Food & Beverage Asia February/March 2024

INGREDIENTS
Cultivated Meat 2.0: A
sustainable revolution in largescale
seafood production
Increasing threats to food system sustainability has amplified the need
for cultivated meat as the next frontier in protein production.
By Mihir Pershad, CEO of Umami Bioworks
As our world grapples
with a growing global
population and
demand for protein,
the sustainability of our
traditional food systems
is being called into
question. Long-established
methods of protein production,
such as ocean fishing and intensive
aquaculture, face mounting challenges due to
environmental issues like ocean warming and
acidification. Simultaneously, the agricultural
sector, with its substantial carbon footprint,
plays a pivotal role in climate change.
Our conventional food system faces many
challenges beyond its environmental
impacts. Depleting aquifers, shifting climate
patterns, environmental degradation, thin
profit margins, and growing reliance on
subsidies (like fishing subsidies) underscore
the need for change. The seafood sector,
in particular, grapples with supply and
price volatility amidst increasing scarcity,
with our oceans substantially depleted
compared to pre-industrial levels. Change
is no longer an option; it is an imperative.
However, despite the pressing need for a
sustainable transformation, the agricultural
sector has received disproportionately low
investment relative to its contribution to
global greenhouse gas emissions. Only
4% of climate funding is directed towards
agrifood systems, despite this sector being
responsible for a third of global emissions.
Furthermore, vital aspects of climate
mitigation such as food loss, waste, and
low-carbon diets receive less than 1%
of climate funding. Likewise, just 10% of
venture capital investments in agrifood
tech go to climate-focused businesses. This
disconnect between the urgency of the
problem and available resources is alarming.
CULTIVATED MEAT 1.0: A
PROMISING START
Over the past decade, the cultivated meat
industry has seen significant growth.
According to the Good Food Institute, there
are 156 companies dedicated to producing
cultivated meat and seafood, with a total
of US$2.8bn invested in the sector as
of 2022. These startups are changing
protein production by creating sustainable
meat and seafood using bioreactors
instead of traditional farming methods.
However, recent months have witnessed
growing scepticism, and there are valid
reasons behind it – despite millions
of dollars poured into the industry,
technical progress has been slower than
anticipated. Scale-up timelines have been
repeatedly adjusted, and production cost
estimates have not yet reached parity with
commodity meat, as many had hoped.
Still, despite the prevailing narrative, the
cultivated meat industry has reached an
inflection point where the viability of the core
technology has been validated. Cultivated
food pioneers have produced meat and
fish with comparable nutrition, flavour, and
sensory attributes – all without the need
to catch a single fish or slaughter a single
cow, pig, or chicken. Yet, one critical hurdle
remains elusive: achieving the level of
commercial production scale and efficiency
necessary to feed millions of people.
As the initial excitement surrounding
cultivated meat wanes with well-publicised
achievements, some segments of the media
have grown impatient with the industry,
dismissing the concept as an overhyped,
short-lived trend with no real future.
However, this perspective overlooks the
tangible progress made over the past decade
and fails to grasp how novel technologies
typically emerge in the market. With the
right commercial strategies and pragmatic
engineering approaches, the cultivated
meat industry is poised for take-off.
CULTIVATED MEAT 1.0: THE
CHALLENGES
Cultivated Meat 1.0 companies face several
challenges that fuel concerns about their
long-term business viability. The cost
structure of cultivated products remains
a hurdle, and unstructured cultivated
meat products struggle to find a place
in higher-value market segments.
Sensory and nutritional concerns also linger.
While lab-proven cultivated meat products
have made advancements, they have largely
not achieved nutritional parity with their
traditional counterparts. Perception plays a
role here, as some consumers view cultivated
meat as having lower nutritional value or
being inferior to conventional products.
26 FOOD & BEVERAGE ASIA • FEBRUARY / MARCH 2024