I remember several years ago reading a paper laying out the issues with scaling up lab-grown meat. Unfortunately, I can't find it, but IIRC the main crux of the article was that it was actually incredibly hard to scale up because you need to maintain a very large and complex space in a completely sanitary manner, as a tiny amount of bacteria getting in could completely ruin a batch of product, and require a large deep-clean. Though 'incredibly hard' was definitely not the same as 'impossible'. Plus, as has been pointed out, there's not really much more you could do to make real meat cheaper, whereas this sounds like a problem that can be worked on, but means that scaling up will take longer than people think.
I ultimately think that the cost of plant-based substitutes will always be cheaper, but that in a lot of cases this will suffice. Certainly in something like a Big Mac, I think a plant substitute would probably get to 'close enough' to be a viable, and cheaper, alternative to real meat. Lab grown meat would probably become a higher end product, where the higher cost can be built in to the price.
Youre right in that the impossible foods approach of working out which proteins make meat taste meaty and artificially producing those and putting them into plant based food is the technically easier approach to scale.
However lab grown meat is using some of the same technogy we'll need for lab grown human organs. So theres a potential extremely high value product that justifies investing in getting the cell culture technology right even if the food long term wouldnt necessarily justify the costs.
I think you're probably right on both counts. More plant-based switchers will be better for the climate anyway - but there's still going to be a constituency of people who want "real" meat, and those are the people lab meat companies should aim at.
In terms of difficulty, I don't doubt it's difficult - but I think if the will were there to do it, even building such complex clean environments is doable at scale. I mean, something going wrong on a plane would be catastrophic, but because of the scale and positive gains from having air travel, we've developed an incredibly rigorous system of safety mechanisms and procedures that makes flying actually a viable thing without too much risk.
Another presumed side-benefit to lab-grown meat, not mentioned in your article, would be not having to administer so many antibiotics. Given that the meat is cultivated in a controlled environment and the "catalyst" would presumably be disease-free, this would be another huge bonus.
I have had a passing interest in lab-grown meat for years now, and it just seems like a dangling carrot to me. I'm sure it'll happen eventually, but so far it's been "just around the corner" for what seems like a very long time.
I think, as others have pointed out, there's still a great deal of vested interest in the meat industry and that's going to be difficult to overcome. My hope is that it will be like EVs (and probably most other "good" things) where it's all a bit niche to begin with, but then word-of-mouth spreads, people get a taste of it and like it, and demand grows exponentially. But this is where your argument comes in. We're not going to have a "Tesla of lab-grown meat" in the UK if there are too many hoops to jump through to get to market.
Anyway, I would switch to lab-grown meat tomorrow if it were widely available. There's no squeamishness here - bring it on!
I've always thought there were two linked thresholds when it comes to adoption of lab-grown meat:
1. The point at which it becomes "good enough" to replace fairly bog standard meat in things like pet food (I don't have a pet so apologies if I'm selling them short here but I don't trust the adverts!), McNuggets, cheap meal deals and late night kebabs. Basically foods where people aren't buying them for the top quality meat. That's a huge percentage of the meat that's currently eaten by humans and animals.
2. The (probably further away) point at which a cultivated meat product is indistinguishable (right down to the molecular level) from an animal grown meat product but the lab grown one is 10x cheaper. At that point enough people are going to have tried one to know that they're fine and then the weight of economics is just irresistible.
And I think that second scenario is more likely than people think. Technological advancement in traditional meat farming doesn't really have anywhere to go that isn't just horrifying cruelty. The things necessary to reduce the price of animal meat have to be done mostly in secret or people find them disgusting. But the scope for technological advancement to lower the costs of lab grown meat is enormous.
I think you’re absolutely right on both counts. What I think will be interesting too is seeing if there’s a flip in perceptions. As initially, as per the two restaurants that sell cultivated meat in Singapore and NYC, it’s clearly going to be marketed as a high-status, upmarket thing - like how Tesla’s target market is upscale liberals. But once lab meat becomes cat food and McNuggets, like you say, I wonder if it will retain its high status for political reasons (because no animals die), or whether there will be a reversal where ‘real’ meat made from actual animals becomes this sort of high-status thing that is eaten by rich people and served in fancy restaurants, while the rest of the world goes cultivated.
There's a Dutch version of the Daily Show hosted by a comedian who uses his platform to campaign against various things - online gambling is one, and the meat industry is another (he's a vegetarian). Last night's episode focused on lab-grown meat and the difficulty of moving forward with the current EU rules. Here's the section, with English subtitles available at the click of a CC button:
I like the optimism here! That said, a few things make me sceptical about whether this can work politically (economically and scientifically it’s a no-brainer). These are, in no particular order:
(1) Whilst the US farming lobby is probably more powerful than the UK’s, what the UK does have in common with the US is that a good chunk of lawmakers in both countries represent rural constituencies and only those constituencies. They have a heavy vested interest in farming, and no reason to back cheaper and more environmentally friendly lab-grown meat.
(2) The Leave coalition also includes some wacky conspiracy theorists, though I don’t think this describes most people who voted Leave. Lab-grown meat is going to sound a lot to those people like the World Economic Forum making you eat bugs, and will generate a backlash from them too.
