Meat grown from animal cells has made headlines in recent weeks as the industry seeks more widespread acceptance.

But experts say the cost and relatively low output are a potentially fatal flaw for the burgeoning industry. No one has found a way to scale up meat cultivation to make it affordable, and some experts are unconvinced anyone ever will.

A University of California Davis study released this spring that found lab-grown meat could cost anywhere from $35 to $17 per kilogram (roughly 2.2 pounds), whereas wholesale beef costs less than $10 per kilogram.

Meat grown in factories has gained regulatory approval, and in mid-September religious scholars decided that meat grown in a lab can be halal or kosher.

Garnering less attention is the arduous process behind producing animal protein in a bioreactor as opposed to a slaughterhouse, and that could stall the quest to turn lab meat into a replacement for animal meat.

A 35-liter bioreactor produces around 10 kilograms — around 22 pounds — the alternative meat company Ever After Foods boasted in a March news release. But experts say the process can take weeks.

That compares unfavorably with an average slaughterhouse, which can process hundreds of cows every day and procure as much as 750 pounds of meat from each, the University of Tennessee's Institute for Agriculture has calculated.

And meat cultivation is pricey. One of those bioreactors costs around $150,000, experts said. Expenses only multiply from there for a labor-intensive process that requires meticulous cleaning and skilled employees. The cultivated meat company Upside Foods pays research associates $62,000 to $80,000 per year, according to job listings on Indeed.com. Meat cutters make $30,000 to $40,000 per year.

Safe to Eat

The FDA and the USDA have given two companies, Good Meat and Upside, the green light to cultivate meat. “The FDA doesn't say it's economically viable, just that it's safe to eat,” said Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt: Meat Lab at UC Berkeley.

A handful of restaurants have lab-grown meat on the menu in a limited way. Celebrity chef Jose Andres uses cultivated meat at his Washington D.C. restaurant China Chilcano, but it’s a high-end dinner and alternative meat is available to only a small number of customers.

“It's not necessarily a regular item,” said Bill Winders, Georgia Tech sociology professor and author of "The Politics of Food Supply: U.S. Agricultural Policy in the World Economy" (Yale Agrarian Studies Series).

It's not clear if cultivated meat can build mass appeal, he said.

“We don't know what the average consumer's palette will think about it,” said Jennifer Martin, who teaches meat science at Colorado State University.

Still, The companies developing manufactured animal protein strike an altruistic tone. “We believe that the future of our planet depends on making big shifts away from traditional industries that cause harm to our planet,” a Good Meat spokesperson said in an email to The Messenger.

They have a point. Animal agriculture is responsible for anywhere from 15% to 11% of planet-warming carbon emissions, research from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has found.

Growing Consumption

In a statement, the Good Food Institute — an advocacy group promoting meat alternatives — noted meat consumption is consistently on the rise. Between 2000 and 2019, worldwide meat consumption increased from 29.5 kilograms to 34 kilograms per capita, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“In order to meet global climate goals, we have to make the meat people love without the detrimental climate impacts,” the statement said.

But a September report in Wired cast doubt on the industry's viability. Upside Foods claimed to use a futuristic 500-liter bioreactor in a factory on the banks of San Francisco Bay to grow its products. But employees who spoke to the tech news outlet anonymously said it actually uses less sophisticated 2-liter roller bottles — thin plastic flasks used to grow sheets of tissue, which are then combined with larger pieces of cultivated meat.

“As you go up in bioreactor size [cultivated meat] becomes more economically viable,” said Derrick Risner, a professor who studies cultivated meat at the University of California Davis.

As for the 2-liter roller bottles outlined in the Wired report, “that’s not scalable,” he said.

Upside did not respond to a request from The Messenger for comment but has stood by its product.

Longer Timeline

Not everyone is pessimistic.

Paul Mozdziak, graduate program director of the department of poultry science at North Carolina State University, noted new technologies always fall in price over time. “I’m very enthusiastic about this space,” he said.

As developing countries grow more affluent, citizens demand more beef, and cultivated meat could satisfy that insatiable desire for animal protein, he said.

But Mozdziak said decades could pass before lab grown meat is widely available. “Maybe it will happen sometime in my granddaughter’s lifetime,” he said.

In the meantime, consumers are more likely to see hybrid products containing small amounts of lab grown meat. Plant-based meat alternatives like Beyond Meat and Impossible burgers already exist, and lab grown meat could add flavor and texture to better replicate traditional hamburgers.

“That will happen relatively soon,” said Denneal Jamison-McClung, co-founder of the Cultivated Meat Consortium at UC Davis “Probably in the next 5 to 10 years.”

But will you ever see lab-grown beef or chicken in grocery stores or at your favorite restaurant?

“Replacements for traditionally grown meat have a longer timeline,” Jamison-McClung said, but she's optimistic it will happen.

San Martin of UC Berkley is unconvinced. "Any fermentation expert who hasn't been hired by these companies will tell you exactly the same thing,” he said. “It’s sheer nonsense.”