Trends and ideas in technology, regulation and public acceptance of cultured meat

Abstract

As future foods, cultured meat is produced by culturing animal cells ex vivo rather than raising and slaughtering animals. It is a promising way to address concerns about resource consumption, environmental pollution, public healthy that associated with conventional livestock production. In the past two years, dozens of cultured meat-related start-ups have been founded and millions of dollars have been raised, demonstrating the high business enthusiasm, broad market prospects and high profitability expected. However, currently many startups are yet determining, optimizing steps of the process or trying to scale-up, so it is still a very long way before cultured meat becomes comparable to the conventional meat. Here, we review the industry status of cultured meat around the world from the geographical distribution, potential products, and funding landscape and, identify the advanced technologies in large-scale manufacturing of cultured meat covering aspects from culture medium optimization, bioreactor designation, scaffold fabrication and cost reduction. Moreover, we discuss the challenges related to policy formulation and public acceptance of cultured meat.