The Revolution of Cultured Meat

There is certainly a race to bring cell-cultured meat to marketplace. Last week news broke of the first lab-grown pork belly and bacon strips, which were developed and created by UK startup Higher Steaks. And KFC announced they had collaborated with the biotech research lab 3D Bioprinting Solutions in Moscow to bring new “hybrid” nuggets to the Russian market. But what is cultured meat, and can we expect it to become a staple in supermarkets and restaurants in the coming years?

What is Cultured Meat?

Cultured meat is meat produced by in vitro cell culture of animal cells. According to Forbes, the process of creating cultured meat can be simplified to the following: “stem cells are taken from the muscle of an animal, usually with a small biopsy under anaesthesia, then they’re put with nutrients, salts, pH buffers, and growth factor and left to multiply”. Of course the cultured meat industry is lagging behind the plant-based one. Between 2017 and 2019, retail sales of plant-based meat grew 31%, with leading brands Beyond Meat, Quorn and Impossible Foods taking a big share of the marketplace. But just as with plant-based meat, cultured meat provides the opportunity to produce “meat” without raising animals, which has huge health and environmental benefits. The challenges faces by cultured meat developers is to produce the meat at scale and also reduce the cost of its production. 

Environmental Impact

This cultured meat revolution is something the planet is crying out for. The world’s population is growing, with another 2 billion humans expected to populate the planet by 2050. Demand for meat is expected to grow by 70% in this time, significantly increasing the precious resources, and resulting in more climate change. If cultured meat production can overtake livestock farming, global greenhouse emissions will reduce as will deforestation.

Health Implications

Another great potential advantage of cultured meat is its health benefits. Antibiotics and hormones can be completely removed from the cultured product. Professor Mark Post of the University of Maastricht believes that cultured meat will be better for us. “We gain greater control over what the meat consists of, for example its fat content,” he says. “And the reduction in the number of farmed animals reduces the chance of zoonosis, or infectious diseases that spread from animals to people”.  Looking to the future, as cultured meat makes its way towards the supermarket aisles, we will most likely see lab-grown meat products coming in “no cholesterol” and “no saturated fats” varieties. Developers can potentially replace saturated fatty acids with omega-3 fatty acids, for example. Thus providing a much healthier burger or sausage to the consumer. 

Challenges to the Industry

The cultured meat market also faces many challenges. Currently, cultured meat costs hundreds of dollars per litre to produce. And the first cultured burger famously cost $280,000 to produce. But recently Future Meat Technologies (founded in 2018 and based in Israel) has managed to reduce their production costs to $150 per pound of chicken and $200 per pound for beef. So it’s likely that cultured meat may be on your supermarket shelf sooner than expected.