WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Portal) – Meat from the lab, once science fiction, could become a reality in some restaurants across the United States as early as this year.
Cultured meat company executives are optimistic that meat grown in massive steel tanks could be on the menu within months of a company getting the green light from a key regulator. As a show of trust, some of them have hired high-end chefs like Argentinian Francis Mallmann and Spaniard José Andrés to eventually showcase the meat in their high-end restaurants.
But cultured meat faces major obstacles to reaching its ultimate goal – supermarket shelves – five executives told Portal. Companies need to raise more funds to increase production so they can offer their beef steaks and chicken breasts at a cheaper price. Along the way, they must overcome the reluctance of some consumers to even taste lab-grown meat.
Cultured meat is made from a small sample of cells collected from farm animals, which are then fed nutrients, grown in giant steel vessels called bioreactors, and processed into something that looks and tastes like a real piece of meat.
Only one country, Singapore, has so far approved the product for retail sale. But the United States is ready to follow. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared in November that a cultured meat product — a chicken breast grown by California-based UPSIDE Foods — is safe for human consumption.
UPSIDE now hopes to have its product in restaurants as early as 2023 and in grocery stores by 2028, its executives told Portal.
UPSIDE has yet to be inspected by the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service and signed off on its labels by the agency. A USDA-FSIS spokesman declined to comment on its inspection schedule.
`BATTLE FREE HOUSE`
At the UPSIDE facility in Emeryville, California, during a recent Portal visit, employees in lab coats were seen poring over touchscreens and monitoring huge vats of water mixed with nutrients. Meat is harvested and processed in a room CEO Uma Valeti calls the “slaughterhouse,” where it is inspected and tested.
Portal reporters were served a sample of UPSIDE’s chicken during the visit. It tasted the same cooked as regular chicken, but was slightly thinner and more evenly browned when raw.
UPSIDE worked with the FDA for four years before receiving the agency’s green light in November, Valeti told Portal.
“This is a game changer for the industry,” he said.
California cultured meat company GOOD Meat already has an application pending with the FDA that has not been previously reported. Two other companies, Netherlands-based Mosa Meat and Israel-based Believer Meats, said they were in talks with the agency, company executives told Portal.
The FDA declined to provide details on pending applications for cultured meat, but confirmed that it is in talks with several companies.
Regulatory approval is just the first hurdle to making cultured meat available to a wide range of consumers, executives from UPSIDE, Mosa Meat, Believer Meats and GOOD Meat told Portal.
The biggest challenge companies face is expanding the nascent supply chain for the nutrient mix that feeds cells and for the massive bioreactors needed to produce large quantities of cultured meat, executives said.
Production is currently limited. UPSIDE’s facility has the capacity to produce 400,000 pounds of cultured meat per year — a small fraction of the 106 billion pounds of conventional meat and poultry that will be produced in the United States in 2021, according to the North American Meat Institute, a meat industry lobby group.
If companies can’t raise the funds needed to scale up production, their product may never reach a price point where it can compete with regular meat, said Josh Tetrick, co-founder of GOOD Meat.
“Selling is different than selling a lot,” Tetrick said. “Until we as a company and other companies build large-scale infrastructure, this will be a very small scale.”
Scaling ailments
According to data from the Good Food Institute (GFI), a research group focused on alternatives to conventional meat, the cultured meat sector has attracted nearly $2 billion in investment worldwide to date.
But GOOD Meat, for example, will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build bioreactors the size needed to produce its meat at scale, Tetrick said.
Investments in the industry have been led by venture capital firms and large food companies such as JBS SA (JBSS3.SA), Tyson Foods Inc (TSN.N) and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co (ADM.N).
JBS spokeswoman Nikki Richardson said the company’s investments in cultured meat “are consistent with our efforts to build a diversified global food portfolio with traditional, plant-based and alternative protein product offerings.”
[1/8] A view shows a cooked piece of cultured chicken breast produced at UPSIDE Foods’ laboratory-grown meat facility in Emeryville, California, the United States, January 11, 2023. Portal/Peter DaSilva
Tyson did not respond to a request for comment. ADM declined to comment.
Much of that money went to the United States, the #1 destination for cultured meat producers because of its size and wealth, said Jordan Bar Am, a partner at McKinsey & Company that focuses on alternative proteins.
Some companies are expanding US manufacturing even before their products are approved by regulators.
Believer Meats plans to build a facility in North Carolina that should start up in early 2024 and could produce 22 million pounds of meat annually, CEO Nicole Johnson-Hoffman said. And GOOD Meat has plans to expand its production in California and Singapore to up to 30 million pounds a year.
The European Union is also working with Israel and other countries on legal frameworks for cultured meat, but has not yet approved any product for human consumption.
THE “ICK” FACTOR
Cultured meat companies plan to tell consumers their product is greener and more ethical than conventional livestock, while trying to overcome an aversion to their product among some shoppers.
For one, their product does not involve animal slaughter, which the companies hope will make the product appealing to people who avoid meat for moral reasons. Animals were unharmed when the cells were removed, company executives told Portal.
Another benefit is that growing meat in a steel container instead of in a field could reduce the environmental impact of livestock farming, which is responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions from feed production, deforestation, manure management and enteric fermentation — animal burps — according to data the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Plant-based meat producers have also appealed to consumers with moral and environmental concerns, despite the sector capturing just 1.4% of the meat market, according to a GFI report.
But cultured meat companies have the advantage of being able to claim their product is real meat, Tetrick said.
“Probably the most important thing we’ve learned is that humans really do love meat. You probably won’t eat much less of it,” he said.
Still, many people are disgusted by cultured meat, said Janet Tomiyama, a health psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies human nutrition.
In a 2022 study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, she found that 35% of meat eaters and 55% of vegetarians would be too disgusted to try cultured meat.
Some people might find the meat “unnatural” and have negative attitudes towards it before they’ve even tasted it, she said.
To attract hesitant buyers, companies need to be as clear as possible about how their product is made and that it’s safe to eat, said Tetrick, whose company has sold its product in Singapore restaurants.
“You have to be transparent, but in a way that’s still appetizing,” he said.
UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat plan to please American palates by only releasing their products in high-end restaurants after approval, they told Portal, banking on consumers there tolerating a higher price and a good first impression of their flesh.
UPSIDE hopes to bring its products to grocery stores in the next three to five years, CEO Valeti said.
Major US supermarket chains did not respond to Portal requests for comment.
Restaurateur Andrés, known for his work on global food security, told Portal he wants to sell cultured meat for its environmental benefits.
“We can see from what is happening all around us, in every country around the globe, that our planet is in crisis,” he said.
Fellow chef Mallmann, known for preparing meat and other dishes on outdoor flames, told Portal he was also influenced by environmental concerns and saw the chefs’ role in making the product more gastronomically appealing and less scientific.
“We have to add romance,” he said.
Reporting by Leah Douglas, editing by Richard Valdmanis and Ross Colvin
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Leah Douglas