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Title    Lab-Grown Meat: Never Cost-Competitive?
Date    Monday September 27 2021, @03:05AM
Author    martyb
Topic   
from the how-much-of-a-premium-would-YOU-pay? dept.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/09/27/0030220

takyon writes:

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."

Related:

Lab-Grown Pork Closer to Reality
Lab-Grown Chicken (and Duck) Could be on the Menu in 4 Years
Cargill, Bill Gates, Richard Branson Backed Memphis Meats Expects Meat From Cells in Stores by 2021
'Soylent' Dawkins? Atheist Mulls 'Taboo Against Cannibalism' Ending as Lab-Grown Meat Improves
Artificial Meat: UK Scientists Growing 'Bacon' in Labs
Impossible Foods CEO Ponders Fake Imaginary Meat
KFC is Working with a Russian 3D Bioprinting Firm to Try to Make Lab-Produced Chicken Nuggets
Gen Z Not Ready to Eat Lab-Grown Meat
No-Kill, Lab-Grown Meat to Go on Sale for First Time
Singapore Approves a Lab-Grown Meat Product, a Global First
Growth Industries: Lab-Grown Structures and Meats
Paris-Based Company Gourmey Hopes Ethical Lab-Grown Foie Gras Will Overcome Bans

Original Submission

Links

  1. "takyon" - https://soylentnews.org/~takyon/
  2. "Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story." - https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
  3. "a techno-economic analysis" - https://cedelft.eu/publications/tea-of-cultivated-meat/
  4. "trumpeted" - https://gfi.org/resource/cultivated-meat-lca-and-tea-policy-recommendations/
  5. "50-dollar lab-grown chicken nuggets" - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-22/clean-meat-just-chicken-nuggets-grown-in-a-lab-coming-soon
  6. "concluded" - https://www.scribd.com/document/526220188/Cultivated-Meat-review-of-the-cost-of-manufacturing
  7. "a much more robust TEA of its own" - https://engrxiv.org/795su
  8. "Lab-Grown Pork Closer to Reality" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/02/17/2122215
  9. "Lab-Grown Chicken (and Duck) Could be on the Menu in 4 Years" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/03/16/2218249
  10. "Cargill, Bill Gates, Richard Branson Backed Memphis Meats Expects Meat From Cells in Stores by 2021" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/11/04/1339240
  11. "'Soylent' Dawkins? Atheist Mulls 'Taboo Against Cannibalism' Ending as Lab-Grown Meat Improves" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/03/09/0335228
  12. "Artificial Meat: UK Scientists Growing 'Bacon' in Labs" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/21/0221232
  13. "Impossible Foods CEO Ponders Fake Imaginary Meat" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/03/25/0059202
  14. "KFC is Working with a Russian 3D Bioprinting Firm to Try to Make Lab-Produced Chicken Nuggets" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/07/19/0256244
  15. "Gen Z Not Ready to Eat Lab-Grown Meat" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/09/08/2230223
  16. "No-Kill, Lab-Grown Meat to Go on Sale for First Time" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/12/02/2212247
  17. "Singapore Approves a Lab-Grown Meat Product, a Global First" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/12/11/0353258
  18. "Growth Industries: Lab-Grown Structures and Meats" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/01/22/0230252
  19. "Paris-Based Company Gourmey Hopes Ethical Lab-Grown Foie Gras Will Overcome Bans" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/07/25/1854212
  20. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=51613

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