Why is the wait so long for cultured meat?
A Singapore restaurant called 1880 serves a trio of cultured chicken dishes made with animal-free meat that’s produced by Eat Just Inc. Singapore is thus far the only place that has approved cultured meat for public consumption. Observers are asking: What’s taking so long? And how long will it take for the cultured meat industry to deliver on its promise? (Photo Source: Eat Just, Inc)
A Singapore restaurant named 1880 is opening its doors to the future. Clustered cozily in nest-like booths under warmly-lit, low ceilings, customers can order one of the House specialities, a trio of cultured chicken dishes seasoned with mouthwatering flavors— crispy sesame with spring onion, puff pastry stuffed with chicken and black bean, and sweet maple waffle topped with spicy chicken.
Factory-farmed chickens living packed together on concrete floors with barely enough room to move. Cultured meat removes animal cruelty from the meat production process, and results in far fewer emissions than traditional animal agriculture. (Photo source: The Guardian)
It’s chicken, but it never walked, clucked, or lived packed wing-to-wing with other meat chickens on an industrial farm. Because it is cultured chicken, the first of its kind to be sold to the public. Its manufacturer, San Francisco-based Eat Just, is so pleased with its progress it has announced plans to build a production facility in Qatar.
Cultured meat (CM) is grown in a lab from animal cells, called stem cells, which are extracted via biopsy from a living animal. Not only is the process harmless but, in the case of the cultured chicken, it takes less than half the time to produce compared to traditional factory farmed chicken. Cultured beef, chicken, pork, seafood and organ meats have all been successfully produced, but chicken is the first to reach commercial scale.
The prospect of cultured meat was first introduced to the public in 2005 when Jason Matheny, co-author of the paper “Commentary: In Vitro-Cultured Meat Production” founded New Harvest, the first non-profit dedicated to lab-grown meat research. Since then, the CM industry has made many lofty promises about its potential to revolutionize food production in favor of our climate. If manufactured responsibly, it could use 98 percent less land, 50 percent less energy, and produce a lower carbon footprint than all forms of traditional meat production—all while tasting like meat.
“Alternative proteins, including cultivated meat, can be a key aspect of how we reduce the emissions from our food system,” says Caroline Bushnell of the Good Foods Institute. “Our food system’s role in climate change is generally under-appreciated, but industrial animal agriculture is a major contributor.”
If the industry continues its current trajectory of streamlining technology and optimizing production, CM could make up roughly 35 percent of the global meat market in the next 20 years, reports a 2020 biotechnology study. Minimizing CM’s environmental impacts by sourcing energy from renewable sources and responsibly managing the disposal and recycling of the materials, called mediums, upon which cultured meat is grown would be an incredible bonus, according to a 2021 Good Food Institute assessment.
But in spite of these promising projections, and nearly two decades of development, only restaurants in Singapore like 1880 have been approved to sell it. What’s taking so long? And what will it take for the CM industry to deliver on its promises?
When it comes to getting into grocery stores and restaurants in this country, cultured meat faces a number of challenges, among them:
Cultivated meat bioreactors in which meat cells are grown in high volumes at high temperatures. (Photo Source: The Good Food Institute)
Cultured meat is expensive to produce. High energy costs are mostly due to the amount of power needed to cool machinery, called bioreactors, during the early growth phase of the cell cultures. The production and disposal of the mediums on which the cell cultures are grown also contribute to the hefty energy requirements of CM facilities. But if CM facilities source from renewable energy, studies show they’ll produce far fewer emissions than the traditional meat industry. (See “Sourcing Power from Renewable Energy” section below.)
It’s not FDA approved yet. Eat Just is the first brand to get regulatory approval—in Singapore. The sector is still waiting for approval to come from the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). But progress—like the USDA’s allocation of $10 million for the establishment of the National Institute for Cellular Agriculture as part of a total $146 million investment in sustainable agriculture research—indicate that CM is closer than ever before to securing FDA approval. Some observers expect the sector to get regulatory approval as early as 2023.
The technology isn’t quite there. Another reason for the high costs of CM is the stem technology, which isn’t streamlined enough to make it feasible for large-scale commercialization. Eat Just’s founder, Josh Tetrick, admits that at current market prices, the company has yet to make any profit.
So challenges certainly exist, but the industry is making adjustments to improve the odds that cultured meat will become commercially viable sooner rather than later. Among the solutions:
Creating a hybrid version of alternative meat. To speed the time to production, lower prices, and reduce the overall amount of CM necessary to create a finished product, some experts are predicting that CM products have a better chance of success if they’re blended with plant proteins, fats, biomass, or traditional meat. Companies like Vital Meat, which is currently developing cultured chicken, duck, white fish and pork, are confident in the future of plant-meat cultured-meat hybrids. SciFi foods estimates it will be able to produce a blended plant-based meat and cultivated meat burger for under $10, with production prices dropping further as it moves towards large-scale production.
If cultured meat companies like Eat Just can secure larger investments and continue to scale up production, cultured chicken may begin to appear on more menus across the globe. (Photo Source: Eat Just, Inc.)
Sourcing power from renewable energy. If CM facilities can source only 30 percent of their necessary production energy from renewable sources (like wind farms, solar panels, and even up-and-coming technologies like instream hydropower) the Good Food Institute reports that CM’s carbon footprint will be smaller than traditional US beef production.
Petitioning for more aid from the government. Elon Musk got $4.9 billion to produce a viable electric car. To create a new, more sustainable agriculture sector, the cultured meat industry may need a big boost too. Industry supporters say that federal aid is critical to achieving any kind of parity with the dairy and meat sectors, given the size of Big Ag subsidies, which added up to $47 billion in 2020.
“For the industry to be anything close to the climate and animal welfare solution that it holds itself up to be, it will require the kind of early-stage research and development that private firms have difficulty pursuing,” writes The Breakthrough Institute.
Thus far, the CM industry has only raised about $2 billion in private investments since 2016 — not nearly enough to scale up when compared to the $47 billion invested into markets like new climate technologies in 2021 alone.
Investment from Big Ag. Another big development is the trend of big meat companies buying and investing in the more than 100 US start-ups currently attempting to break the code of commercialized CM production. With the world’s largest CM production facility poised to be built in the US by the end of 2024, significant investments from Big Ag and the government will make all the difference.
So where does all this lead? We need an abundance of protein alternatives, ones that will appeal to meat-eaters and plant-based eaters alike. Tetrick, chief executive of Eat Just, is optimistic that cultured meat will be adopted within the lifetimes of this generation and the next. “I think our grandchildren are going to ask us about why we ate meat from slaughtered animals back in 2022,” Tetrick said in an interview with the Guardian.
Singapore’s 1880 has successfully opened its doors to embrace the future of cultured meat, and the pieces are falling into place, slowly, but surely, for the US market to do the same.
Sarah Katharine Hurlock is a Stone Pier Press News Fellow based in Needham, MA.