GFI response on the state of cultivated meat innovation
Top takeaways
- Cultivated meat is in its early, formative days. Writing cultivated meat off today would be like writing off solar power in the 1980s or writing off electric vehicles in the early 2000s.
- Trajectories of other transformative industries show us that success and tipping points are achieved via innovation and substantial public investment in R&D.
- Cultivated meat science and technology is rapidly evolving, with a growing number of researchers in industry and academia exploring lines of inquiry that will help reduce costs, increase the scale, and improve the quality of future products. As the rate of newly published research accelerates, the entire sector benefits from the growing foundation of open-access information and new discoveries that can be translated for the commercial realm.
- Given finite land and water, a growing global population, and crisis-level food security issues, we cannot scale up existing meat production indefinitely. To make a meaningful difference on any of these fronts, we can’t do more of the same. The challenges we face require a reimagining of global protein production. Diversifying meat production by accelerating progress on cultivated meat and other alternative proteins will allow the production of more protein with fewer resources.
Dig deeper
Cultivated meat—a transformative technology in its earliest days—is one of several solutions that will be needed to feed a population nearing 10 billion people while staying within planetary boundaries. Alongside other innovations and shifts, meat made from real animal cells can help write the next chapter for food and agriculture around the world.
Often with technology and innovation, progress isn’t linear. Just look at what’s playing out today with renewable energy: cost improvements are beating even the most optimistic projections of a decade ago. As global leaders prioritize investing in and accelerating the transition to renewable energy and other climate-forward solutions, more of them (but still not enough) are beginning to see cultivated meat and other alternative proteins as what they are: agricultural innovations that, with proper levels of public and private support, can dramatically reduce emissions, reduce pandemic and antibiotic-resistance risks, free up massive amounts of land for restoration, and feed more people with fewer resources.
These are the early days
Like with other paradigm-shifting innovations that have come before it, critiques of cultivated meat as non-viable are happening in its early days. Extrapolating from early-stage production methods and models into a definitive stance on long-term scientific or economic viability is short-sighted. Writing cultivated meat off today would be like writing off solar power in the 1980s or writing off electric vehicles in the early 2000s. Following such thinking would harm future generations by causing missed opportunities to invest in technologies that can diversify and modernize meat production—something that governments, scientists, and future-oriented organizations and institutions around the world are increasingly recognizing as essential for meeting global climate, biodiversity, food security, and public health goals.
While today there remains technological uncertainty associated with scaling cultivated meat production, increasing resource allocation toward research efforts to resolve these uncertainties is both appropriate and necessary. To deliver on cultivated meat’s potential to help satisfy growing demand for meat, reduce climate impacts, and create space for more sustainable farming, governments must invest in sustainable, large-scale production. This will take time, and it will take resources (global investment into clean energy exceeded $1.7 trillion in 2023 alone—the lifetime investment of $3 billion into cultivated meat is a pittance in comparison, on par with the investment into a single EV battery plant), but it’s wildly premature to write off the industry as a failure to launch.
What other transitions can teach us
The cultivated chicken products that received safety approval from FDA and the USDA in 2023 are early-stage products, with significant potential for future optimization. This first wave of cultivated meat products (currently, cultivated chicken products from two companies) are to the food system transformation what the earliest versions of electric vehicles and solar panels were to our country’s energy evolution. Think back to the talk of range anxiety and extraordinarily high costs of EVs only a decade ago—challenges that continue to be addressed, with tipping points accelerating growth more quickly than expected.
The trajectory of the EV industry provides a useful perspective on the emergence of transformational novel technologies and illustrates the role of external forces in dictating when the moment is right for broader-scale commercial adoption. Modern EVs reached 10 percent market share just last year, despite the Prius launching globally in 2000 and the first Tesla Model S prototype unveiling in 2009. Even earlier EV models enjoyed marked commercial success before the gas-powered Model T became ubiquitous and massive investments into gas refinery and filling infrastructure expanded access and dropped costs for gasoline. The 1970s global energy crisis spurred renewed interest in electric vehicle technology, and substantial government investment for decades—including a government-backed loan to Tesla in 2010 that amounted to 1/6th of all prior investment into EVs up to that point—was required to pave the way for the rapid market uptake in recent years.
Arguably, the advent of industrial farming delayed what would have otherwise likely been a much earlier impetus for the first wave of innovation to develop cultivated meat. In 1931, around the time of the introduction of modern industrial animal agriculture, then British Member of Parliament, Winston Churchill—later to become Prime Minister—remarked, “Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” The multiple crises we face today that are exacerbated by conventional protein production—climate change, biodiversity loss, supply chain vulnerabilities, and global health risks such as antimicrobial resistance and pandemics—may well be the cultivated meat industry’s 1970s energy crisis—but with a degree of urgency that necessitates that we can’t wait another 50 years to see widespread market adoption.
