Like so much technology, cell-based meat gorges on energy — for now
Editor’s note: This is the latest in our Emerging Voices series featuring work by new writers. -Barclay Palmer
New forms of food production — without animals, pesticides, fertilizers, or even soil — continue gaining attention and investors as the world’s growing population demands more food from a planet that’s quickly losing farmable land to climate change. While plant-based products including “meatless meat” are already available in some stores and restaurants, “lab-grown” or cell-based meat (CBM) is gaining attention and funding — scrutiny, with some saying it will be better for the environment only if it innovates its production methods.
Growing recognition that some of the same industrial agriculture techniques that helped reduce hunger and food prices over the past century are also damaging our land, health, and climate has accelerated the search for low-impact alternatives. Methane and nitrous oxide make up most of agricultural emissions, and have more than 28 and 273 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide, respectively. Meanwhile, the global population is expected to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050, while the planet loses nearly 4,000 square miles of farmable land each year to drought, land degradation and desertification. As industrial agriculture contributes 22% of greenhouse gasses, innovators are looking for alternative ways to feed people.
That’s where cellular agriculture comes in. “Cell ag” offers ways to make protein that use far less land and water, and that harness more benefits from renewable energy than industrial farming can. And its alternatives to milk, eggs, and cheese are gradually gaining public acceptance.
As industrial agriculture contributes 22% of greenhouse gasses, innovators are looking for alternative ways to feed people.
“Cultivated meat,” however, poses unique challenges because of the difficulty in replicating complex meat proteins, textures and flavors. It starts with just a few livestock cells that are placed in “bioreactors” and fed nutrients such as amino acids, glucose, and vitamins in an oxygen-rich cell culture known as a “growth medium.” Utilizing “tissue-engineering techniques borrowed from regenerative medicine,” the cells are arranged into forms that resemble muscle, fat, and connective tissue that combine to result in “genuine animal meat,” without the need to raise and kill livestock. In many cases today, these cells are harvested and processed with plant proteins to make store-ready products, such as those in Singapore. Cultivated meat products have been approved for sale only in Singapore (2020), the U.S. (2022) and Israel (2024).
Is that a hamburger or a political football?
Cultivated meat arrived in US restaurants in 2023. But it might take a while to reach your supermarket. High production costs, lack of availability and low consumer demand — despite FDA approval and potential health benefits — have slowed industry growth. Moreover, FDA approval and meat industry interests have turned it into a political issue: four states have banned lab-grown meat. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed, “Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals.” Former Pres. Donald Trump has also made meat a political issue, although without citing cell-based meat specifically, falsely claiming that Vice President and Presidential candidate Kamala Harris “wants to pass laws to outlaw red meat to stop climate change.”
Why cellular agriculture needs renewable energy
Another potential obstacle is evidence suggesting that “cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment” than conventional meat, according to a 2024 UC Davis study, because it currently uses energy-intensive pharma-grade production methods rather than food-grade’s less demanding processes. “If companies are having to purify growth media to pharmaceutical levels, it uses more resources, which then increases global warming potential,” said Derrick Risner, doctoral candidate and lead author of the study, a Life Cycle Assessment or LCA. A 2024 study in Nature similarly found that a 73% transition to cellular agriculture by 2050 using current production techniques would increase rather than decrease the energy demand of global food systems — by 69%. Transitioning from pharma-grade to less expensive food-grade ingredients and cultures could reduce cellular agriculture’s emissions, but such innovation would take time and money. A more attainable solution, however, could be found in harnessing renewable energy.
If global renewable energy use reaches 86% by 2050, as projected by the International Renewable Agency (IRENA), the 2024 Nature study found that transition to cultivated meat could reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 52% compared to current agricultural emissions, despite a sharp increase in industry energy consumption. A life cycle analysis (LCA) by the Good Food Institute (GFI) similarly found that renewable energy could help the cultivated meat industry dramatically reduce emissions.
Transition to cultivated meat could reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 52% compared to current agricultural emissions, despite a sharp increase in industry energy consumption.
Industrial agriculture is not expected to reach such energy efficiencies — ever. Modern agriculture produces significant Scope 3 emissions beyond their own production, as well as a host of greenhouse gasses, including methane from livestock digestion, nitrous oxide from manure management and fertilizer application, and carbon dioxide from plant decomposition.
By contrast, GFI’s study found that cellular agriculture emissions are mainly Scope 1 and 2, meaning they are produced directly from operations or from purchased resources, and don’t prompt the greater Scope 3 emissions generated by traditional agriculture. The GFI study found that cultivated meat manufacturers can reduce their carbon footprint by up to 70% simply by using and sourcing renewable energy at their facilities.
The vision thing
Cellular agriculture isn’t just the next step in a history of “intensive farming.” It’s a vision for a completely redefined industry — which is why, despite its potential environmental benefits, it may never be fully realized. Still, more than 170 cultivated protein companies are pushing the industry forward, including Blue Nalu, a leader in cell-based seafood. Since 2013, cultivated meat and seafood companies have raised over $3 billion, showing substantial declines only during the 2022/23 global risk-off decline in venture and startup investments, reflecting what GFI called the “broader tepid private funding environment.”
However, the cell-based meat industry still faces a tower of hurdles, ranging from skepticism or even fear among the public or regulators, to caution about unequal access, to conventional problems with scaling production and distribution. The numerous complexities of cellular agriculture beg an important question: is this the most simple solution? Alternative, plant-based meat lookalikes are already widely available and unburdened by energy-intensive bioreactors and expensive production. The only difference is they’re not “meat” as most people understand meat to be: from animals.
As data continues to point to intensifying climate risks, we wait to see if our desire to eat “meat” will fuel the innovation necessary to make cellular agriculture a viable industry and, if not, whether we can live in a world without meat. David Tetrick, CEO of the cultivated meat and egg company Eat Just, isn’t so optimistic: “I think the addiction to meat runs so deep in us.” The truth, of course, is that we don’t know. But if we wait to find out, it could be too late. So for now, the quest to grow meat in a lab continues.
Featured photo: Eat Just / GOOD Meat
