Food & Beverage

Lab-grown meat facing hurdles on race to the bun

What obstacles stand in the way of everyday quick-service use of lab-grown meat, and how can the industry successfully cross them?

Photo: iStock

August 20, 2020 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

Although KFC's efforts to produce lab-grown chicken nuggets could signal that cultivated meat is headed for mainstream adoption across the QSR space, several obstacles stand in the way, according to Zak Weston, foodservice and supply chain manager of Good Food Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based alternative protein source advocacy group.

Those obstacles include the price point and regulating a path to market.

"Whether it's in the United States through the USDA and FDA, or working through countries like Singapore or other areas around the world," Weston said, "you really need to make sure that regulators are on board that this is safe and something that regulators are comfortable with the process around, so that that there are no worries about launches.

So, we (GFI) are always looking globally to understand where and what the regulations are to try to determine which are the good regulatory frameworks and paths to market for these new types of product and this new way of producing meat."

Find Weston's full interview below.

"We fully anticipate (with cultivated meat) there are some folks who will be like, 'Nope, sounds too much like science fiction. I'm not going to go for it.'

-Zak Weston

Q: How will lab-cultivated meats first be available to consumers, in the view of the Good Food Institute, according to its research?
A: The first products we expect to see are going to be probably blended with animal meat and with plant-based proteins to create interesting combinations, like (combined) with a plant-based protein burger to give it a really, really powerful flavor … more similar to an animal protein product.

You'll also see them enter at a generally a higher price point, which is why a lot of these cultivated meat companies are focusing on things like fois gras, high-end steaks and yellowfin tuna stuff, that's really, really valuable and you can charge a premium price for.

It's just like entering the (consumer auto) market with a high-end roadster — that early sales success in a premium channel allows you to build out your sales, distribution … and production facilities to attract additional investment and build bigger facilities to obtain greater efficiencies. Then what you end up having is over time, you're able to produce it cheaper and cheaper.

Our anticipation is that that's probably going to take at least 10 years before before it can compete with animal-based meat, although it can be on the market much sooner as a premium product or blended in with regular animal-derived (meat). We've seen that a lot of industries and that's what we anticipate happening with cultivated meat.

Q: But there is an element of "weird science" to lab-grown meat in the consumer's mind, isn't there? So how is GFI and the cultivated meat industry considering that particular issue which could be a real impediment to QSRs if they fear their customers literally won't bite cultivated meat?
A:Given today's consumer mix, clearly only some consumers are really going to go for this, so you're going to have a small percentage of early-adopters. …What's interesting is that when we've done consumer research … when you describe cultivated meat and the benefits that it offers to consumers and the process by which it's made, there are still a lot of people who are interested in buying it and are willing to pay a little bit of a premium for it.

That's really impressive to us because most new foods, consumers are generally not interested unless it's sitting there in front of them, or they see their friends eating it or in a familiar context, like their local KFC. But (GFI) research suggests that there will be enough consumers to build that early crucial sales traction and certainly enough to warrant some restaurant chains having cultivated meat on the menu.

Q: Can you think of anything similar in the realms of one-time new foods, historically, that might provide some foresight into how the process with cultivated meat acceptance might go?
A:Well, if you'd told anybody in the restaurant industry in the 1960s and even the 1970s that, "Hey, guess what? Raw fish is going to become a huge trend in the American restaurant industry" people would have laughed you out of the room. But it happened and now sushi is this very, very mainstream thing within American foodservice.

Then, back in the 1920s and '30s, if you'd told folks, "Hey, lobster is going to be a real premium meat in the next years," they would have laughed at you because then, lobster was the crap-meat … until the lobster industry (did) a massive repositioning campaign. Everybody just thought it was a nasty weird meat … but over the course of a few decades it's (perceived) to be a really premium offering.

So yeah, we fully anticipate (with cultivated meat) there are some folks who will be like, 'Nope, sounds too much like science fiction. I'm not going to go for it." But, especially younger generations will see it as really cool because the idea that I could have meat without sacrifice and it's better for my health, better for the environment and better for the animals and the folks who are working in the food system — that's pretty enticing to them. … I think every country is going to be different in regards to how they embrace this at the end of day.

Q: Lastly, the Good Food Institute has a lot of people working on the future of the food we eat, as it relates to alternative sources of protein, outside traditionally produced meat. What types of protein sources do you and the folks at GFI see as most promising for future restaurant industry sources of the center-of-the-plate proteins?
A: Well, we've still really only scratched the surface with plants — we've only explored a handful of the thousands of plant species and cultivars out there, so I'm still really excited to see what that's going to do with like breeding better ingredients and better crops and introducing more biodiversity through the different sources.

But another set of technologies we're excited about is fermentation. So like using mushrooms or other types of fungi or algae to produce protein or even using plant culture or bacteria as hosts and little bio-factories to synthesize protein. We think that has a lot of positive implications where we could literally be able to produce proteins using microorganisms.

At the end of the day farmed animals — a cow, a chicken, a pig — are macro-organisms that we can see. But microorganisms, which we can't really (without a microscope) see, are still used all the time to ferment food like yogurt, cheese or a lot of cultured foods out there like kimchi and sauerkraut and … beer. So we're pretty excited about those — they have a lot of potential.

About S.A. Whitehead

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Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.