Robust and rapidly evolving research ecosystem for cultivated meat
In the last year alone, researchers pursued new lines of inquiry that will help reduce costs, increase the scale, and improve the quality of future cultivated meat and seafood products. From 2022 the 2023, we’ve cataloged more than a 50 percent increase in the number of relevant cell lines available to researchers. Rapid advances are also being made to reduce the cost of cell culture media, a major cost driver for the production of cultivated meat. Recent research on this topic has used mathematical techniques and algorithms to optimize media costs and reduce environmental impact or to derive serum-free media that outperforms serum-containing media. This flurry of results and research tools empowers more research groups to expand their focus into scaling up production, using scaffolding to culture cells in 3D, and creating prototype products that can be analyzed for taste, texture, and nutrition.
While these advancements are accelerating year over year, significantly more public investment is needed in pre-competitive R&D so that foundational science can help cultivated meat companies innovate and collectively advance the entire field. In fact, the dearth of public funding for cultivated meat R&D is often cited by the earliest cultivated meat company founders as a driving force for their decision to fundraise from the private sector to conduct this early-stage work. Venture capital was abundant, and government R&D funding was virtually non-existent for cultivated meat in the 2010s.
We are now starting to see the tables turn. Government investment into alternative proteins only recently crossed a cumulative $1 billion (almost all of which has come in the last few years), but innovation takes time to move from the bench to commercial deployment. Fortunately, this field isn’t starting from scratch: cultivated meat draws upon decades of prior research in cell culture, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine to understand the basics—now its charge is to focus on scaling and cost reduction. We are seeing countries recognize this potential and begin to fund researchers specifically focused on addressing these areas. For example, the United Kingdom’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, awarded £12 million ($15 million) to the Cellular Agriculture Manufacturing Hub led by the University of Bath. The hub, which will run for seven years, will investigate how to manufacture cultivated meat at scale, including how to reduce the cost of infrastructure and improve sustainability by using recycled raw materials.
A young industry still in its formative years
Empowering the food system to feed a growing world is a relay race, not a sprint. With more than 150 companies operating in the cultivated meat sector worldwide, some are bound not to make it across the finish line, as has been the case in clean energy, electric vehicles, and all other emerging and established technologies. Across sectors, 90 percent of startups fail, and the first-movers often face the toughest uphill battles because they have to devote enormous resources to overcome hurdles such as regulatory approval that followers can then navigate more efficiently. As with any emerging industry, having a dynamic field of players and producers increases the overall odds of success of the field, leading to a greater diversity of ideas, solutions, and strategies.
Early signs point to the emergence of a robust cultivated meat ecosystem of specialist companies that can offer vital business-to-business technology solutions, alleviating the burden on individual companies to innovate across the entire value chain. The industry has made remarkable progress in a very short amount of time. Ten years ago, the first cultivated meat burger debuted at an estimated cost of $300,000. Today, cultivated meat is approved for sale in two countries, Singapore and the United States (the largest economy in the world), with other countries primed to soon follow suit. Just one month into 2024, Israel became the third country in the world to approve cultivated meat with the world’s first cultivated beef product approval for Aleph Farms. We are at the very early stages of cultivated meat’s entrance into the marketplace, and we fully expect the industry landscape, the science, and the products to evolve over time. The companies and products receiving the majority of consumer, investor, and media attention today may look completely different in the next five years.
Replicable models of success for other innovative industries exist, demonstrating a clear pathway to success. Consider the impact of CDMOs (contract development and manufacturing organizations) that have relieved early startups of the upfront capital costs of facilities, equipment, and infrastructure. Setting up collaborative, industry-lifting solutions like this—solutions that make it easier for early-stage innovators to set up shop, create jobs, and transform food and agriculture for the better—is exactly what’s called for in the 2023 Bold Goals for U.S. Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing report.
GFI celebrates the important work of first-mover companies that have created a foundation for other innovators and entrepreneurs to build upon—and build we must.
Feeding more with less
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization projects meat consumption to rise by at least 50 percent by 2050 from 2012 levels. Given finite land and water, a growing global population, and crisis-level food security issues, we cannot scale up existing meat production indefinitely. To make a meaningful difference on any of these fronts, we can’t do more of the same. The challenges we face require a reimagining of global protein production. Diversifying meat production by accelerating progress on cultivated meat and other alternative proteins will allow the production of more protein with fewer resources.
The scientists working on cultivated meat today share much in common with others working across the entire food system—most notably, a commitment to feeding the world in the most efficient, resilient, and socially just way possible. Founded by physicians, environmental leaders, diplomats, and researchers in the United States and around the world, cultivated meat startups are developing a broad array of familiar foods—chicken, salmon, shrimp, beef, and more. As much as it’s an emerging market, it’s a shared vision: Meat grown directly in cultivators can be one additional way to meet growing demand without adverse impacts on the environment and global health.