WASHINGTON:This year, lab-grown meat could become a reality in some American restaurants.

After one company received approval from a significant regulator, executives at cultivated meat companies are optimistic that meat produced in sizable steel vats could be available in a matter of months. Some of them are so confident in the quality of the meats that they have hired eminent chefs to prepare them for their upscale restaurants, including Argentine Francis Mallmann and Spaniard José Andrés.

However, five executives told Reuters that cultivated meat faces significant challenges before it can reach its ultimate destination—supermarket shelves. In order to increase production and lower the cost of their beef steaks and chicken breasts, businesses must attract more funding. Along the way, they will have to get past consumer resistance to even try lab-grown meat.

A small sample of cells taken from livestock is used to create the meat in bioreactors, where they are fed nutrients and allowed to grow until they resemble real meat in both appearance and flavour

.The product has only so far been authorized for retail sale in one nation, Singapore. However, the US is prepared to follow. A chicken breast produced by UPSIDE Foods in California was deemed safe for human consumption by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November.

According to UPSIDE executives speaking to Reuters, the company now plans to introduce its product to restaurants as soon as 2023 and grocery stores by 2028.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture must still inspect and approve the company's labels. A spokesperson for the USDA FSIS declined to provide any additional information regarding the timing of its inspections.

Meat is harvested and processed in a room called the "slaughterless house," where it is inspected and tested. At UPSIDE's facility in Emeryville, California, workers were seen poring over touch screens and monitoring giant vats of water mixed with nutrients. The company's chicken tasted just like conventional chicken when cooked, though it was somewhat thinner and had a more uniform tan color when raw.

UPSIDE worked with the FDA for four years before receiving approval from the agency in November, according to Valeti.

"It's a watershed moment for the industry," he said.

GOOD Meat, a California-based cultivated meat company, already has an application pending with the FDA, which was previously unreported. Two other companies, Netherlands-based Mosa Meat and Israel-based Believer Meats, have said they are in talks with the agency, according to company executives.

The FDA declined to provide details of pending cultivated meat applications but confirmed it is talking to multiple companies. The biggest challenge companies face is growing the supply chain for the nutrient mix to feed cells and for the massive bioreactors required to produce large quantities of cultivated meat.

For now, production is limited. UPSIDE’s facility has the capacity to churn out 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat per year – a small fraction of the 106 billion pounds of conventional meat and poultry produced in the United States in 2021, according to the North American Meat Institute, a meat industry lobby group.

According to GOOD Meat co-founder Josh Tetrick, if the companies cannot raise the necessary funds to scale up production, their product may never reach a price point where it can compete with conventional meat.

"Selling is not the same as selling a lot," Tetrick explained. "This will be on a very small scale until we as a company and other companies build large-scale infrastructure."

The cultivated meat sector has so far raised nearly $2 billion in investments globally, according to data collected by the Good Food Institute. But it will take hundreds of millions of dollars for companies to build bioreactors of the size needed to make its meat at scale.

Investment in the industry so far has been led by venture capital firms and major food companies like JBS SA (JBSS3.SA), Tyson Foods Inc (TSN.N), and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (ADM.N).

According to Nikki Richardson, a spokesperson for JBS, the company's investments in cultivated meat "are consistent with our efforts to build a diversified global food portfolio of traditional, plant-based, and alternative protein product offerings."

Tyson did not respond to an interview request. ADM refused to comment.

According to Jordan Bar Am, a partner at McKinsey & Company who focuses on alternative proteins, much of that money has been directed toward the United States, which is the No. 1 target for cultivated meat makers due to its size and wealth.

Some companies are ramping up production in the United States even before their products have been approved by regulators.

According to CEO Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, Believer Meats intends to build a facility in North Carolina that will be operational in early 2024 and capable of producing 22 million pounds of meat annually. And GOOD Meat intends to expand its production capacity in California and Singapore to up to 30 million pounds per year.

The European Union, Israel, and other countries are also developing regulatory frameworks for cultivated meat, but no product for human consumption has been approved.

Cultivated meat companies plan to pitch to consumers that their product is greener and more ethical than conventional livestock. The products do not involve animal slaughter, which companies hope will appeal to people who avoid meat for moral reasons. Animals are unharmed in the cell collection process, company executives said.

Another draw is that growing meat in a steel vessel instead of in a field could reduce the environmental impact of livestock, which are responsible for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions through feed production, deforestation, manure management, and enteric fermentation - animal burps - according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Plant-based meat companies have also appealed to consumers with moral and environmental claims, though the sector has captured just 1.4% of the meat market, according to a GFI report.

But cultivated meat companies have the advantage that they can claim their product is real meat, Tetrick said.

"Probably the single biggest thing we've learned is that people really love meat." "They're not going to eat much less of it," he predicted.

Even so, cultivated meat offends many people, according to Janet Tomiyama, a health psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies human diets.

She discovered that 35% of meat eaters and 55% of vegetarians would be too disgusted to try cultivated meat in a 2022 study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

According to her, some people may perceive the meat as "unnatural" and develop a negative attitude toward it before even trying it.

To attract hesitant customers, companies must be as transparent as possible about how their product is made and that it is safe to eat, according to Tetrick, whose company has sold its product in Singapore restaurants.

"You have to be transparent about it, but in a way that's still appetizing," he said.

According to Reuters, UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat plan to whet American appetites by releasing their products first at high-end restaurants, betting that consumers there will tolerate a higher price point and have a positive first impression of their meat.

UPSIDE CEO Valeti stated that the company hopes to get its products into grocery stores within the next three to five years.

Major supermarket chains in the United States did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Andrés, a restaurateur known for his work on global food security, told Reuters that he wants to sell cultivated meat due to the environmental benefits.

"What is happening all around us, in every country around the world, shows that our planet is in crisis," he said.

Fellow chef Mallmann, known for his outdoor cooking of meat and other foods, told Reuters that he is also influenced by environmental concerns and sees the chefs' role as making the product more gastronomically appealing rather than scientific.

"We need to inject some romance into it," he said.

Source: Reuters