Will lab grown meat help save the climate of earth?

The production of food - especially meat, releases a lot of carbon in the atmosphere. 1/3 of global greenhouse gas emissions is from food creation, such as meat, according to the United Nations.

Can we grow just the meat and animal cells without having to harvest the meat from animals? The industry is going to have to make a choice when it comes to production in order to do this, and we'll see how animal meat stacks up to lab grow meat.

Many startups are trying to create lab grown meat in order to get protein for food. Plant and cell-based alternatives to protein are an option today. The technology started in 2013 in London and first companies formed in 2015.

Today, there are around 150 companies focused on cultivating products and technologies that deal with lab created food instead of getting food directly from animals.

There has been about $2.6 billion raised since about 2015 for companies in this area. Companies are in the pilot scale of production, which means they are in the research and development phase, and they are trying to get a viable product at cost.

Impact of Lab Grown Meat

Cultivated meat is a technology that lets you have a more efficient mode of meat production. Fewer and fewer amounts of inputs are needed to get calories.

There is a lifecycle assessment that is done for any product to see the impact it has on others and the environment from production. Several of these studies have been done for cultivated meat, and it seems that the conclusion is a decreased amount of land use - up to a 95% decrease. That's a much smaller footprint. Carbon footprint could be up to 90% as well.

To get these large reductions and small land use, renewable energy will need to be used. That way, there is no carbon footprint in the energy used to process the lab grown meat.

Beef and lamb production take a ton of resources and energy to make. Lab grown or made food that is similar to beef and lamb will almost always have less energy and carbon footprint used. It's like an EV (electric vehicle). To make the EV requires some use of energy and current fossil fuels. Eventually, the EV will be created with renewable energy. Over time, the EV uses much less of a carbon footprint.

Cultivated meat requires plant ingredients that are fed to cells, which causes energy to be lost. It would have a footprint similar to Impossible Burger today, which is much less than actual animal meat.

Do you see plant based and lab grown meat actually becoming a large market item?