(3) Consumer sentiment towards meat substitutes is not as negative here as it is elsewhere in Europe, but voters are still wary of any watering down of regulations, especially if it’s food. I’m torn on whether lab-grown meat would be seen as kind for animals or Brexit Soylent Green.
(4) Lab space could be a bit of a struggle given the UK’s lack of enthusiasm for building anything.
(5) Any nascent industry that plans to rely on growth through economies of scale might prefer a country with a more consistent track record. I think businesses would want some reassurance that the UK wasn’t going to come up with a regulatory framework that another prime minister wouldn’t chuck out in a fit of pique a year later.
I’d love to be proven wrong, but I think this would meat (ha ha) the same fate as other Brexit dividend ideas. The problem with any idea that involves a lot of regulatory divergence from the EU is that the UK isn’t actually that different from your average EU country in its attitudes towards regulation. We may not have liked immigration, but nobody else in the EU does either to be honest.
I think you underestimate the scaling challenge. The stats for genome sequencing look good but it didn't start in 2000 with the Human Genome Project, it started decades before. And biological processes sometimes just don't scale: remember when algae was going to suck carbon out of the air and create diesel for us?
I am hopeful that this can be scaled and can replace most of the everyday animal products we consume: milk (that's the real prize!), chicken, ground beef, tuna and/or salmon, cod and/or haddock, and bacon/ham. Then the other types of meat can go back to being an occasional treat (Christmas dinner, etc) rather than a daily staple. I just don't know that I believe it's either inevitable or even that close.
I’m all for this - But I’m very sceptical about your claim that there would be huge demand for this if it’s scaled up. People are very squeamish about lab grown meat in a way they simply aren’t about meat meat.
You *could* be right, but I guess my argument is that there are so many millions of meat-eaters out there right now, even if only a relatively modest number switched over, that would make a significant climate/animal welfare impact.
And obviously squeamishness is hard to quantify, but I wonder if people might be more flexible than we might think. Presumably before flying was invented, the idea of *floating in the sky held up by nothing but air* must have been a pretty scary thought (it still is for many people. including myself).
Or look at how not so long ago some people would find the sight of two men kissing viscerally unpleasant, but societal norms have happily shifted to it being a completely normal thing.
Obviously neither of these things are _completely_ analogous to food, but clearly it is our brains and not our tongues doing a lot of the processing.
I remember several years ago reading a paper laying out the issues with scaling up lab-grown meat. Unfortunately, I can't find it, but IIRC the main crux of the article was that it was actually incredibly hard to scale up because you need to maintain a very large and complex space in a completely sanitary manner, as a tiny amount of bacteria getting in could completely ruin a batch of product, and require a large deep-clean. Though 'incredibly hard' was definitely not the same as 'impossible'. Plus, as has been pointed out, there's not really much more you could do to make real meat cheaper, whereas this sounds like a problem that can be worked on, but means that scaling up will take longer than people think.
I ultimately think that the cost of plant-based substitutes will always be cheaper, but that in a lot of cases this will suffice. Certainly in something like a Big Mac, I think a plant substitute would probably get to 'close enough' to be a viable, and cheaper, alternative to real meat. Lab grown meat would probably become a higher end product, where the higher cost can be built in to the price.
Youre right in that the impossible foods approach of working out which proteins make meat taste meaty and artificially producing those and putting them into plant based food is the technically easier approach to scale.
However lab grown meat is using some of the same technogy we'll need for lab grown human organs. So theres a potential extremely high value product that justifies investing in getting the cell culture technology right even if the food long term wouldnt necessarily justify the costs.
I think you're probably right on both counts. More plant-based switchers will be better for the climate anyway - but there's still going to be a constituency of people who want "real" meat, and those are the people lab meat companies should aim at.
In terms of difficulty, I don't doubt it's difficult - but I think if the will were there to do it, even building such complex clean environments is doable at scale. I mean, something going wrong on a plane would be catastrophic, but because of the scale and positive gains from having air travel, we've developed an incredibly rigorous system of safety mechanisms and procedures that makes flying actually a viable thing without too much risk.
Another presumed side-benefit to lab-grown meat, not mentioned in your article, would be not having to administer so many antibiotics. Given that the meat is cultivated in a controlled environment and the "catalyst" would presumably be disease-free, this would be another huge bonus.
I have had a passing interest in lab-grown meat for years now, and it just seems like a dangling carrot to me. I'm sure it'll happen eventually, but so far it's been "just around the corner" for what seems like a very long time.
I think, as others have pointed out, there's still a great deal of vested interest in the meat industry and that's going to be difficult to overcome. My hope is that it will be like EVs (and probably most other "good" things) where it's all a bit niche to begin with, but then word-of-mouth spreads, people get a taste of it and like it, and demand grows exponentially. But this is where your argument comes in. We're not going to have a "Tesla of lab-grown meat" in the UK if there are too many hoops to jump through to get to market.
Anyway, I would switch to lab-grown meat tomorrow if it were widely available. There's no squeamishness here - bring it on!
