Czech start-up Bene Meat Technologies is the first to win European Union registration for laboratory-grown meat for use in pet food and plans to boost production to make up to several metric tons per day next year, the company said on Wednesday.
For the moment, that is the important bit. All the tooling is expensive medical stuff right now (they’re even owned by a medical company) and afaik there’s also the question of how to produce a cheap, sustainable nutrient solution. Let’s see whether this takes off now or whether we’re a couple decades early.
The issue is a bit different than you seem to think (and tbh, different than I accidentally wrote earlier). Lab-grown meat needs to grow in the absence of bacteria and other foreign cells which grow a lot faster than meat cells. Hence, the issue is not capex for the tooling alone, but how to scale up sterile processes in huge vessels.
If they use similar input to regular feed, they should have similar output. Except it’s just the meat and no bones, brains, or other animal parts that modern humans find largely inedible. However, most companies started out by using animal products as the nutrient solution (e.g. some kind of fetal serum for beef products) which meant killing animals nonetheless. Multiple companies say they have solved the issue but at the same time go around saying “proprietary! proprietary!”, so we don’t really know whether it’s just smoke and mirrors for their investors.
For the moment, that is the important bit. All the tooling is expensive medical stuff right now (they’re even owned by a medical company) and afaik there’s also the question of how to produce a cheap, sustainable nutrient solution. Let’s see whether this takes off now or whether we’re a couple decades early.
The medical stuff will get cheaper for sure if it doesn’t need all the expensive certifications, supply chain surveillance etc
The issue is a bit different than you seem to think (and tbh, different than I accidentally wrote earlier). Lab-grown meat needs to grow in the absence of bacteria and other foreign cells which grow a lot faster than meat cells. Hence, the issue is not capex for the tooling alone, but how to scale up sterile processes in huge vessels.
which kinda brings up the next point, does this type of meat have the same nutrition properties? There aren’t any studies on that yet afaik
If they use similar input to regular feed, they should have similar output. Except it’s just the meat and no bones, brains, or other animal parts that modern humans find largely inedible. However, most companies started out by using animal products as the nutrient solution (e.g. some kind of fetal serum for beef products) which meant killing animals nonetheless. Multiple companies say they have solved the issue but at the same time go around saying “proprietary! proprietary!”, so we don’t really know whether it’s just smoke and mirrors for their investors.