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posted by martyb on Monday September 27 2021, @03:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-much-of-a-premium-would-YOU-pay? dept.

Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story.

Splashy headlines have long overshadowed inconvenient truths about biology and economics. Now, extensive new research suggests the industry may be on a billion-dollar crash course with reality.

[...] [In March], the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit that represents the alternative protein industry, published a techno-economic analysis (TEA) that projected the future costs of producing a kilogram of cell-cultured meat. Prepared independently for GFI by the research consulting firm CE Delft, and using proprietary data provided under NDA by 15 private companies, the document showed how addressing a series of technical and economic barriers could lower the production price from over $10,000 per pound today to about $2.50 per pound over the next nine years—an astonishing 4,000-fold reduction.

In the press push that followed, GFI claimed victory. "New studies show cultivated meat can have massive environmental benefits and be cost-competitive by 2030," it trumpeted, suggesting that a new era of cheap, accessible cultured protein is rapidly approaching. The finding is critical for GFI and its allies. If private, philanthropic, and public sector investors are going to put money into cell-cultured meat, costs need to come down quickly. Most of us have a limited appetite for 50-dollar lab-grown chicken nuggets.

[...] [Dr. Paul Wood] couldn't believe what he was hearing. In his view, GFI's TEA report did little to justify increased public investment. He found it to be an outlandish document, one that trafficked more in wishful thinking than in science. He was so incensed that he hired a former Pfizer colleague, Huw Hughes, to analyze GFI's analysis. Today, Hughes is a private consultant who helps biomanufacturers design and project costs for their production facilities; he's worked on six sites devoted to cell culture at scale. Hughes concluded that GFI's report projected unrealistic cost decreases, and left key aspects of the production process undefined, while significantly underestimating the expense and complexity of constructing a suitable facility.

[...] In fact, GFI was well aware of Wood's line of criticism. Several months earlier, Open Philanthropy—a multi-faceted research and investment entity with a nonprofit grant-making arm, which is also one of GFI's biggest funders—completed a much more robust TEA of its own, one that concluded cell-cultured meat will likely never be a cost-competitive food. David Humbird, the UC Berkeley-trained chemical engineer who spent over two years researching the report, found that the cell-culture process will be plagued by extreme, intractable technical challenges at food scale. In an extensive series of interviews with The Counter, he said it was "hard to find an angle that wasn't a ludicrous dead end."

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:37AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:37AM (#1181754)

    Go away with your lab experiment.

    If you want sustainable farming, invest in sustainable farming.

    Or launch a few vegan cookbooks full of delicious food that people might actual want to eat instead of craving faux meat all the time.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:13AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:13AM (#1181761)

    Or do the research for a context where sustainable farming is impossible and your research becomes meaningful. For instance, colonization of Mars, for the long centuries needed to terraform it.
    Oh, wait, you started it a wee too early; by the time Mars colonization starts, your patents get to the stage of "scientific communication". Thanks.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @05:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @05:41AM (#1181780)

      Hi from Planet Earth.

      I don't want your lab-grown Martian food.

      Thanks.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Monday September 27 2021, @09:30AM

      by driverless (4770) on Monday September 27 2021, @09:30AM (#1181804)

      For instance, colonization of Mars, for the long centuries needed to terraform it.

      Forget about colonizing Mars, we've been busy seeding the place with robots, before we know it the second variety will be coming to colonize us.

      Just for future reference, I would like to state that I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.

  • (Score: 2) by bart9h on Monday September 27 2021, @05:52PM

    by bart9h (767) on Monday September 27 2021, @05:52PM (#1181929)

    I wholeheartedly agree with your second and third sentences, but I don't see the reason for the first one.