No-kill burgers, low-carbon steaks, rewilded farmland – that’s what the cultured meat industry promises. But is it able to deliver?
Now, we know that it was the egg that came first. Then came the chicken. At least, that’s how Eat Just has done things.
In 2019, the US cultured-meat company began selling vegan eggs from mung beans. Their version of eggs required 98% less water than conventional eggs, used 86% less land, and produced 93% less CO2 emissions than conventional eggs. They said so.
A year later, they started selling lab-made chicken in Singapore, the world’s first cultivated meat product approved for human consumption. According to the firm, it required 78 percent less water and 95 per cent more land than a traditional chicken, and emits 92% less CO2 emissions.
The feedback from diners A surprised: “Oh, this tastes like chicken.”
Although it wasn’t the answer that a chef would expect to hear, Josh Tetrick, CEO and co-founder at Eat Just, was happy with the outcome. Their GOOD Meat chickenIt passed the taste test and was approved for market. The company plans to increase its production.
“We see a place in the world… where conventional meat feels like the horse and buggy, conventional meat feels like a flip phone,” says Tetrick.
But will cultured meat ever surpass conventional meat consumption?
‘A double win’
The world is facing a crisis in food production. Our existing agricultural processes mean we won’t have enough land available to feed an estimated 10 billion people by 2050.
Global meat production has more than quadrupled since 1961. Consumption has risen by almost 87 percent. Livestock production is now responsible. an estimated 14.5 per cent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. Our food system is contributing to biodiversity loss, deforestation as well as water pollution.
The main driver of greenhouse gas emissions is livestock. Is cultured beef the answer? Image: Illiya Vjestica
“We’re already at breaking point,” says Seren Kell, science and technology manager for the Good Food InstituteEurope (GFI). “We have to find an alternative.”
GFI, a non-profit organisation that promotes research on cell-based proteins, has called for more government investments to create a more efficient system of food.
“Most of the calories are lost as part of growing and being an animal,” Kell says, “and then you don’t even eat most of the animal.” A chicken needs to eat nine calories to produce one calorie of meat.
We find a place where conventional meat feels like horse and buggy.
That’s not all. While livestock uses approximately 77% of all land, it accounts for only 18% of the world’s food supply. The feed for livestock accounts for more than three quarters the global soy production.
Some in the cultured meat sector think that it’s possible to eliminate the need to raise livestock for food altogether. One analysis into cultivated meatAccording to production, switching from conventional meats would use as little as 95% less land.
“It’s a double win,” says Kell. “That land can then go and be a carbon sink if you use it for rewilding, reforestation and any other potential carbon storage technologies.”
But, can it be done at the scale needed?
Madame Fan, Singapore: Cultivated Chicken Dishes Image by Eat Just
Limitations
Cultured meat can be described as real animal meat that is made from animal cells. GOOD Meat’s chicken, for example, is 70 per cent cultured chicken cells and 30 per cent plant protein for added structure and flavour. It is made from 100% chicken cells and no animals.
It’s now on sale alongside conventional meat at the Madame Fan restaurant in Singapore. If you weren’t told, you would be unlikely to tell that the chicken Caesar salad with kale, romaine, edible flowers and shaved radish used cultured meat.
“It’s not hard to grow animal cells in culture in laboratory conditions and Petri dishes, in very small beakers,” says Simon Kahan, CEO of Biocellion SPC, who leads the Cultivated Meat Modelling Consortium (CMMC), a group that helps companies optimise bioprocessing techniques through computer modelling. “That’s been done for a very long time.”
There’s no one I can call up and say, ‘Hey, can I place an order for a 100,000-litre bioreactor?’
The industry faces two major challenges: cost and scale. Back in 2013, when Prof Mark Post of Maastricht University created the world’s first lab-made burger, it cost €250,000 (£215,000) to make.
