81
several tons of meat every six to eight weeks. Richard
McGeown, the chef who cooked Post’s first burger on
the live broadcast, is already dreaming about how he will
cook and serve the next one at his restaurant in southern
England. He’d like to pair it with an aged cheddar, smoky
ketchup and house-made pickles. “It would do great,” he
says. “Everyone loves a good burger.” More important,
he’d love to serve something that is as good for the
environment as it is good to eat.
But for those in the $386 billion-a-year cow business,
a battle is brewing. As production moves from feedlot
to factory, cattle ranchers stand to lose both jobs and in-
vestments. Like coal country in the era of clean energy,
entire communities are at risk of being left behind, and
they will fight. “The cattle industry will do everything
they can to call lab-grown meat into question,” says Lei-
serowitz. “Because once it breaks through to grocery
stores, they’re competing on basic stuff, like taste and
price. And they know they won’t be able to win.”
The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association has already peti-
tioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture to limit the
use of the terms beef and meat exclusively to “products
derived from the flesh of a [bovine] animal, harvested in
the traditional manner.” A decision is pending, but if it
comes down in the favor of the cattle industry, it could
create a significant barrier to market adoption of cell-
cultured meat, says Dent. “For a new product that con-
sumers don’t know and don’t trust, the terms you can
use make a critical difference. Who’s going to buy some-
thing called ‘lab-grown cell-protein isolates’?”
“It’s meat,” says Tetrick. “Even down to the genetic
level, it is meat. It’s just made in a different way.” Tet-
rick, who won a similar naming battle in 2015 when
his company, then known as Hampton Creek, success-
fully maintained the right to call its eggless mayon-
naise substitute Just Mayo, says the U.S. Cattlemen’s
Association’s complaint is as senseless as if the U.S.
automotive industry had argued that Tesla couldn’t
use the word car to describe its electric vehicles, on
the basis that they lacked an internal combustion en-
gine. Still, he says, naming is critically important. As
the technology has gathered speed over the past sev-
eral years, terms including cell-cultured, cultivated,
slaughter- free, cell-based, clean, lab-grown and syn-
thetic have been variously used, but consensus is gath-
ering around cultivated meat, which is Tetrick’s term
of choice.
Verstrate, at Mosa, is ambivalent. “Ultimately we’re
going to produce a hamburger that is delicious. We can
call it meat or we can call it Joe, but if a meat lover con-
sumes it and has the same experience as when consum-
ing a great Wagyu burger, then we’re good to go.” □The Mosa
team. From
left: Peter
Verstrate,
co-founder
and chief
operating
officer;
Maarten
Bosch,
CEO; Mark
Post, chief
scientific
officer,
at their
headquarters
in
Maastricht,
Netherlands,
in July