SA国际传媒

Long ago, fact-checking website had to clarify an internet rumor that, no, fast-food restaurant does not use lab-grown, genetically of pulsating chicken flesh devoid of feathers and beaks in its food.

Fast-forward to today: In November, announced 鈥� lab-grown chicken .

It鈥檚 been a long road for Upside Foods, the first company in this space to receive venture funding back in 2015, per SA国际传媒 data. But the reality of a bustling, highly competitive lab-grown meat startup system is not dissimilar from the horrifying visual of KFC internet lore. Scientists can grow lumps of meat in petri dishes that can mimic chicken breast, steak, ground meat and even filets of salmon with just a few stem cells.

Funding in the cultivated meat space has reached $693.5 million so far in 2022. That鈥檚 the second-largest amount of funding per year in that industry after 2021, and represents a 208% increase from funding in 2020.

Plants vs. cultivated meat

It is interesting to see that plant-based food, often a concoction of soy proteins, fermented mushroom cells and seaweed, is still netting more money than cultivated meat. But it had a five-year head start; the first plant-based meat startups to get venture funding happened in 2010, per SA国际传媒 data.

The sector also encompasses a wider variety of foods like milk and eggs. But plant-based meat hasn鈥檛 been immune to the slew of logistical- and supply chain-related challenges that plague the food industry, and companies like .

Everything around meat 鈥� maintaining a home for animals, feeding them, butchering them, packaging them and selling them 鈥� is simply an insufficient use of supply chain capabilities. Thirty-six percent of the world鈥檚 crop calories , and animal farms . A 2020 report from says, unequivocally, that 鈥渢he meat industry is unsustainable鈥� 鈥� especially as our population reaches 8 billion.

So perhaps it鈥檚 unsurprising that cultivated meat (a more palatable word for “lab-grown,” perhaps) is seeing investment from giant meat producers like , and . What if, instead of growing whole animals, we only grow the parts we eat?

This all sounds great, but we鈥檙e not sure how well cell-grown meat scales. We鈥檙e not even sure if, at full capacity, it will be that much cheaper or better for the environment than how meat is grown now. Cultivated meat requires lab space, disposable equipment () and logistical operations to package and ship the meat as well.

In November, Upside Foods (for comparison, 50,000 pounds of meat equals roughly 113 cows, and 53,000 square feet is 1.2 acres).

The IDTechEx report does point out a rather obvious solution that鈥檚 much cheaper than cultivated meat. 鈥淲hilst many of the problems associated with animal agriculture could be solved by large percentages of the world’s population giving up meat, this seems extremely unlikely, regardless of the environmental or ethical reasons.鈥�

滨濒濒耻蝉迟谤补迟颈辞苍:听Dom Guzman