"Cellular agriculture": Current gaps between facts and claims regarding "cell-based meat"

Abstract

In alignment with an emerging Silicon Valley style outlook on the future of food, a bold 2019 report by the think tank RethinkX claimed that by 2030 the U.S. meat and dairy industries would be bankrupt due to "cellular agriculture" taking over their traditional markets (Tubb and Seba, 2019). This claim was based on their view of how quickly precision fermentation and "cell-based meat" ( CBM ) technology would be developed and scaled, so they could compete on price parity with traditional livestock production (Leroy et al., 2023). However, estimates on future evolutions differ wildly. For example, a 2018 report ordered by the Flemish government predicted that the consumption of "clean meat" may start in approximately 2040 (van Diepen et al., 2018). Ten years ago, however, it was already touted that "clean meat" would be available in the market by 2017 (EC, 2012). By now, it is clear that it is difficult to make predictions and that many technical challenges remain before such products can become commercially available. Nevertheless, over the past few years, billions of dollars have been invested in these technologies related to cellular agriculture (including precision fermentation and CBM) and hundreds of new start-ups have been created around the globe (Boukid and Gagaoua, 2022). The terminology for developed products is still under discussion; for recognizability, we will use the term "cell-based meat", though the term "meat" imparts characteristics that have not been proven, as we will discuss. The reasons for proposing new protein alternatives, including CBM , are diverse and divergent, but mainly related to ethical concerns about animal welfare and the possible impact of animal protein production on the environment (Siddiqui et al., 2022). This paper briefly describes the technical, regulatory, and consumer challenges facing both precision fermentation and CBM and examines their potential to disrupt the meat and dairy industries, with a focus on CBM as an alternative to farm animal proteins.