#FakeMeat: How big a deal will animal meat analogs ultimately be?

Abstract

• New technologies behind plant-based meat analogs and lab-cultured muscle tissue have captured the attention of the public and investors. While plant-based meat substitutes exist in a market that has been around for decades, the new technologies are significantly different-and, most agree, significantly better tasting than earlier products made primarily of soy protein concentrate and wheat gluten-and so represent a sizable potential challenge to traditional, harvested meat producers and processors. • The meat industry is operating from a position of significant strength, however, being well established, extremely cost-effective, and many times larger than the nascent meat analog and cultured tissue markets. • The meat industry should prepare to move and change along with demographic shifts toward smaller households (smaller portions and packaging), consumers who have less time for food preparation (premarinated, precooked meat and meat ingredients, further processing into easily used forms, such as dices and cubes, for stews and other dishes that use meat as an ingredient rather than as center of the plate), emphasizing niche markets with desirable attributes, such as Organic and no-antibiotics-ever production. • The meat industry already has engaged the USDA in an effort to clarify, as quickly as possible, how the new technologies will be treated in a regulatory manner, which will significantly influence how the products can be labeled and marketed, and even produced. • The next 3 to 5 yr will be key to how traditional animal-harvested meat products and meat analogs and lab-cultured tissue will coexist in the consumer market, and whether the traditional meat industry will retain, or cede, market share to the new technologies.