The BulleTin • Thursday, May 13, 2021 A13
Whole Foods founder John Mackey
invests in maker of lab-grown meat
BY DEENA SHANKER
Bloomberg
A prominent producer of
cultivated meat is renam-
ing itself and announcing its
first commercial plans — and
has secured investment from
Whole Foods Market and its
founder, John Mackey.
The moves by Upside Foods,
formerly known as Memphis
Meats, show the industry is
ready to sell its products to the
public when there’s U.S. regula-
tory approval. While it’s unclear
when or if the products will get
a green light, Upside CEO Uma
Valeti says his company is pre-
pared to move quickly. Chicken
will be the first cultured meat
product that it offers.
“We are looking for the ear-
liest possible date and we’ll be
ready,” Valeti said. “If it is by
end of year, we’ll be ready, if it’s
a little longer, we’ll be ready.”
Cellular agriculture compa-
nies, which produce proteins
like beef and chicken by grow-
ing meat from cells instead of
slaughtering live animals, must
get approval from the U.S. De-
partment of Agriculture and
the Food and Drug Adminis-
Toyota
Continued from A11
Early implementation of
infection-prevention mea-
sures and a timely ramp up of
production in China, where
virus-related disruptions dis-
sipated relatively early, meant
Toyota has been able to in-
crease its global output above
the previous year’s level each
month since August.
That allowed Toyota to
meet demand for cars that
rose swiftly in regions begin-
ning to emerge from lock-
down. Overall, unit sales for
the fiscal year ended in March
were down just 4% versus the
previous year.
Amid the gloom, Toyota’s
results “stand out as particu-
tration before they can offer
their products to the public.
There is no public timeline
for this, but industry execu-
tives have expressed optimism.
Companies are currently await-
ing guidance on labeling stan-
dards, which would be an im-
portant step toward retail sales.
“We are ready for business
and we want to put products
in front of the consumer,” Va-
leti said.
Mackey, who invested about
$500,000 of his money in Up-
side, said cultured meat has an
important role to play as con-
sumers start to look at more al-
ternatives to meat.
“This could change the
world in a very good way be-
cause of the horrendous suf-
fering that livestock animals
go through, the tremendous
damage that industrial agri-
culture has done to the envi-
ronment,” Mackey said in an
interview.
Whole Foods, which also in-
vested an undisclosed amount
in Upside, would be an import-
ant retail partner. Mackey said
no decisions have been made
about carrying Upside prod-
ucts, but “I hope that we do.”
The industry has seen mo-
mentum build recently. In
early 2020, Upside raised $161
million in new funding. That
round eventually swelled to
$186 million and included
the investments from Whole
Foods and Mackey. SoftBank
Group Corp. and Cargill Inc.
also participated.
There are now more than 70
cellular meat companies glob-
ally cultivating meats ranging
from chicken to foie gras to
kangaroo. Cultured meat could
make up as much as 35% of the
$1.8 trillion global meat mar-
ket by 2040, according to an es-
timate from Kearney.
The environmental ben-
efits, however, remain to be
proven. Cultured meat will
still produce emissions from
heating and electricity, a recent
assessment by environmen-
tal researcher CE Delft found.
Based on nations’ stated power
and gas policies for 2030, culti-
vated meat is expected to have
a lower environmental im-
pact than beef, but higher than
chicken, pork and plant-based
alternatives.
larly bright,” Bloomberg Intel-
ligence analyst Tatsuo Yoshida
said. The company’s sales are
proving sturdy, he said.
Stronger-than-anticipated
demand for cars threw the
auto industry for a loop at the
beginning of 2021 when many
were hit with the realization
they hadn’t ordered enough
chips to raise their output. The
failure to secure semiconduc-
tors, which are crucial to mak-
ing tech-laden modern cars, is
expected to result in millions
of lost vehicle sales this year.
Experts are saying the dearth
will probably get worse before
it gets better.
The chip shortage is likely
to impact 500,000 units of
Nissan’s output this current
fiscal year, though it aims to
recover about half of those
losses in the latter half of the
year when the crunch begins
to ease, said Nissan Chief
Executive Officer Makoto
Uchida, speaking at a briefing
Tuesday.
Toyota has emerged rela-
tively unscathed up until this
point thanks to its practice
of monitoring small suppli-
ers and stockpiling chips, al-
though a fire that broke out
at an automotive chip plant
owned by Renesas Electronics
Corp. in March still poses a
risk to the whole of Japan’s au-
tomotive sector.
