The CEO of cultured poultry provider SuperMeat has a challenge for anyone who doubts lab-produced proteins will be a game-changer for the restaurant business.
Just eat a piece of SuperMeat’s chicken without cooking it, says Ido Savir.
“Even raw, it tastes like chicken, it tastes good, it tastes clean, it tastes fresh,” Savir says. “I dare you to try that with conventional poultry,” about 100% of which is contaminated with salmonella and susceptible to a host of other pathogens, in addition to being adulterated with growth hormones and antibiotics.
Nor does cultured meat’s availability depend on growing conditions set by a sometimes fickle Mother Nature or the quality of feed a farmer uses. Because it’s cultivated in a pristine setting similar to facilities where pharmaceuticals are produced, the vagaries are factored out.
Despite the protein's range of potential positives, will consumers balk at what some critics have slammed as Frankenfood?
Companies in that arena are hoping not, thanks to efforts to get chefs comfortable with their products, and in turn, put customers at ease.
Benefits meet roadblocks
In addition to supply hiccups, lab-grown meat could also cut down on the environmental wallops stemming from conventional farming.
“Studies indicate that cultivated meat would use land 60 to 300% more efficiently than poultry and 2,000 to 4,000% more efficiently than beef,” according to the Good Food Institute, a self-described nonprofit thinktank on new food-production methods. “This greater efficiency would benefit everything from biodiversity to climate.”
And these benefits come without chickens being slaughtered and processed in ways that have drawn the objections of animal-rights activists and laypeople alike.
But it’s not as if suppliers and purchasers are able to enjoy those benefits just yet—and deal with some downsides. For one thing, federal approval to sell and consume cultured meat in the U.S. is moving closer, but it’s not here yet, says Andrew Noyes, VP of global communications and publicity for Good Meat, a U.S.-based supplier of cultivated chicken.
First taste of GOOD Meat’s chicken breast
In addition to certifying the cultivation processes for the meats as safe, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food & Drug Administration have yet to decide what labeling may be required to flag the product for consumers, whether they buy the meat in a restaurant or a store.
The timeframe on that step is unclear, though the FDA says it hopes to have a first draft available by the end of 2023.
“It’s a hot topic right now, but we haven’t seen any actual proposed labeling standards,” says Laura Abshire, director of food and sustainability policy for the National Restaurant Association.
Even if regulatory roadblocks are removed, there’s still the challenge of ramping up to a feasible production level.
“We’ve been selling in Singapore for two years, and we can’t keep up with demand,” said Noyes. “We are able to make more meat today than we were last months, and more than we could months before that.” But there’s still a long way to go, as there would be for Good Meat and its competitors if cultivated poultry were approved tomorrow for sale in the U.S.
From vat to vendor
Cultivated meats are grown from cells cultured in stainless-steel vats that resemble the ones used for brewing beer or producing wine. The largest ones at Good Meat’s West Coast plant have a capacity of 1,000 liters, while some of the vats in Singapore hold 6,000.
“What we will ultimately need as an industry are bioreactors that are hundreds of thousands of liters in capacity,” says Noyes. “That’s a technical challenge.”
“By the end of the decade, or about five or 10 years, we will have price parity.”
Production limits are expected to keep cultured meats at a premium price for some time to come. “By the end of the decade, or about five or 10 years, we will have price parity” between cultured and farm-raised chicken, says SuperMeat’s Savir. But “we don’t stop there—we can actually make it cheaper.”
There are also still challenges with the meat itself. A chicken raised on a farm has all sorts of tissues—bone, muscle, tendons, etc. Cultured chicken is like a slab of homogenous breast meat, without the mouthfeel of a bite from a leg or a wing, says Noyes.
“We’re focused at this stage on whole muscle meats, so we have to use plant proteins to give more structure and texture,” he says.
SuperMeat also uses plant proteins to address texture challenges, but Savir says the end product’s texture is superior to that of a purely plant-based analog.
The non-issue, suppliers agree, is taste.
“The best thing that we hear is it tastes like chicken—nothing more, nothing less,” says Noyes.
Putting it in the market
In Singapore, Good Meat has offered its cultured chicken through a variety of channels. In one test, the meat was sold at a hawker stall, one of the streetside food stands that abound in the island city-state.
