Are the slaughterhouse’s days numbered?
The cultured meat sector is being seriously beefed up: last week, and still pending exact location, US company Good Meat’s plans for the construction of the world’s largest factory/laboratory to produce meat in bioreactors, more than doubling the amount produced in Israel by Future Meat. A quick search online shows that there are any number of investments, product launches and other news.
Why are investors increasingly interested in cultured meat? Apart from the obvious environmental benefits and reducing the suffering of animals, the cell division process means it is reasonably easy to produce huge amounts of the stuff economically and hygienically, which once consumers’ reticence has been overcome, means huge profits. In short, this is all about economies of scale and increase output exponentially, which reduces costs and will make it possible to go from the first very expensive prototypes, to trays of chicken nuggets or hamburgers that can readily compete with “real” meat in terms of cost and quality.
Following the approval of the first products based on artificial meat for mass consumption in 2020 in Singapore, the sector has been developing fast, and the signs are that this food revolution — whereby we would consume meat that has never belonged to any animal that walked, breathed or suffered, seems to be ready to hit the supermarket shelves. At…
