![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/4228163B-7AE2-426B-9670-7E593560C876.jpeg?resize=300%2C169\")
<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
BY Joe Fassler<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Paul Wood didn\u2019t<\/strong> buy it.<\/p>\n For years, the former pharmaceutical industry executive watched from the sidelines as biotech startups raked in venture capital, making bold pronouncements about the future of meat. He was fascinated by their central contention: the idea that one day, soon, humans will no longer need to raise livestock to enjoy animal protein. We\u2019ll be able to grow<\/em> meat in giant, stainless-steel bioreactors\u2014and enough of it to feed the world. These advancements in technology, the pitch went, would fundamentally change the way human societies interact with the planet, making the care, slaughter, and processing of billions of farm animals the relic of a barbaric past.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a digital-era narrative we\u2019ve come to accept, even expect: Powerful new tools will allow companies to rethink everything, untethering us from systems we\u2019d previously taken for granted. Countless<\/a> news<\/a> articles<\/a> have<\/a> suggested<\/a>that a paradigm shift driven by cultured meat is inevitable, even imminent. But Wood wasn\u2019t convinced. For him, the idea of growing animal protein was old news, no matter how science-fictional it sounded. Drug companies have used a similar process for decades, a fact Wood knew because he\u2019d overseen that work himself.<\/p>\n For four years, Wood, who has a PhD in immunology, served as the executive director of global discovery for Pfizer Animal Health. (His division was later spun off into Zoetis, today the largest animal health company in the world.) One of his responsibilities was to oversee production of vaccines, which can involve infecting living cells with weakened virus strains and inducing those cells to multiply inside large bioreactors. In addition to yielding large quantities of vaccine-grade viruses, this approach also creates significant amounts of animal cell slurry, similar to the product next-generation protein startups want to process further into meat. Wood knew the process to be extremely technical, resource-intensive, and expensive. He didn\u2019t understand how costly biomanufacturing techniques could ever be used to produce cheap, abundant human food.<\/p>\n In March of this year, he hoped he\u2019d finally get his answer. That month, the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit that represents the alternative protein industry, published a techno-economic analysis<\/a> (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\u2014an astonishing 4,000-fold reduction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Costs for cell-cultured meat need to come down quickly. Most of us have a limited appetite for 50-dollar lab-grown chicken nuggets.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n In the press push that followed, GFI claimed victory. \u201cNew studies show cultivated meat can have massive environmental benefits and be cost-competitive by 2030,\u201d it trumpeted<\/a>, 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n With its TEA findings in hand, GFI has worked tirelessly to argue for massive public investment. Its top policy recommendation, according to GFI\u2019s in-depth analysis<\/a> of the TEA results, is aimed at \u201cforward-thinking\u201d governments: They \u201cshould increase public funds for R & D into cultivated meat technology\u201d in order to \u201cseize the opportunity and reap the benefits of becoming global leaders\u201d in the space. In late April, just six weeks later, that message was amplified by The New York Times<\/em>. In a column called \u201cLet\u2019s Launch a Moonshot for Meatless Meat,\u201d Ezra Klein, a co-founder of Vox who is now one of the Times<\/em>\u2019s most visible and influential writers, argued<\/a> that the U.S. government should invest billions to improve and scale both plant-based meat alternatives (like the Impossible Burger) and cultivated meat.<\/p>\n Bruce Friedrich, GFI\u2019s founder and CEO, appeared in the story to argue that the need for significant public investment was urgent and necessary.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we leave this endeavor to the tender mercies of the market there will be vanishingly few products to choose from and it\u2019ll take a very long time,\u201d he told Klein. The message was clear: If we want to save the planet, we should double down on cultured meat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Read more https:\/\/thecounter.org\/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale\/?mc_cid=19ea89b3b3&mc_eid=a8b61e24b5<\/a><\/p>\n Wood couldn\u2019t believe what he was hearing. In his view, GFI\u2019s 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\u2019s analysis. Today, Hughes is a private consultant who helps biomanufacturers design and project costs for their production facilities; he\u2019s worked on six sites devoted to cell culture at scale. Hughes concluded<\/a>that GFI\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n In an interview by phone, Wood wondered if GFI was being disingenuous\u2014or if the organization was simply naive.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter a while, you just think: Am I going crazy? Or do these people have some secret sauce that I\u2019ve never heard of?\u201d Wood said. \u201cAnd the reality is, no\u2014they\u2019re just doing fermentation. But what they\u2019re saying is, \u2018Oh, we\u2019ll do it better than anyone else has ever, ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n\nCultivated meat companies have repeatedly missed product launch deadlines<\/h2>\n