The proprietor sold the chicken at the same price he charges for conventional poultry, and the product was a hit, Noyes recounts, adding that the operator didn’t want to stop the test.
To assess acceptance at the other end of the market, Good Meat placed its chicken in Huber’s Butchery, a landmark Singapore meat shop and restaurant. The poultry is priced the same as conventionally produced chicken, and is only offered on Thursday nights to guests who secure a table when reservations open the prior Sunday. Those reservations are typically gone in hours, says Noyes.
“Chefs also look at climate change, at animal agriculture, at trends in consumer eating habits, and they understand that the food system is evolving.”
Similarly, SuperMeat conducted taste trials in its home city of Tel Aviv, Israel. “We’ve done blind tastings with master chefs as judges and they couldn’t tell the difference” between the company’s cultured meats and farm-raised chicken, says Savir.
It also gave the tasting process a twist to see how the public would react to eating something lab grown, offering samples in a restaurant-like setting where testers could see how the chicken was produced.
“We actually put it in front of them,” says Savir. “The whole idea of this industry is making it more accessible, more transparent.” The participants were intrigued and appreciative of the benefits rather than put off, he says, adding that most asked for multiple samples.
Whether cultured meats would see widespread acceptance in the U.S. is still uncertain. That’s why their purveyors intend to enlist restaurants as apostles.
“Chefs are the best partners,” says Savir. “They understand meats, how to use it, how to explore with it.”
All of the suppliers interviewed intend to work with chefs to snag the public’s interest and allay any doubts about the quality and integrity of their products.
“Chefs also look at climate change, at animal agriculture, at trends in consumer eating habits, and they understand that the food system is evolving,” says Noyes.
Studies show they’re also avid first adopters. In a survey conducted by SuperMeat, 86% of chefs say they are interested in serving cultured meat or poultry, and 76% say they’re unfazed by the higher price.
Chefs get on board
Dominique Crenn, the celebrated San Francisco chef, pulled all land-grown meats off her menu in 2019 because of the environmental impact of traditional animal husbandry. But she’s agreed to put Upside Foods’ cultured proteins on the menu at three of her restaurants as soon as federal regulators give a green light.
Restaurateur Kimball Musk, the brother of serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, is listed by Upside Foods as an investor, as are industry suppliers Cargill and Tyson. The company describes its relationship with Crenn as a partnership and says she’ll assist in developing recipes for Upside chicken.
In March, celebrity chef and humanitarian Jose Andres similarly pledged to put Good Meat’s chicken on the menu of one of his restaurants in Washington, D.C. Neither Andres nor Good Meat have revealed which restaurant that will be, but the supplier said the meat will be priced comparably to other chicken selections on the establishment’s bill of fare. (Andres also holds a seat on Good Meat’s board.)
As with other ingested materials, the meat requires the regulatory approval of the Food & Drug Administration, the federal agency that certifies a new product is safe, as well as the watchdog of the nation’s meat supply, the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
And the industry may catch a tailwind from the White Hoise. President Biden has directed his administration to study the opportunities, advantages and challenges of what he calls “biomanufacturing.”
“It transitioned in the last two years from some sort of scientific promise to a commercially viable option.”
The FDA has already approved the cultured chicken produced by two companies, Good Meat and Upside Foods. Now, they and the handful of other cultivated-meat suppliers are awaiting a final go-ahead from the USDA to sell their proteins to restaurants in the U.S.
“That will be completed in a couple of weeks, a couple of months, maybe longer—we don’t know,” says Savir. But he no longer speculates the process will take years. SuperMeat plans to have its cultured chicken on the global market by the end of 2024.
“The cultured-meat industry is only about six years old,” says Savir. “It transitioned in the last two years from some sort of scientific promise to a commercially viable option.”
And with chefs ushering in a new type of food, consumers will likely follow. At least that’s what Good Meat found in Singapore.
“We think the same will be true in the United States,” says Noyes, “but it’s going to take time and it’s going to take education, by us and the broader industry, to communicate to consumers what this is.”
Research supports the optimism. Sales of cultured meats should rise globally at a compound annual rate of 15%, to $450 million, by 2030, according to a study from Custom Market Insights.
“We’re introducing technology to meat production, and this is just the starting point,” says Savir. “Once the consumers embrace that, and I really believe they will, the industry will be able to grow geometrically,” feeding more people at a lower cost.