2013-2023: A Decade Of Cultivated Meat.

A meat.

On August 5, 2013, the world’s first cultivated burger was taste tested. Back then, one food expert said the burger was “close to meat, but not that juicy.” Ten years on, what progress has the tech made? But first, why does it matter?

Livestock.

As much as 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are attributed to livestock, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Without addressing that problem, the world won’t be able to meet the Paris Agreement target to limit global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.

The study published earlier this year shows that some types of cultivated meat can save up to 92% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) if fully renewable energy is used in the production process.

It may be helpful here to clarify the difference between cultivated meat and plant-based meat for the uninitiated. In a nutshell, scientists making cultivated meat, sometimes referred to as lab-grown, take muscle samples and stem cells from animals and grow this small sample into a larger amount. Meanwhile, plant-based meat is created by extracting and altering the proteins found in plants to make a product similar to meat. The Impossible Burger of Burger King fame is an example of plant-based meat.

By some measures, we’ve come a long way, but in other aspects, progress has been rather slow.

This image from Mark Post’s lab shows how muscle tissue is routinely grown in culture at laboratory scale. The cultured beef burger was created by growing muscle strands at this scale thousands of times.

That first burger was developed as a scientific project by Mark Post and his team at Maastricht University, which was funded by Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin. Reportedly, the cost to develop and make the two patties was about US$330000.

Today, it is down to hundreds or tens of dollars per pound (453 gram) – several orders of magnitude less but still far more expensive than conventional meat or plant-based meat. The price continues to go down with research and development and scale-up.

Pant-meat from Impossible Foods anf Beyond Meat.

The original cultivated meat was one product (ground beef) and was pretty dry, as it had no fat cells. Today, there’s much more variety and complexity of products and prototypes, with everything from chicken to steak, salmon, and foie gras. A lot of them are “hybrids,” mixing animal cells with plant proteins/fats. It’s not yet a 100% match, but we’re getting close to replicating some meat formats.

Most of the money invested in developing cultivated meat tech has come from venture capital firms and went into more than 100 startups globally. Some estimates have the total funding the tech has received at just under US$3 billion, with more than US$1 billion of that in the last 18 months.

Lab-grown beef.

Two countries have approved specific cultivated products to be sold to consumers: Singapore in 2020 and the US in 2023. Currently, just three restaurants globally are selling limited amounts of cultivated meat: Singapore, San Francisco, and Washington.

The lab grown meat industry has a value of approximately $130 million USD in 2021. The industry is expected to grow to a value of approximately $500 million by 2030.

Approximately 80% of people in the US and UK are willing to at least try lab grown meat. Lab-grown meat will be able to be sold to US consumers for the first time, with the federal government granting permission for 2 separate businesses to offer their chicken products to people.

A meal made of cultured chicken by Good Meat, one of the two businesses granted permission to sell lab-grown meat in US.

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