BioP2P Staff
As two restaurants in California and Washington, D.C. begin to offer dishes made with cell-cultured chicken, the Washington Post explores the benefits and challenges producers of these products face.
Advocates of cell-cultivated chicken, beef, and related products note the environmental benefits by reducing the amount of land and water needed to meet the growing demand for animal protein. It could also eliminate the inhumane treatment of animals, the spread of zoonotic diseases, and the environmental damage associated with raising animals. Some 7.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere every year by the livestock industry, representing 14.5 percent of all human-related greenhouse gas emissions, the Post reported.
To date, the two companies approved in the United States to sell cultivated meat can grow only hundreds of thousands of pounds per year, a fraction of the hundreds of millions of metric tons of meat produced globally each year.
Even as one company announced plans to construct a $140 million, 187,000-square-foot facility in the Chicago area to produce millions of pounds of cultivated ground-meat products per year, the article notes many obstacles to scaling the industry. This includes waning interest from investors, challenges in scaling manufacturing to 100,000 liters, and reducing the cost of production.
You can read the article here.