Toyota’s hybrid system of
keeping inventory of some
crucial parts gave it a leg up
on other automakers depend-
ing heavily on the ‘Just-in-
Prices
Continued from A11
Energy costs, though,
edged down 0.1%, with gaso-
line pump prices falling 1.4%,
the biggest drop since May
2020.
Economists warned,
though, that gasoline prices
could go higher this month,
depending on how long a shut-
down lasts after the cyberat-
tack on the Colonial Pipeline,
which supplies the East Coast
with 45% of its fuel.
COVID-19
Continued from A11
Michelle Rogers, Meredith’s
mother, said she hoped the
youth vaccinations would help
bring some normalcy back.
“A little apprehensive, but
you know what? This is a step
towards getting life back to
normal so, we’re all in,” Mi-
chelle Rogers said with a slight
fist pump.
Earlier in the week, the
Food and Drug Administra-
tion authorized emergency
use of the two-shot vaccine
made by Pfizer and its Ger-
man partner, BioNTech. A
study of more than 2,000
time’ manufacturing strat-
egy of keeping a low stock of
goods on hand.
As the shortage drags on,
Toyota still expects to have
sufficient semiconductors for
production in the near term,
though the summer months
get a little cloudier, Bob Car-
ter, Toyota’s top sales executive
in the U.S., said in a recent in-
terview.
Indeed, the company’s per-
formance in the fiscal year just
ended was impressive. Even
though sales revenue dipped,
net income increased on the
strength of Toyota’s financial
services business and margins
rose to 8.3% from 6.8%.
The company’s deep con-
tingency planning is putting
it in a good position to reap
Last month, Powell sug-
gested at a news conference
that Fed officials expect infla-
tion to move above its 2% an-
nual target over the next few
months, in part because of
what economists call the base
effect: Year-over-year inflation
will look larger in April and
May because those months
are compared with the same
months in 2020, when prices
were sinking as the pandemic
shut down much of the coun-
try. Those year-over-year fig-
ures should look smaller once
they are compared with later
months in 2020, by which time
many prices had recovered.
The Fed has said it will allow
prices to rise slightly above 2%
for a period of time to make
up for the past decade’s short-
falls in inflation.
Powell has said that as long
as the increase in inflation
doesn’t appear to be hurting
consumer and business expec-
tations about price increases,
the central bank would be will-
ing to let prices rise without
acting to raise interest rates.
12- to 15-year-olds found the
same dose adults use is safe
and strongly protective in the
kids, too.
Among the outstanding
questions: Is it OK to get vac-
cinated against COVID-19
at the same doctor’s visit as
people receive some routine
vaccinations? That’s an urgent
back-to-school concern espe-
cially for the 12- to 15-year-
olds, who have missed out on
regularly scheduled vaccines
during the pandemic — but
also an issue for adults, too.
The CDC until now has
recommended not getting
other vaccinations within two
weeks of a COVID-19 shot,
mostly as a precaution so that
safety monitors could spot if
any unexpected side effects
crop up. But the CDC said
Wednesday it is changing that
advice because the COVID-19
vaccines have proved so safe
— and that health workers
can decide to give another
needed vaccine at the same
time.
The American Academy of
Pediatrics on Wednesday also
endorsed the Pfizer vaccine
for the 12-and-up crowd —
and agreed that it’s fine to give
more than one vaccine at the
same time, especially for kids
who are behind on their regu-
lar vaccinations.
sales from consumers in the
U.S. and China who are snap-
ping up cars, emboldened by
signs the pandemic is waning.
Toyota’s global sales in March
rose 44% to 982,912 units, an
all-time record for a single
month.
The company expects sales
for the current fiscal year to
touch 10.6 million. Electri-
fied vehicle sales alone should
reach 8 million units by 2030.
Toyota recently announced
plans to introduce 15 EVs
globally by 2025, quelling to
a certain extent concerns the
automaker is falling behind
rivals like VW in its develop-
ment of electric cars.
Something few realize is how
long Toyota has been develop-
ing EVs, Toyota Chief Digital
Officer James Kuffner said at a
briefing Wednesday. With 25
years of experience developing
EV components like motors
and power electronics, “Toyota
is strongly positioned to lead
the world in the best, reliable,
low-cost battery-electric vehi-
cles,” Kuffner said.
Toyota shares rose as much
as 2.7% Wednesday, before
closing up 2.2%, bringing
gains for the year to around
7%. The company will do a
five-for-one share split per
the register as of Sept. 30. The
purpose of the stock split is
“to reduce the minimum in-
vestment price, thereby creat-
ing an environment where it is
easier to invest in our shares,”
Toyota said in its earnings
statement.