31, 2020, in
Centennial Park under the St.
John Bridge in Portland.
The groom is the son of Pete
and Barbara Stoefen, of La
Pine. He is a 2006 graduate of
Bend High School and a 2010
graduate of Linfield College,
where he received a bachelor
of arts in political science. He’s
a 2013 graduate of the Univer-
sity of San Francisco, where
he received a master of arts in
sports management. He works
in sports management but is
on hiatus due to the pandemic.
The bride is the daughter
of Norm and Cindy Beck, of
Portland.
She is a 2004 graduate of
Westview High School and
a 2008 graduate of Oregon
State University where she
earned a bachelor of science
in business administration.
She is an account director
at Peter Jacobsen Sports in
Portland.
The will settle in Portland.
Alyssa and Jack Mulkey
BIDEN’S $15 WAGE PROPOSAL:
Jack and Alyssa (Crawford)
Mulkey were married Aug.
8, 2020, at the Diamond A
Ranch in Bend with a recep-
tion following.
The bride is the daughter
of Shawn and Lori Crawford,
of Johnson City, Tennessee.
She is a 2015 graduate of
Mountain View High School
and a 2018 graduate of Ore-
gon State University — Cas-
cades, where she earned a
bachelor of science in human
development and family ser-
vices. She is a loan set-up co-
ordinator at Prime Lending
in Bend.
The groom is the son of
Steve and Lorna Mulkey, of
Bend. He is a 2015 gradu-
ate of Mountain View High
School and a 2017 graduate
of Central Oregon Commu-
Job killer or a boon for workers?
BY PAUL WISEMAN
AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON — Presi-
dent Joe Biden’s effort to raise
the federal minimum wage
to $15 an hour could provide
a welcome opportunity for
someone like Cristian Car-
dona, a 21-year-old fast food
worker. Cardona would love to
earn enough to afford to move
out of his parents’ house in
Orlando, Florida, and maybe
scrape together money for col-
lege.
More than 1,000 miles away
in Detroit, Nya Marshall wor-
ries that a $15 minimum wage
would drive up her labor costs
and perhaps force her to close
her 2-year-old restaurant, al-
ready under strain from the vi-
ral pandemic.
Between Cardona’s hope and
Marshall’s fear lies a roiling
public debate, one with enor-
mous consequences for Amer-
ican workers and businesses.
Will the Biden administration
succeed in enacting a much
higher federal minimum wage
— and should it? Economists
have argued the merits of min-
imum wage hikes for years.
“The mother of all economic
debates” is how economists
Michael Feroli and Daniel Sil-
ver of JPMorgan Chase de-
scribe it.
The administration has cast
its campaign to raise the min-
imum as a way to lift up mil-
lions of the working poor, re-
duce America’s vast financial
inequality and help boost the
economy.
“No American should work
full time and live in poverty,”
said Rosemary Boeglin, a
White House spokeswoman.
“Research has shown that rais-
ing the minimum wage re-
duces poverty and has positive
economic benefits for workers,
their families, their communi-
ties, and local businesses where
they spend those additional
dollars.”
Yet just this month, the non-
partisan Congressional Bud-
get Office estimated that while
raising the minimum wage to
$15 by 2025 would increase
pay for 17 million people and
pull 900,000 out of poverty,
it would also end 1.4 million
jobs. The reasoning is that em-
ployers would cut jobs to make
up for their higher labor costs.
The fate of Biden’s minimum
wage proposal remains hazy.
Facing resistance in Congress,
the president has acknowl-
edged that he will likely have
to omit the measure from the
$1.9 trillion COVID-19 finan-
cial relief package he is propos-
ing and re-introduce it later as
a separate bill.
For years, there was almost
no debate at all about a min-
imum wage. Classical econo-
mists had standard advice on
imposing or raising minimum
wages: Don’t. Piling higher la-
bor costs on employers, the
thinking went, would force
them to cut jobs and end up
hurting the very low-wage
workers the minimum wage
was intended to help.
But groundbreaking re-
search in the 1990s suggested
that the Econ 101 version was
simplistic at best. Now there
is growing confidence among
economists — though far from
a consensus — that lawmakers
can mandate sharp increases
in the minimum wage without
killing large numbers of jobs.
Assessing Biden’s $15 plan,
for instance, economists at
Morgan Stanley have con-
cluded that “the impact to em-
ployment, positive or negative,
would be minimal, while the
social benefits to lifting real
wages of lower-income earners
and millions out of poverty are
substantial.’’
Raising the minimum wage,
they said, would also help nar-
row the chronic economic gap
between white Americans on
the one hand and Black and
Hispanic Americans on the
other.
The federal government in-
troduced a minimum wage to
a Depression-scarred country
in 1938. Though Congress has
raised the minimum over time,
it hasn’t done so for more than
11 years — the longest gap be-
tween increases. Adjusted for
inflation, $7.25 in 2009 dollars
would be about $8.80 now.
Twenty-nine states and Wash-
ington, D.C., have already ad-
opted minimum wages above
the federal $7.25.
The United States lags be-
hind other developed coun-
tries in the size of its minimum
wage. In 2018, the U.S. mini-
mum amounted to 33% of the
nation’s median earnings —
dead-last among 31 countries
in the Organization for Eco-
nomic Cooperation and Devel-
opment. By contrast, Canada’s
minimum wage came to 51%
of median income, France’s
62%
Biden’s plan would shake
things up entirely. He proposes
gradually raising the wage to
$15 an hour by 2025, starting
with a jump to $9.50 this year.
Thereafter, it would be indexed
to grow at the same rate as the
U.S. median wage — the point
at which half earn more and
half earn less.
Melissa Stickney/Submitted
Jack and Alyssa Mulkey
nity College where he earned
an associate of arts. He is a
project manager at Com-
posite Technologies in Red-
mond.
They honeymooned in
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
They will settle in Bend.
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