Epilogue

A comment from Supertrends co-founder Lars Tvede

At Supertrends, we are interested in emerging technologies that can have significant impact on a number of industries and society as a whole. As such, we found the topic of cultured meat particularly fascinating, because it ties in with some overarching tendencies in innovation. A recurring pattern in the way humans source their commodities is that first, we extract resources from the environment (as in hunting); then we learn to cultivate them (as in farming); and then we learn to synthesize them (as with cultured meat). Historically, our ability to acquire finite resources – such as guano-based fertilizer or buffalo meat – from nature has been limited, but there are no apparent practical limitations to genetic, biological, or chemical synthetization.

Interestingly, when we move to synthetization, the production becomes largely digitised, programmable, intelligent, accurate, and more compact. For example, cultivating food in bioreactors requires just one percent of the land needed to harvest it from plants and, in particular, animals. Through genetic engineering, it can be made healthier, more nutritious, or otherwise tailored to human requirements. It is even conceivable that we may consume synthetic products from endangered or extinct animals – think mammoth leather or tiger steaks. Moreover, these products may not only come with increased variety and quality, but also at a far cheaper price. Here’s another interesting aspect: In the slaughterhouse, meat is gained through “subtractive manufacturing” – cutting away parts of the cow to get to the meat. In-vitro meat, on the other hand, is built up layer by layer through “additive manufacturing” – also known as 3-D printing. Applied to cultivated meat, this opens up a plethora of new possibilities, including the prospect of being able to combine meat and fat in whatever structure you want; to combine components from different species; or to combine animal-based meat with plant-based fat.

Coexistence with the traditional meat industry

Nevertheless, this report also discusses many highly complex technical, legal, and commercial obstacles that must be overcome before cultured meat can be made available on an industrial scale. Personally, I am therefore somewhat skeptical of scenarios predicting the imminent demise of the meat and livestock industries within the next few decades. On the contrary, the incumbent meat industry might easily remain with us for very long, if it is able to create meat-with-a-story.

Consider Switzerland’s watchmaking industry, which has managed to hold its own against the competition from Asian producers of digital watches that are more accurate than the most expensive Swiss mechanical watches. Even though the Chinese now make far more watches than the Swiss, the Swiss make far more money on watches than the Chinese, because mechanical timepieces deliver time-with-a-story and are now part of the experience economy. Similarly, while bodybuilders and food scientists may think of meat primarily as a “source of protein”, most consumer decisions are driven by factors such as taste, smell, appearance, and cultural factors. In short, people eat meat because they like it.

Marketing challenges

Launching in-vitro meat must count as one of the most intriguing marketing challenges of all time. Early adopters will be willing to pay premium price for an environmentally sustainable product. While other consumers might, at least initially, be put off by the “Yuck Factor”, they may still buy cell-based meat if it becomes cheap enough. Selling the same type of products with widely different prices and messages will have its challenges. One way in which the industry hopes to succeed is by promoting the term “clean meat”, though as our analysis shows, perhaps cultured meat isn’t necessarily so much “clean” as it is “compact”.

Nevertheless, technical progress is advancing rapidly. One major success has been the replacement of animal-sourced Fetal Bovine Serum with plant-based growth factors, which is certainly “cleaner” than the previous method of draining blood from unborn cattle fetuses. The data suggests to me that the novel product will gradually encroach on the traditional meat industry and capture increasing market shares over time, perhaps following an S-shaped curve. Perhaps we should heed the observation made by the futurist Roy Amara and others: “We tend to overestimate the impact of a technology in the short term and underestimate the long-term impact.”

The revolution comes in two waves

Many scientists expect the revolution to come in two waves, in short succession. The first is in precision fermentation, which has long been used to make insulin and rennin for cheese as well as growth hormones, vitamins, and other rare and expensive proteins. The unit cost of making precision-fermented molecules has fallen by over 99.9 percent in recent decades and could decline by another 90 per cent over the coming decade. Thus, a method that until about 1995 was only economically viable for select proteins went on to be used for making cosmetic products, and more recently has increasingly been harnessed to produce artificial materials such as collagen and palm oil. Within a few years, minced meat made from proteins produced by yeast cells could be cheaper than butchered meat; some experts think the cost could plummet to one-seventh of traditional produce by 2030, although I would personally be skeptical of that timeline. The second stage will be the development of higher-grade structured meat cuts as well as artificial milk and leather goods using cellular agriculture, which could become economically viable by the second half of the decade. Taste and texture could be optimized by mixing the muscle fibers into a collagen matrix and through 3-D printing mixtures of muscle fibers and fat pockets.

A crisis in agriculture?

The consequences may not only be positive. There is the potential for a huge crisis that could impact large swathes of traditional agriculture, from farmers, slaughterhouses, the agricultural machinery industry, agricultural banks, and cattle transport companies to veterinarians. The value of farmland could fall sharply unless governments buy it above market prices. Conversely, there could also be enormous ecological, economic, and social benefits. Huge tracts of land (in the US alone, an area six times the size of Germany) would be freed up for development or conversion into national parks. A crucial part of food production would be shifted much closer to consumers. The food industry would use far less water, pesticides, growth hormones, and antibiotics, and cause far less pollution. Finally, synthetic food could be customized to be healthier, more nutritious, and more wholesome, and produced in unlimited quantities.

Limited only by imagination

Indeed, we can conceive of a future where advances in food production are only limited by the boundaries of our imagination. As with 3-D printing, scientists and engineers could share blueprints for decentralized manufacturing of meat and other foodstuffs, which could be retrieved and refined by a global community. Like the transformation of energy systems, a shift towards distributed food production that is closer to consumers and more responsive to local requirements will enhance the security and stability of supply, as well as the ability of the overall system to withstand shocks and disruptions.

In business terms, there are huge opportunities to be gained by positioning oneself at an early stage to reap the benefits created by a fundamental transformation in one of the pillars of the global economy. On the other hand, a failure to adapt to such a radical shift in a timely manner is fraught with peril, especially given the many potential ramifications and secondary effects on other sectors of the economy. We hope that this report has not only provided our readers with an understanding of the issues involved, but will also serve as a navigational aid to help them set course for success in uncharted waters.