Post has been a founder of Mosa Meat since then. This is a Dutch-based cultured meat business. His firm can now produce a lab-grown burger for around €9 (£7.50), which is a fraction of the original cost, but still considerably more expensive than a regular beef patty. McDonalds’ hamburgers cost £0.89 each – and that’s after gherkins and margins have been added.
“What’s difficult is growing the cells in larger containers like beer brewing-sized containers,” says Kahan. “That’s needed to get the economies of scale up, so that the overall cost – the processing cost – is reduced.”
Mosa Meat in the Netherlands can produce a burger for around £7.50. Image: Sander Dalhuisen
Tetrick agrees. “We need bioreactors north of 100,000 litres to make tens of millions of pounds of meat,” he says. “In order to get into vessels of that size, you need to design and engineer them from scratch because there’s no one I can call up and say, ‘Hey, can I place an order for a 100,000-litre bioreactor?’”
A reminder of the enormity of the challenge is provided in this article 2021 analysis by the US trade publication Food Navigator. It presented a hypothetical scenario for cultured beef to account for 10% of the global meat supply by 2010. Its conclusion? The industry would need 4,000 facilities that could produce 10 kilotonnes each year. It would require more than one factory per day to achieve this goal.
Another challenge is that the amino acids needed for cell-culture media – the medium in which the animal cells are grown – aren’t available in the quantities required for food production right now. It is also responsible for more than 90% of production costs.
Kell believes it may be possible to find cheaper options that are just as efficient. Kell believes that there might be some innovation in recycling cell-culture media or optimising cells to grow at higher density. These innovations are currently being tested or purely speculation.
It looks just like a regular chicken breast but it was lab-grown. Image by Eat Just
The CMMC hopes to find answers through its modeling. It will get results on everything from how a bioreactor’s geometry can affect cells, to how different feeding schedules affect cell growth.
“This has never been done before,” says Kahan. “It’s a moon-shot project and it’ll probably take it several years to get results that will be useful to the industry. At the same time, the industry itself is a moon-shot.”
“There still are a lot of challenges,” admits Tetrick. “Everything from how do you develop the cell line? What nutrients will the cell need? How do you find a way to make it inside the stainless-steel vessel How can you work well with regulatory authorities such as those in Singapore to make it more likely that one will get approval? They all continue to be challenges.”
Then there’s the question of whether the meat is grown in food- or pharma-grade conditions. Experts believe the latter is necessary due to how susceptible cells are to disease. This could lead to higher costs.
This has never been done before. It’s a moon-shot project
Despite all this, cultured beef is on the market. Singapore was the first to allow this stuff to be sold. Eat Just is currently working with restaurants across the country in order to offer the lab-grown chicken as a menu item. The meat will also be available at local hawker stalls beginning in February 2022.
Over in Israel, Future Meat Technologies has become the first firm to produce a chicken breast for less than $5 (£3.60), and foodies have tried their lab-grown meat at a “test restaurant” near Tel Aviv.
The industry is waiting for other regulatory authorities to give the green light. “We’re ready to go now,” says Tetrick. Tetrick thinks Eat Just will be available in all major US retail outlets within the next three- to six years.
Seren Kell doesn’t think the UK or Europe will have a mass market for cultured meat in the near future. She says that it’s more likely to appear in Australia, North America and China, which wants cultured meat to be part of its five-year agricultural plan.
MeaTech, an Israeli company, 3D printed a 4oz steak 2021. Image: MeaTech
“We’re probably in a position right now where a lot of the most exciting research is happening in Europe,” says Kell. “But because of our regulatory landscape and the lack of government investment to see these technologies through to completion, it will likely be commercialised in other countries first.”
Spanish government has invested in research in order to introduce olive oil to cultivated meat in order to lower its cholesterol levels. These are the exciting changes lab-grown meat can make to our dining experience.
Tetrick says the quest to become the world’s most consumed meat is set to be a “multi-decade, many hundreds of billions of dollars project.” But they’ve made the egg. They’ve also made the chicken. Now they’re hoping they’ve got the golden goose.
Main image: Eat Just
