Considerations for the EU
Research paper
Published 19 February 2019
Updated 17 December 2020
ISBN: 978 1 78413 312 2
The Impossible Burger 2.0, a plant-based vegan burger that tastes like real beef. Copyright © Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
Plant-based ‘meat’ and ‘lab-grown’ meat may help to tackle the unsustainability of the livestock sector. Focusing on the EU, this paper explores the challenges of scaling up production and generating demand for such meat analogues.
Meat alternatives – non-traditional protein sources intended to be used and consumed in a similar way to meat products – are available around the world. Some of these have long been readily available in certain regions. For example, the Quorn meat substitute brand, launched in the UK in 1985, uses fermentation technology to create mycoprotein (a type of single-cell protein) from the soil fungus Fusarium and is well established in many Western markets.16 Insect proteins, already in the mainstream in some Asian markets, are used by a growing number of companies in Europe and North America in products for human consumption and in animal feed.17
In recent years, the interest, innovation and investment in meat analogues – non-traditional protein sources that are designed to be direct, imitative substitutes for conventionally produced meat – have increased significantly. Technologies are delivering, or are expected to deliver, products that have the potential to reduce traditional meat consumption without a drastic shift in eating behaviours. These developments coincide with the growing realization that, for environmental and public health reasons, reducing global traditional meat consumption is both necessary and desirable.
Two broad categories of meat analogues – advanced plant-based ‘meat’ and cultured meat – mark a particularly radical departure from the traditional meat and non-meat options seen to date. The driving principles in their production are mimicry and efficiency – principles identified by Mark Post, the innovator behind the first lab-grown burger in 2013,18 as the two key requisites for the acceptance and industrialization of a meat alternative.19 Both raise challenging questions for producers, policymakers and consumers alike around how ‘meat’ should be defined and regulated, and around the possibility of satiating the world’s growing demand for meat while dramatically scaling back animal agriculture.
Advanced plant-based ‘meat’ products are those that use plant-derived ingredients to directly mimic animal-derived meat and which are designed to be indistinguishable from their animal-based equivalents. Drawing a clear line between plant-based ‘meat’ and the plant-based meat alternatives that have come before is not straightforward. The distinction on which plant-based ‘meat’ innovators have patented – or sought to patent – their products and processes lies in the versatility and sensory experience of cooking and eating. They are marketed predominantly as processed meat products – burgers, sausages, meatballs – but are distinct from more mainstream plant-based meat alternatives in that they contain novel ingredients or use innovative processes intended to achieve an unprecedented degree of mimicry in taste, texture, look and cooking qualities. Advanced plant-based ‘beef’ burgers, for example, developed by companies such as Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods and Moving Mountains, comprise a unique set of ingredients that, in combination, produce a patty whose texture resembles that of minced beef, has a pink hue that turns brown on cooking, and exudes liquid on eating (see Figure 1).
For the most part, these products use non-genetically engineered ingredients such as beetroot juice to achieve these qualities, while Impossible Foods’ ‘Impossible Burger’ contains soy leghemoglobin (SLH), a plant protein. SLH is isolated from the root of the soybean plant and, like haemoglobin in blood and myoglobin in muscles, it is a molecule that carries oxygen, storing it in the roots of legumes. When the ‘Impossible Burger’ is cooked and eaten, SLH is exuded as a red-tinted liquid – comparable to myoglobin, the substance that ‘bleeds’ from minced beef – and gives a metallic iron-like (and thus meat-like) flavour to this product.20
Cultured meat is grown in vitro from animal-derived stem cells using a growth medium (Figure 1). It is ‘biologically equivalent’21 to meat but is not harvested from a living animal. Culturing meat involves biotechnological processes borrowed from regenerative medicine (the branch of medicine that aims to develop ways to regenerate cells, tissues or organs)22 and aims to scale up these approaches to manufacture meat through cellular and tissue culture, termed ‘cellular agriculture’. Although no agreement has yet been reached on the definition for this process, cellular agriculture entails using a ‘set of technologies to manufacture products typically obtained from livestock farming, using culturing techniques to manufacture the individual product’.23
