Vat-grown meat firms bet on masterchefs to win over carnivores

Washington — Once the stuff of science fiction, lab-grown meat could become reality in some restaurants in the US as early as later in 2023.

Executives at cultivated meat companies are optimistic that meat grown in enormous steel vats could be on the menu within months after one company won the go-ahead from a key regulator. In a show of confidence, some have signed up high-end chefs such as Argentinian Francis Mallmann and Spaniard José Andrés to eventually showcase the meats in their high-end eateries.

But to reach its ultimate destination — supermarket shelves — cultivated meat faces big obstacles, five executives told Reuters. Companies must attract more funding to increase production, which would enable them to offer their beef steaks and chicken breasts at a more affordable price. Along the way, they must overcome a reluctance among some consumers to even try lab-grown meat.

Cultivated meat is derived from a small sample of cells collected from livestock, which is then fed nutrients, grown in huge steel vessels called bioreactors, and processed into something that looks and tastes like a real cut of meat.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in November that a cultivated meat product — a chicken breast grown by California-based Upside Foods — was safe for human consumption. Upside is now hoping to bring its product to restaurants as soon as 2023 and to grocery stores by 2028, its executives told Reuters.

Upside still needs to be inspected by the US department of agriculture’s food safety and inspection service and get sign-off from the agency on its labels. A department spokesperson declined to comment on its inspection timeline.

Slaughterless house

At Upside’s facility in Emeryville, California, lab coat-clad workers pore over touch screens and monitor giant vats of water mixed with nutrients during a recent Reuters visit. Meat is harvested and processed in a room that CEO Uma Valeti calls the “slaughterless house”, where it is inspected and tested.

Reporters were served a sample of Upside’s chicken during the visit. It tastes just like conventional chicken when cooked, though is somewhat thinner and has a more uniform tan colour when raw.

Upside worked with the FDA for four years before receiving the agency’s green light in November, Valeti said. “It’s a watershed moment for the industry.”

California-based cultivated meat company GOOD Meat already has an application pending with the FDA, which has not been previously reported. Two other companies, Netherlands-based Mosa Meat and Israel-based Believer Meats, said they are in discussions with the agency, company executives told Reuters.

The FDA declined to provide details of pending cultivated meat applications but confirmed it is talking to multiple companies.

Regulatory approval is just the first hurdle for making cultivated meat accessible to a broad swath of consumers, executives at Upside, Mosa Meat, Believer Meats, and GOOD Meat told Reuters. The biggest challenge is growing the nascent supply chain for the nutrient mix to feed cells and for the massive bioreactors required to produce large quantities of cultivated meat, executives said.

For now, production is limited. Upside’s facility has the capacity to churn out 181,000kg of cultivated meat a year — a small fraction of the 48-billion kilograms of conventional meat and poultry produced in the US in 2021, according to the North American Meat Institute, a meat industry lobby group.

If the companies cannot get the funds needed to scale up production, their product may never reach a price point where it can compete with conventional meat, said GOOD Meat cofounder Josh Tetrick.

“Selling is different from selling a lot,” Tetrick said. “Until we as a company and other companies build large-scale infrastructure, this is going to be very small-scale.”

The cultivated meat sector has so far raised nearly $2bn in investment globally, according to data collected by the Good Food Institute (GFI), a research group focused on alternatives to conventional meat.

But it will take hundreds of millions of dollars for GOOD Meat, for example, to build bioreactors of the size needed to make its meat at scale, Tetrick said.

Investment in the industry so far has been led by venture capital firms and major food companies such as JBS, Tyson Foods and Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM). Much of that money has been directed towards the US, the top target for cultivated meat makers because of its size and wealth, said Jordan Bar Am, a partner at McKinsey who focuses on alternative proteins.

JBS spokesperson Nikki Richardson said the company’s investments in cultivated meat “are consistent with our efforts to build a diversified global food portfolio of traditional, plant-based and alternative protein product offerings”. Tyson did not respond to a request for comment. ADM declined to comment.

Some companies are scaling up US production even before their products have been approved by regulators.

Believer Meats plans to build a facility in North Carolina, set to be commissioned in early 2024, that could produce 9-million kilograms of meat annually, CEO Nicole Johnson-Hoffman said. And GOOD Meat has plans to build out its production in California and Singapore to as much as 13-million kilograms annually.

The EU along with Israel and other countries are also working on regulatory frameworks for cultivated meat but have not yet approved a product for human consumption.

Cultivated meat companies plan to pitch to consumers that 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 companies hope will make the product appealing to people who avoid meat for moral reasons. Animals are unharmed in the cell collection process, company executives told Reuters.

Another draw is that growing meat in a steel vessel instead of in a field could reduce the environmental impact of livestock, which are responsible for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions through feed production, deforestation, manure management, and enteric fermentation — animal burps — according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Plant-based meat companies have also appealed to consumers with moral and environmental claims, though the sector has captured just 1.4% of the meat market, according to a GFI report. But cultivated meat companies have the advantage that they can claim their product is real meat, Tetrick said.

“Probably the single biggest thing we’ve learned is that people really love meat. They’re probably not going to eat a whole lot less of it,” he said.

Too disgusted

Still, a lot of people are grossed out by cultivated meat, said Janet Tomiyama, a health psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies human diets. 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 cultivated meat.

Some people may perceive the meat to be “unnatural” and have a negative attitude about it before even trying it, she said.

To attract hesitant shoppers, companies need to be as clear as possible about how their product is made and that it is safe to eat, said Tetrick, whose company has sold its product at restaurants in Singapore. “You’ve got to be transparent about it, but in a way that’s still appetising,” he said.

Upside Foods and GOOD Meat plan to whet US palates by releasing their products at high-end restaurants first once approved, they said, betting that consumers there will tolerate a higher price point and have a good first impression of their meat. Upside hopes to get its products into grocery stores in the next three to five years, Valeti said.

Major US supermarket chains did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Restaurateur Andrés, known for his work on global food security, said he wants to sell cultivated meat because of its environmental benefits. “We can see in 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 his preparations of meat and other foods on outdoor flames, said he is also influenced by environmental considerations and sees the role of chefs as making the product more gastronomically appealing and less scientific. “We have to add romance to it,” he said.

Reuters