Cultivated meat

Europe needs a resilient food system. Recent years have seen supply chain disruptions, increasingly extreme weather, zoonotic diseases and pollution crises. Our reliance on industrial animal agriculture for protein both exacerbates and exposes us to these risks, as two-thirds of Europe’s cereals are fed to animals and 42% of its farmland is dedicated to grazing and fodder.

To build resilience, Europe needs to diversify the ways it produces food. With public investment in the research and infrastructure needed to scale production, cultivated meat could help to satisfy demand for meat while reducing pressure on existing systems.

Initial research suggests that, compared with conventional meat production, cultivated meat could be far less resource-intensive. A peer-reviewed study by CE Delft – the first ever to be based on data from cultivated meat companies – found it could:

• Cut the climate impact of meat by up to 92%.
• Reduce air pollution by up to 94%.
• Use up to 90% less land.

This is compared with an ambitious scenario for conventional animal agriculture in 2030, where farmers manage to cut the carbon footprint of meat by 15% (for beef), 26% (for pork) and 53% (for chicken).

Cultivated meat can also be made without antibiotics or animals, avoiding the risk of zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistance.

Cultivating meat is similar to growing plants from cuttings in a greenhouse, which provides warmth, fertile soil, water and nutrients.

It involves taking a small sample of cells from an animal and growing them in a fermentor, similar to those used for brewing beer. This supports the same process that happens inside an animal by providing the warmth and the basic nutrients needed to produce meat – water, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals.

The result is animal fat or ground meat, which can be mixed with plant-based ingredients to make final products that are indistinguishable from conventionally produced meat.

The first cultivated products to become widely available in Europe are likely to be ingredients like cultivated fat, which can enhance the flavour of plant-based meat, or products containing small quantities of cultivated meat cells. 

Since mid-2023, several companies have submitted applications to sell cultivated meat and ingredients in the EU, Switzerland and the UK. Regulators are currently undertaking thorough and evidence-based assessments of the safety and nutritional value of these products. In practice, this process often takes several years from submission to final authorisation.

Cultivated meat products have already been approved for sale in Singapore, the United States and Australia, clearing the way for broader commercialisation. Further products have received safety review clearance in New Zealand and Israel, confirming they are safe to eat. The fact that cultivated meat has passed rigorous approval processes from different agencies worldwide suggests it can play a role in a safe and sustainable future for Europe’s food system. However, cultivated meat remains at an early stage in its development and still requires significant investment from governments into research and infrastructure to realise its potential.

GFI Europe is working with the EU and national governments to ensure that the regulatory approval process for cultivated meat is robust, clear, and evidence-based.

The world’s first cultivated beef burger was unveiled in London in 2013. Since then, startups across Europe have made progress in developing cultivated meat and ingredients – but the field remains at an early stage. Government investment will be essential to accelerate progress and maximise the societal benefits of cultivated meat.

Public sector investment in open-access research can address foundational issues and ensure advancements benefit their entire field, rather than just one company. Government funding helped to slash the cost of solar panels by 85% in a decade, making renewable energy affordable.

In the same way, research suggests that supportive policies and sustained government investment in cultivated meat could enable the sector to contribute between €14 billion and €50 billion a year to the EU economy by 2050, and support 50,000-184,000 jobs. To achieve this, both the public and private sectors would need to invest significant sums in research and infrastructure to overcome existing challenges.

Many terms have been used to describe meat grown from cells – from “slaughter-free meat” to “cultured meat” and “lab-grown meat”. “Lab-grown meat” is an especially misleading term. At scale, cultivated meat will be produced in cultivators (a type of fermentor), in a facility similar to a brewery. All sorts of food, from beer to bread, begins in a food lab – but we don’t call cornflakes “lab-created cornflakes”.

In 2019, GFI began using the term “cultivated” following an extensive research project to develop a narrative and decide on a term that was neutral, understandable and appealing to consumers.

Research into the best terminology across key European languages published by GFI Europe in 2022 found that ‘cultivated meat’ is also the most appropriate terminology in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Separate research conducted by Opinium found that consumers are more likely to confuse cultivated meat with plant-based meat than with conventional meat. This poses safety risks for consumers with seafood or red meat allergies, who could mistakenly consume products that are unsafe for them. The research also found that wording such as “artificial” or “synthetic” increased the risk of this confusion. To avoid these risks, cultivated meat companies should be able to clearly convey the nature of their products by being able to use appropriate imagery and ‘meaty’ names on their labels (both generic terms such as ‘fish’ and species names such as ‘beef’).