The cells used to initiate the cell culture can be sourced from primary animal tissue through a biopsy procedure; alternatively, cell lines (stem cells) that can replicate indefinitely can be produced via genetic engineering, gene editing or through induced or spontaneous mutations.24 Cells are cultured within specific liquid media, which provide the conditions needed for tissue growth. The exact media used will depend on the cell species and tissue type, but the process requires nutrients (supplied by foetal calf or horse serum, chicken embryo extract, collagen, serum-free media, etc.).25 Other inorganic and organic components (antibiotic/antimitotics or carbohydrates, amino acids and vitamins) can be added to the media to enable cell growth.26 A scaffold is required for cells to proliferate and develop the structure required for producing a tissue (for example, a muscle) instead of an unorganized collection of muscle cells. The components used in these processes are dependent on their stages of development, and research in this area is still in its infancy.27 For example, even though a few companies, such as Higher Steaks and Aleph Farms, already use only animal-free growing media, more research is needed for lowering the costs of serum-free processes.28
Much of the development in the field of cultured meat has been driven by start-up companies and university laboratories, with funding from large corporations (see Annex 1).29 Products are mainly at the prototype stage and are not yet available for purchase in restaurants or retail outlets. It is estimated that the value of the global cultured-meat market could reach $20 million by 2027, primarily driven by increases in meat consumption and innovation in the technology necessary to scale up from laboratory to factory production.30
The global market for plant-based meat alternatives was estimated to be worth $4.63 billion in 2018 and, according to business information providers Research and Markets, is projected to reach $6.43 billion by 2023 (growing at a compound annual growth rate – CAGR – of 6.8 per cent).31 Research published in March 2018 by Mordor Intelligence put the expected CAGR of the market over the 2018–23 period at a slightly lower 5.8 per cent. According to Mordor, Europe presented the largest regional market for meat substitute products in 2017, with 39 per cent of global market share,32 while the Asia-Pacific market is estimated to be the fastest growing due to rising levels of economic development and to its large population.33 According to research undertaken by Nielsen for the US Good Food Institute, plant-based meat analogues still accounted for less than 1 per cent of the value of the total US retail market for meat as of 11 August 2018, but had risen in value by 23 per cent since the equivalent period of 2017. The worldwide market for meat has been valued at $1 trillion.34
The food service sector is also offering plant-based meat alternatives. The ‘Beyond Burger’ is already sold in over 25,000 restaurants, hotels and universities worldwide. The ‘Impossible Burger’ is available in more than 4,000 locations in the US. Moving Mountains’ products are stocked at over 500 locations in the UK and are also available in the Netherlands.
Regionally, North America is projected to dominate the cultured-meat market in 2021, as the region is characterized by significant investment in the development of meat analogues.35 The market is also expanding into Asia, since China’s signature in 2017 of a $300 million agreement to import cultured-meat technologies from Israel, and the Japanese government’s participation in May 2018 in a $2.7 million funding round for a new ‘clean meat’ start-up, Integriculture.36
In major Western markets the retail sector is both responding to and helping to drive this rising acceptance of plant-based meat alternatives. Major grocery retailers selling plant-based meat analogues include UK-based Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose & Partners and Ocado, and Whole Foods, Target, Safeway, Kroger and Walmart in the US.37 Around the world, there has been an increase in the number of all-vegan grocery stores, which also serve as retail channels for plant-based ‘meat’ products: these include Naturalia Vegan (France), Sweet to Lick (US), Veganz (Germany and the Czech Republic), and Vegan Supply (Canada).38 Certain brands have been successful in penetrating multiple markets: Beyond Meat’s plant-based ‘Beyond Burger’ recently launched in Tesco, the UK’s biggest retail supermarket, with the same market strategy used in the US, whereby the product is sold alongside animal-based meat patties.39
The food service sector is also offering plant-based meat alternatives. The ‘Beyond Burger’ is already sold in over 25,000 restaurants, hotels and universities worldwide, including in major restaurant chains such as TGI Fridays and BurgerFi, in the US, and Honest Burgers and All Bar One, in the UK.40 The ‘Impossible Burger’ – the ‘bleeding plant-based burger’ mentioned earlier – is available in more than 4,000 locations in the US (including in two major chains – Bareburger and White Castle), and has been launched in Hong Kong and Macau, with plans to expand worldwide.41 British company Moving Mountains’ products are stocked at over 500 locations in the UK and are also available in the Netherlands.42 The Vegetarian Butcher, a Dutch supplier of plant-based meat alternatives, has expanded to 3,000 sales outlets in 14 countries.43 The Asian market already has cultural ties with vegetarian food, and recent campaigns by restaurants, food bloggers and start-ups have contributed to an increase in consumption of meat alternatives. Hong Kong-based start-up Right Treat has developed a plant-based pork substitute, branded ‘Omnipork’, with the intention that it can be widely used within Asian cuisine.44 Shifts in dietary habits towards vegetarianism and a reduction in meat consumption have been a major driver behind these launches.
