theceomagazine.com | 99world’s seas of fish. The rise of lab-grown meat could radically
reduce human pressure on the natural world, while cutting
water use and greenhouse gas emissions (cows burp a lot
of methane).
Cultured meat is real meat, grown indoors and artificially.
The cultures are pricey vats of biochemical soup. So far,
it’s wildly expensive: when Maastricht University scientists
served the world’s first cultured-meat hamburger, in 2013,
they priced it at US$325,000. But in six years it has already
dropped 60-fold, to below US$5,000 a kilogram.
Cultured meat is mostly mushy – mince, really – and
cultured-meat researchers mostly admit we’re still a long way
from the muscle and fat of perfect steak. The artificiality makes
some people queasy. But it’s reportedly very edible. Make it
at least vaguely competitive with existing meats, and we may
quickly create a widespread social taboo against eating meat
from what were once live animals. Greater demand and further
innovation could drive down prices quickly.
The big trick, then, is for companies like Memphis Meats,
Just, Finless Foods, Mosa Meat and Tyson Foods to make
culturing fast and energy efficient, and thus affordable.
Investors from Bill Gates to agriculture giant Cargill are betting
that can happen. Gates has also invested in plant-based
artificial meats.
Keep the price cuts coming over the next decade or two,
and the world may have a lot more food factories and a lot
fewer cows and fishing boats.The term cultured meat may seem a mere mouthful, but
its effects may dwarf most others. We use half the world’s
habitable land for agriculture, and more than three-quarters
of that is used for livestock. As countries try to meet the
demand for produce, for example China’s demand for
Australia’s seafood, they are also denuding many of the
CULTURED
MEAT FOR FOODThe next big things | INNOVATE