I've always thought there were two linked thresholds when it comes to adoption of lab-grown meat:
1. The point at which it becomes "good enough" to replace fairly bog standard meat in things like pet food (I don't have a pet so apologies if I'm selling them short here but I don't trust the adverts!), McNuggets, cheap meal deals and late night kebabs. Basically foods where people aren't buying them for the top quality meat. That's a huge percentage of the meat that's currently eaten by humans and animals.
2. The (probably further away) point at which a cultivated meat product is indistinguishable (right down to the molecular level) from an animal grown meat product but the lab grown one is 10x cheaper. At that point enough people are going to have tried one to know that they're fine and then the weight of economics is just irresistible.
And I think that second scenario is more likely than people think. Technological advancement in traditional meat farming doesn't really have anywhere to go that isn't just horrifying cruelty. The things necessary to reduce the price of animal meat have to be done mostly in secret or people find them disgusting. But the scope for technological advancement to lower the costs of lab grown meat is enormous.
I think you’re absolutely right on both counts. What I think will be interesting too is seeing if there’s a flip in perceptions. As initially, as per the two restaurants that sell cultivated meat in Singapore and NYC, it’s clearly going to be marketed as a high-status, upmarket thing - like how Tesla’s target market is upscale liberals. But once lab meat becomes cat food and McNuggets, like you say, I wonder if it will retain its high status for political reasons (because no animals die), or whether there will be a reversal where ‘real’ meat made from actual animals becomes this sort of high-status thing that is eaten by rich people and served in fancy restaurants, while the rest of the world goes cultivated.
And even in that circumstance, as far as the climate and animal welfare impact goes, that's still a pretty huge win!
There's a Dutch version of the Daily Show hosted by a comedian who uses his platform to campaign against various things - online gambling is one, and the meat industry is another (he's a vegetarian). Last night's episode focused on lab-grown meat and the difficulty of moving forward with the current EU rules. Here's the section, with English subtitles available at the click of a CC button:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYs5Aj4IDNw
I like the optimism here! That said, a few things make me sceptical about whether this can work politically (economically and scientifically it’s a no-brainer). These are, in no particular order:
(1) Whilst the US farming lobby is probably more powerful than the UK’s, what the UK does have in common with the US is that a good chunk of lawmakers in both countries represent rural constituencies and only those constituencies. They have a heavy vested interest in farming, and no reason to back cheaper and more environmentally friendly lab-grown meat.
(2) The Leave coalition also includes some wacky conspiracy theorists, though I don’t think this describes most people who voted Leave. Lab-grown meat is going to sound a lot to those people like the World Economic Forum making you eat bugs, and will generate a backlash from them too.
(3) Consumer sentiment towards meat substitutes is not as negative here as it is elsewhere in Europe, but voters are still wary of any watering down of regulations, especially if it’s food. I’m torn on whether lab-grown meat would be seen as kind for animals or Brexit Soylent Green.
(4) Lab space could be a bit of a struggle given the UK’s lack of enthusiasm for building anything.
(5) Any nascent industry that plans to rely on growth through economies of scale might prefer a country with a more consistent track record. I think businesses would want some reassurance that the UK wasn’t going to come up with a regulatory framework that another prime minister wouldn’t chuck out in a fit of pique a year later.
I’d love to be proven wrong, but I think this would meat (ha ha) the same fate as other Brexit dividend ideas. The problem with any idea that involves a lot of regulatory divergence from the EU is that the UK isn’t actually that different from your average EU country in its attitudes towards regulation. We may not have liked immigration, but nobody else in the EU does either to be honest.
I think you underestimate the scaling challenge. The stats for genome sequencing look good but it didn't start in 2000 with the Human Genome Project, it started decades before. And biological processes sometimes just don't scale: remember when algae was going to suck carbon out of the air and create diesel for us?
I am hopeful that this can be scaled and can replace most of the everyday animal products we consume: milk (that's the real prize!), chicken, ground beef, tuna and/or salmon, cod and/or haddock, and bacon/ham. Then the other types of meat can go back to being an occasional treat (Christmas dinner, etc) rather than a daily staple. I just don't know that I believe it's either inevitable or even that close.
Apparently there's a place in South Ken that does 3D printed steaks, am gonna see what it tastes like...
I’m all for this - But I’m very sceptical about your claim that there would be huge demand for this if it’s scaled up. People are very squeamish about lab grown meat in a way they simply aren’t about meat meat.
You *could* be right, but I guess my argument is that there are so many millions of meat-eaters out there right now, even if only a relatively modest number switched over, that would make a significant climate/animal welfare impact.
And obviously squeamishness is hard to quantify, but I wonder if people might be more flexible than we might think. Presumably before flying was invented, the idea of *floating in the sky held up by nothing but air* must have been a pretty scary thought (it still is for many people. including myself).
Or look at how not so long ago some people would find the sight of two men kissing viscerally unpleasant, but societal norms have happily shifted to it being a completely normal thing.
Obviously neither of these things are _completely_ analogous to food, but clearly it is our brains and not our tongues doing a lot of the processing.
I am excited for the prospect of lab grown meat, but I doubt the government will want to invest much in it cus itd be unpopular with farmers