More than 170 companies are now in the race to produce commercially viable, publicly-palatable cultured meat products, attracting more than $4.7 Billion in investments since 2019.

The cultured meat (CM) industry owes much of its growth to claims it is environmentally beneficial, alleviates animal welfare concerns and is equally as nutritious and acceptable as conventional meat.

However, a newly published study has examined existing research on cultured meat and has found that many of the industry’s claimed sustainability and nutritional benefits “are overly ambitious and not supported by evidence”.

The scientific review, titled Reassessing the sustainability promise of cultured meat: a critical review with new data perspectives, was published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition on 21 February.

“Highly energy intensive; gaps in knowledge”

Its findings include that environmental assessments have revealed that  CM is highly energy intensive and its environmental footprint can only be improved if renewable energy sources are used.

It adds there are many unknowns and gaps in the knowledge on the nutritional quality of cultured meats that require further investigation.

Further, it noted that the scalability and technical challenges facing cultured meat are “significant”.

The case for CM

The study points out that development of “novel food products” such as cultured meats have garnered substantial attention and investment in recent years as an avenue to mitigate food-related environmental impacts.

CM, also referred to as ‘lab-grown meat’ or ‘cell-based meat’, is produced by taking a small sample of animal cells and growing them in media that supplies essential nutrients for cell proliferation.

Cultivated cells are kept in isolation in a controlled environment, such as a bioreactor, to grow into a cell mass that is then harvested and processed into meat products.

First cultured meat on track to be approved for Australia

Since the production of the first cell-based burger at a cost of US$325,000 in 2013, there has been significant commercial investment in the technology.

The world’s first commercial sale of cell-cultured meat occurred in December 2020 at Singapore restaurant 1880, where cultured chicken manufactured by a Singaporean CMO for United States firm Eat Just was sold.

Australians will soon also be able to eat laboratory-grown meat, with Food Standards Australia and New Zealand expected to approve the first cell-cultured meat produced in Australia – a lab grown culture from quail cells manufactured by Sydney-based Vow Group – by July.

Hurdles to become a viable option for consumption at scale

However, the research review notes there are a range of nutritional, environmental, technical, economic and consumer challenges that cultured meat must overcome if to become a viable option for consumption at scale.

Cell lines for a wide variety of animal species have been created and grown in specialized media at laboratory scale, but moving to production scale has been challenging, it says.

Major technical challenges

The paper explains that the original concept of growing muscle cells in single cell suspensions and then inducing them to differentiate to form muscle fibres has shifted to the production of a cell paste, which is blended with plant-based material to form hybrid products like burgers, sausages and dumplings.

The major technical challenge with CM is to scale up manufacturing from bench scale to thousands of litres, at a cost that will allow the products to compete with conventional meat products.

Cultured Meat production at scale will require long continuous sterile culture periods, as any contaminating bacteria or fungi would quickly overgrow the mammalian or avian cells, which have a doubling time of around 24h.

In various parts of the cell production cycle, bovine serum is used to promote cell viability and growth. However, many cultured meat companies aim to remove bovine serum as it is clearly desirable from a marketing perspective to claim that no animals were slaughtered as part of the manufacturing process.

Bovine serum is expensive, but serum free alternatives available on the market have shown suboptimal performance and may not be compatible with all cell lines.

‘Far from competitive with conventional meat for foreseeable future’

The study says the cost of the culture media, which is currently viewed as one of the major costs for production of cultured meat, will need to be less than US$1/L to manage costs.

“It is as yet unclear when a viable, cost-effective alternative to bovine serum will be available; nor is the extent to which pharmaceutical (and more expensive) practices will need to be adopted to maintain product quality. These challenges come with significant associated costs, which leave the production of CM far from competitive with conventional meat production for the foreseeable future.”

The downturn in the market for alternative meat products has also raised questions about the size of the market for cultured meat.

Additionally, recent life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have demonstrated that CM will be an energy intensive industry.

Regulatory challenges and labelling

The lengthy and costly regulatory processes are a concern for the new food sector, and labelling of cultured meat has been controversial, with Italy, France and the States of Florida, Arizona and Alabama in the US moving to ban the products due to concerns around the use of the term “meat”.

With the majority of CM products being hybrid products, meaning that cultured cells are blended with plant-based material in the final product, there will also be a question around what percentage of cultured cells will determine use of the term “meat” on the label.

While these challenges are more surmountable than the technical and scalability challenges, they are expected to cause delays or even prevent the commercial availability of cultured meat in many parts of the world.

Environmental impact of cultured meat production

Seven peer-reviewed Life Cycle Assessment studies have been completed on cultured meat to date.

The review notes that most studies did not consider the environmental impact associated with building facilities or the downstream processes such as packaging, thus the results of these studies should be seen as indicative of ‘process-only impacts’.

Based on these studies, the most notable environmental impacts of cultured meat are the energy requirements and the greenhouse gas emissions (largely a result of energy demand), with water use also of concern in some studies.

It said a “clear upwards trend” was notable in the footprint estimates over time.

Estimated greenhouse gas emissions and energy use per kilogram of culture meats rose notably in “more recent publications”, for which increased understanding of and availability of data on CM production was available.

Studies also note that the footprints of conventionally produced meat can vary substantially between production systems, and care must be taken when comparing estimates, both between cultured meat and conventionally produced meat, and between CM estimates themselves, as these estimates can vary “based on the underlying data used and the assumptions made”.

For the environmental impacts beyond energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and water use, generally publications found that CM has a lower footprint than conventionally produced meat.

It also emphasises that since there are no large-scale cultured meat facilities, all the environmental assessments available to date are based on projections and assumptions.

Nutritional challenges facing the cultured meat industry

A key tenet in the cultured meat industry is the potential for their products to deliver a nutrient profile comparable to that of conventional meat.

The study notes that there are no publicly available nutritional profile for cultured meats, but what was evident from its review was that the nutritional composition of cultured meats will not inherently be identical to the conventional products without fortification.

For example, vitamin B12, which is known to be predominantly found in meat and dairy, will not be present in the cultured products, unless added to the culture medium or to the final cultured meat product. This also raised questions about the degree to which the absorbed B12 in fortified cultured meat products would be bioavailable to consumers.

Another important aspect in assessing nutritional value of cultured meat is protein quality. Although cultured meat is assumed to mimic animal-derived protein, the protein quality of the products has not yet been thoroughly studied, the review said.

Consumer acceptability

If the technical hurdles of scaling up cultured meat production are surmounted, the market success of cultured meat will still rely on consumer willingness to integrate these products into their diets.

It found that there is a need for future studies involving actual cultured meat products to explore factors influencing consumer preferences and how these preferences change over time, as well as how these preferences convert to purchasing decisions.

‘Critical time’ for cultured meat sector

The study said the next few years will be ‘a critical time’ for the cultured meat sector with more licensed products entering the market, while the funding available to these companies has recently contracted.

Understanding of the cultured meat industry’s environmental impact would remain limited until the industry has scaled up.

Cultured meat to focus on competing with higher value meats

The study authors said the economic sustainability of the cultured meat industry has not yet been proven, regardless of whether reaching price parity was the aim of cultured meat producers.

“The cost of production of chicken meat is also the cheapest of all the traditional meats and therefore will be the hardest to compete with on price, again suggesting a move to higher value meats will be in the best interests of CM companies.

“The need for a food system that is more sustainable across environmental, economic, and human dimensions is clear.

“It is still too early to determine the role that cultured meat should play in this system, but the current challenges imply that several great changes – technological, regulatory, environmentally, nutritionally, and in the mind of consumers – will be necessary before cultured meat can achieve global integration.”