In reality, the meat grown at the moment is present only in the very distant supermarkets of Singapore and only a few sector technicians know the product . It is therefore right to clarify what cultured meat is, to focus on its strengths and weaknesses and to analyze it also in terms of future market potential. However, an objective examination must be based on the concrete, not on the ideological, and therefore we must accept the idea that from the point of view of chemical and nutritional composition, cultured meat is the exact reproduction of meat obtained from traditional farms.
The production process
However, the production process takes place in companies specialized in food biotechnology starting from the collection of stem cells from the animal species to be reproduced , the same ones which are then fed and multiplied in a bioreactor. After this step, the cells are sent to a further stage of growth - the actual cultivation - on a three-dimensional support which gives rise to muscle tissues as similar as possible to those of the reference species. It should be noted that the process is relatively standardized and is not dissimilar from what is done at a medical level to replicate human tissues subject to subsequent transplantation.
Meat in vitro, the problems that hinder its diffusion
However, three problems hinder the large-scale diffusion of cultured meat, the first of which consists of the difficulty of making the product assume a consistency similar to that proposed by farmed meat, also giving it, second problem, the fat/protein ratios sought by consumers . Put simply, it happens that cultured meat looks more like a hamburger than a steak. Thirdly, and ten years after the first in vitro hamburger cooked and eaten during a press conference in London, not all cultivation procedures that work well in small laboratories are equally successful when scaled up to industrial scale. This is also because many of theprocedures necessary for the production of meat are protected by patent and as long as there are no mergers or agreements between companies that have mutual exclusivity on "complementary" techniques, the industrialization process of the sector will be slowed down if not completely impossible. The risk or the possibility of eating cultivated meat is ultimately still far away and for this reason it is possible to analyze the product in an objective and serene way in terms of healthiness and sustainability , with the healthiness opposed by the opponents of meat in vitro due to its origin " non-natural”, induced by a production process that would not guarantee equal food safety to the consumer.
Cultured meats and opposing ideologies
Supporters and critics of in vitro meat
Animal rights and environmental associations are among the main supporters of cultivated meat , because its diffusion would make it possible to reduce the number of animals raised in the world, and therefore their suffering and the emissions of polluting gases. However , the official documents and the scientific literature partially blame both sides . The wholesomeness of cultured meat was in fact sanctioned last March 21 by the Food and Drug Administration, the supervisory body for the wholesomeness of US food, declaring that "there are no further doubts" in this regard, adding that the product must comply to the country's food standards econtrols aimed at protecting the consumer. It should also be kept in mind that the production process for cultured meat avoids human slaughtering operations, reducing the risk of contamination of the meat. Not only that, excluding breeding eliminates the use of antibiotics and – in countries where they are permitted – also of growth hormones, substances whose presumed residues in conventional products frighten those who do not want meat grown in supermarkets. However, it is true that cultivated meat plays against farms, but only intensive ones and without positive returns in terms of emissions reduction. On April 21, a publication issued by a research group directed by Derrick Risner of the University of California Davis, one of the most prestigious institutions in the world on the subject, in fact presented a technical-economic analysis of the technologies currently available for the production of cultured meat, estimating six possible production processes. Of these , three show an optimistic version of the process , in which a refinement of cell growth techniques is hypothesized that allows the use of raw materials with a "typical" environmental impact of the agro-food chain, while the other three hypothesize that use raw materials with purification levels of the medical-pharmacological sector.
To clarify , the cells used for the production of cultured meat , given current technologies, need very clean water and nutrients to grow , for which ultrafiltration and refining processes are necessary which have a very high energy cost. The problem is that most of the impact analyzes published so far do not mention this fundamental point, but jump directly to the possibilities of creating meat using filtered and sterilized water and easily available raw materials. It is a pity that there are no short-term solutions to make these processes possible.The end result is that, comparing the best estimate of environmental impact for cultured meat with the best estimate for conventional meat, the latter beats the former with a production of just under ten kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted per kilogram of meat against over twelve kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted to produce cultured meat. And the data worsens considerably considering the real technologies . Feeding bioreactors with purified raw materials carbon dioxide emissions per kilo of meat could exceed a ton and a half. To conclude, an analysis of the current development of the chain and of the market for cultured meat.
The most interesting data in this regard are published in the periodic report published by the Good Food Institute and according to the document, 2022 was a record year having seen new investments in the sector for 896 million dollars reaching two billion and 780 million dollars. The companies that have declared their involvement in the sector have become 156, starting from 107 of the previous year, but it is estimated that there are many more. Nestlé, Jbs, Tyson Food, Mitsubishi and Cargill have declared important investments, but many multinationals are probably investing in this technology on the sly. At the country level, it also happens that those who are investing the most are the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and Singapore. The first two are not surprising, the US has always been the first investor in food technology and the United Kingdom has a century-old culture for the development of alternative foods to meat. Israel and Singapore, on the other hand, represent a "new" way of conceiving food production. Forced into a small space and in areas of the world to real or potential geo-political tensions, with great technological and economic resources behind them, both countries have been investing for years in innovations that allow them to reduce the import of food such as vertical and – today – cultured meat.
Meat in vitro, an emerging reality that will generate profits
To conclude, therefore, if the production process still has ample room for improvement , cultured meat represents an important reality that sooner or later will establish itself in the global agro-food panorama . In these cases, as always, there are two approaches to novelty, that of sticking one's head in the sand to pretend not to see and that of seeking information and studying options in order to be able to participate in the profits that the new supply chain will generate . It would be wise to opt for the latter.
