Cultured meat production: what we know, what we don’t know and what we should know

Abstract

Certain companies in the rapidly expanding cultured meat space claim that cultured meat is exactly the same in taste, flavour and nutrition as traditional meat, but without the need for animal slaughter, and bringing benefits for human health and the environment. It is important to point out that cultured meat is still in the early phases of development and, in many cases, the claims are based on assumptions rather than facts. In this work, we outline several knowledge gaps, mainly based on technical issues, with repercussions related to the possible benefits as well as economic and regulatory challenges.

Highlights:

• Cultured meat made entirely of cultured cells does not yet exist

• Cultured meat production still faces several hurdles including the omission of animal-derived components and economic viability

• A lack of transparent production methods limits the evaluation of product characteristics and environmental impact

KEYWORD:

• Cultured meat
• clean meat
• cellular agriculture
• cell-based food

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support this review were derived from the papers in the reference list.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the FWO (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek—Vlaanderen) under grant number S002821N.