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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:40AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:40AM (#1181756)

    Remember how reusable rockets were supposed to be impractical because the extra weight penalty of building them strong enough to land and the extra propellant would mean no margin for payload? And that the closest to reusable, the space shuttle, took a year to refurbish after each billion dollar flight?

    Or before that, how the USA would need at most 5 computers?

    Or spending $80 to upgrade from 16k to 64k of ram?

    Or the beef industry saying nobody would buy a meatless veggie burger? And how they would never taste as good as real beef?

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 27 2021, @04:44AM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 27 2021, @04:44AM (#1181766) Journal

    Or the beef industry saying nobody would buy a meatless veggie burger? And how they would never taste as good as real beef?

    OK, I tried one, and it was a failure. Do you have any suggestions of a veggie burger that really is as good as beef? I'm sitting breathless, on the edge of my seat here . . . .

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @05:44AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @05:44AM (#1181781)

      I quite like the some of the veggie burgers I've tried.

      None of the 'meat' variety, mind you. What is the obsession with making food from lentils and beans taste like animal flesh?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @02:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @02:55PM (#1181874)

      Millet, black bean, lentils, mushrooms, etc. can be better than beef in the hands of someone that knows what they're doing. Fake-meat will never be able to beat real meat, of course. 3D-printer beef might end up being better though?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @08:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @08:46AM (#1181800)

    Or the beef industry saying nobody would buy a meatless veggie burger? And how they would never taste as good as real beef?

    Good luck. Personally, I'd rather eat insects.

  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Monday September 27 2021, @10:22AM

    by driverless (4770) on Monday September 27 2021, @10:22AM (#1181806)

    That was an issue of engineering and money. In this case you're running up against basic biological and physical issues that you can't engineer or buy your way around...

  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday September 27 2021, @11:51AM

    by RamiK (1813) on Monday September 27 2021, @11:51AM (#1181824)

    Remember how reusable rockets were supposed to be impractical because the extra weight penalty...

    Nope. The issue was the lack accurate gyroscopes and computation power. This was gradually solved around the the 70-80s. What wasn't solved was an economic model: Rebuilding a rocket is cheap and profitable so a reusable one only scales when you have a reason to go up to LEO for thousands of times. So, everyone in the field who could count with their fingers and toes figured it's just not going to happen and isn't worth their time. Then came Musk lying to congress selling them reusable LEO rockets with a story how he'll tie 'em like willy coyote and get to higher orbits. It was ridiculous and all the engineers reviewing it said the tolerances are impossible to pull off and they were right. But by then Musk got his contract. So now, congress is too heavily invested in this crap so they're going for some other crap that doesn't work to subsidize it like satellite internet (high latencies.. low bandwidth...), tourism (cause who doesn't want to pay $50k for 30min on a air plane?) and the all time classic and most ludicrous of them all, military expenditure.

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    compiling...