Culture Clash? What Cultured Meat Could Mean for UK Farming: Using Waste or By-Products, 2022-2024

One of the most promising opportunities for linking farming with cultured meat production is using farm waste or by-products as ingredients. This is just one way the two industries could complement each other, and our preliminary findings suggest it is worth exploring. Economic Impact: The cost of the pharmaceutical-grade ingredients used in growth media, particularly amino acids, is a major barrier to affordable cultured meat. We wanted to explore whether there were viable alternatives from the farming sector which are currently going to waste. The sources we looked at are oilseed rape meal, hoof and horn meal and bovine blood. The results suggest that using agricultural feedstocks for media preparation could be cheaper than DMEM, and that large savings are potentially available from using food or feed grade sources. Environmental Impact: As well as lowering the cost of production, could using agricultural waste or by-products reduce the environmental footprint of cultured meat? DMEM accounts for more than half the impact of cultured meat across most categories, including water consumption and global warming potential. So, reducing the impact of DMEM could substantially reduce the impact of the finished product. We analysed the ‘cradle-to-gate’ life-cycle impact of the cultured meat produced with the same alternative formulations. This includes factors such as energy, scaffold material and oxygen, but does not include building construction or equipment manufacturing. We assumed that 140 litres of growth medium would be needed per kilogram of cultured meat. The impact of baseline DMEM was set at maximum (100%). The impact of the other media were lower, with alternative ingredients outperforming the baseline DMEM across all impact areas. While this suggests it is worth investigating further, it is important to keep in mind that the data we used came from a range of different sources, and have not all been tested experimentally.

This research will critically assess the potential impact on UK agriculture of cultured meat, a technology with possibly profound and uncertain implications for the future of food and farming. Also known as 'clean', 'cell-based' and 'cultivated' meat, cultured meat is engineered animal tissue intended for people to eat. It is a type of alternative protein. Alternative proteins are strategically important to UK and global food systems because they can use less land and water than livestock products, lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, cut antibiotic use and the risk of new zoonotic diseases, and help promote animal welfare. Early data suggest that cultured meats could yield such benefits, but may struggle to compete with other meat alternatives on energy efficiency and cost. They are important because they could substitute more directly for livestock meat than other alternatives, and are at an earlier stage of development, so more open to influence by policy-makers and investors. While cultured meat is potentially transformative, its benefits therefore remain speculative. It also brings risks in nutrition, food fraud and food safety. Technical, regulatory, market and cultural uncertainties mean that the sector may not develop in the UK commercially, or may develop but fail to deliver public benefits. This project focuses on how cultured meat could affect farming in the UK. This is relevant to its environmental, economic and animal welfare impact, and to public and political attitudes that will shape how it gets regulated. Cultured meat is commonly assumed to be a threat to farmers, producing food in ways that could put some out of business. However, nobody has actually looked into this in-depth, or explored these issues with farmers in the UK. In practice, the different ways that cultured meat might develop could bring diverse risks and opportunities for farmers. The technology may create demands for new agricultural products, such as cells (donor herds for cell harvesting), feedstock for growth media (arable, forage, sugar beet), feedstock for edible scaffolds (cellulose, pea, bean, soya) and current waste streams (glucose, cellulose). In some scenarios, cultured meat might even be produced on farms, in facilities owned and operated by farmers, or could complement campaigns for 'less and better' meat. Alternatively, it may not reduce livestock meat consumption at all, or it may compete directly with high-welfare meat production. This research is designed to influence how this potentially transformative technology affects the UK food system. We will work with farmers and other people who may be affected by the technology to investigate whether they can see responsible ways of developing cultured meat. We will examine what farmers currently think of cultured meat, and explore different ways the technology could develop. We will work with farmers in a wide range of different situations to model how their businesses could get involved in or be affected by cultured meat production, and assess the environmental, social and economic consequences. We aim to answer the following questions: 1. How do UK farmers currently perceive cultured meat? 2. What threats and opportunities does the development of cultured meat pose to UK farm businesses in different scenarios? 3. Under what conditions, if any, would on-farm production of cultured meat be practical, economically viable and desirable in the UK? In answering these questions, we will consider not only the direct effects of cultured meat on farm businesses and livelihoods, but also wider ecological, nutritional, cultural and ethical implications, and how cultured meat might complement or conflict with the ways land use and diets in the UK could change to become sustainable.