With meat and dairy consumption set to double between 2000 and 2050, synthetic meat wouldn’t just be a nice thing to have – it will prove critical in meeting the rising demands of people around the world. Given what has happened to production costs in the decade since the field was first conceptualised, it seems likely that synthetic meat won’t just compete on price with animal meat but will, in the not too distant future, be far cheaper. All this while alleviating sufering and reducing our use of otherwise finite resources. Post’s personal view is that synthetic meat will be competitive on price within twenty years. The truth is that the power of the experience curve could mean it’s even sooner.
Meat from Vegetables
Cellular agriculture extends beyond just synthetic meat, however. Indeed, farming minced meat, fillets and breasts from stem cells remains incredibly time-consuming – at least for now – and while these products could be mainstream within a generation, for some that isn’t soon enough. Which is why Impossible Foods have chosen a diferent approach in trying to create vegan products that are indistinguishable from meat. But rather than ‘grow’ meat proteins, they think they can do that by making non-meat proteins more closely resemble those found in animals.
The science behind their model, which for now focuses on their flagship ‘Impossible Burger’, is far simpler than creating animal meat minus the animal. Nevertheless, it remains in the ambit of cellular agriculture because the intention is to create new biological mechanisms to produce existing foods. While the approach favoured by the likes of Mark Post is to create synthetic meat by eliminating the animal from a set of biological processes, Impossible Foods want to go even further and just use vegetables. While that might sound outlandish perhaps it shouldn’t. After all, from a biohacker’s perspective a cow is just a chemical reaction that converts feed and oxygen into beef.
Food Without Animals
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