Cultivated Meat: What You Need to Know about This Nascent Industry

There was a time when eating real meat grown without animals sounded like something from a distant future. Today, that future is ever closer to becoming a reality.

Increasingly, some are looking beyond their burgers and steaks and growing concerned about the impact of meat production. After all, conventional meat production does enormous harm to animals, the environment, and the global climate. Meanwhile, environmentalists have been looking for sustainable alternatives that can help to wean the world off its ever-increasing animal consumption. 

Plant-based meat alternatives have been available for some time, and cultivated meat may be joining them in the coming years. Initially patented by in 1998, “cultivated meat" or “clean meat" is on the verge of entering the market, albeit in a limited way. The industry has achieved several milestones in recent years, and 2023 has the potential to be the most eventful year yet.

But what exactly is cultivated meat, and when will it be available on menus near you?

What is cultivated meat? 

Unlike plant-based meat, cultivated meat does actually come from animals—more specifically, their cells. Using only small amount of animal tissue, companies can grow real meat, thus eliminating the need to have to raise and slaughter an entire animal.

The approximately three-week-long process begins with a sesame seed-sized amount of tissue being taken from an animal via a biopsy. Within this tissue, scientists identify the highest-quality cells, which they then feed with nutrients to spur their growth. Once the growth is sufficient, scientists move the cells to a cultivator.

In the case of British startup Ivy Farm Technologies, that cultivator is “Betty,” a 159-gallon steel behemoth that sits in the company’s 18,000-square-foot U.K. plant. Using these bioreactors, scientists grow the cells into the animal parts most commonly used to create products like chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and sausages.

State of the industry

Despite the technology existing to create these products, consumers cannot yet purchase cultivated meat in most of the world. That soon may change.

In November, California-based Upside Foods become the first company to receive safety clearance for its cultivated meat from the US Food and Drug and Administration. Another California company, San Francisco-based Eat Just Inc., won regulatory approval in Singapore in late 2020, and the company’s cultivated chicken is available to purchase there now.

The FDA clearance for Upside Foods has provided a welcome jolt to the cultivated meat industry in the U.S. In a statement, FDA officials confirmed it had no questions about the safety of Upside’s meat. Assuming Upside Foods passes a forthcoming facilities inspection by the Department of Agriculture, the company will be free to sell its cultivated chicken products across the country.

No European country has yet to grant a similar safety clearance, though Ivy Farm had hoped to gain approval in Great Britain for its sausage products by 2023. The FDA news, however, has encouraged the company to pursue launching in the U.S. market first.   

Challenges and possibilities 

While the cultivated meat industry has attracted more than $3 billion in funding over the last several years, global recession fears have created some doubt as to whether venture capital firms will continue to invest in the sector. This may be especially true given that the prospects of short-term profitability are minimal. 

Without further funding, companies like Ivy Farm may face difficulties scaling up their production to meet global demand. “Betty,” for instance, can produce only 6,000 pounds of meat each year, an amount that falls short of the average annual red-meat consumption of as little as 80 Americans.

Another challenge is cost. The industry has admittedly come a long way in reducing costs: in 2013, the total price tag to develop the world’s first cultivated burger was more than $300,000. McKinsey reported in 2021 that cultivated meat companies had reduced production costs by 99 percent. However, the cost of cultivated meat still far exceeds slaughter-based meat. For comparison, based on estimates from Ivy Farm, the cost to produce one of its burgers would be close to 10 times more than the price of a Big Mac.

A significant driver of costs is supplies. Materials like the nutrients used to initially grow cells are most often purchased by biopharmaceutical firms for the production of medicines. These materials are available only in limited quantities, and they're very expensive. Cultivated meat companies need to build what amounts to an almost entirely new supply chain to secure these products in the quantities and at the prices needed to scale their operations. 

Scaling up also assumes that bigger bioreactors will be able to grow cultivated meat in larger quantities. However, without further testing, there's no guarantee this will be possible.

Even if firms like Ivy Farm manage to find innovative ways to achieve mass production, they will still have to convince the public to purchase their products. A December 2021 survey in the United Kingdom found that one-third of respondents were willing to try cultivated meat. The most significant factor in their decision was the safety of the products. This survey was taken prior to the FDA clearance, however. As was the case with one CNN journalist, the FDA clearance, along with possible similar clearances in other countries, may go a long way in assuaging consumers' fears.

All said, things are looking up for the cultivated meat industry. Besides the FDA clearance for Upside Foods, the industry was recently buoyed by Believer Meats' announcement that it is breaking ground on the world's largest cultivated meat production plant in North Carolina. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report noted that cultivated meat (as well as plant-based meat) has potential as a way to reduce the emissions and land use impacts tied to traditional meat production. 

Of course, for many consumers, the ultimate question will be: yeah, but how does it taste? There's good news here, too. Cultivated meat generally tastes like real meat—because it is. TIME reported early last year that "Cultivated Meat Passes the Taste Test;" in this case, Israeli Master Chef judge Michal Ansky could not correctly distinguish conventional chicken from SuperMeat's lab-grown chicken in a blind taste-test. It wasn't exactly a rigorous, scientific assessment, but the stunt illustrates the quality that cultivated meat products are capable of achieving today.