Sunday, August 4, 2024

"Even after $1.6B in VC money, the lab-grown meat industry is facing ‘massive’ issues"

A deep dive from TechCrunch, August 4:

Will cultured meat ever work?

When Mosa Meat served up a first-of-its-kind, lab-grown hamburger in 2013, it cost over $300,000. Eleven years later, around 200 startups worldwide remain hopeful that growing meat from cells, rather than slaughtering animals, will one day be a major portion of our food supply. 

Despite their optimism, such success is not a given. In 2024, the industry has hit such rocky times that multiple startups have been forced to scale back or close shop. 

The industry is talking about eventually producing about 30 million pounds of finished product annually. However, over 100 billion pounds of traditional meat is produced annually today. And if plant-based meat accounts for about 1% of all meat by volume, it’s going to take time for cultivated meat to get to that point, said Better Meat CEO Paul Shapiro, who wrote a book in 2018 called “Clean Meat.”

Any goal that puts cultivated meat in big box grocery stores or on fast food menus in the 2020s is “unrealistic,” he told TechCrunch.

“Even if it were ready now, and the funding was available now, the time that it takes to build these factories is years. And the fact is, the money isn’t there for it, which is why a lot of these companies have abandoned their plans for commercial-scale factories,” Shapiro said.

For instance, New Age Eats shut down in early 2023, with founder Brian Spears posting on LinkedIn that the company was unable to secure funds to complete its pilot facility. Berkeley-based Upside Foods laid off workers and put plans on hold for a new Chicago-area facility. Israel-based Aleph Farms let go of 30% of its staff in June, also citing difficulties in raising capital. 

San Francisco Bay Area-based SCiFi Foods also permanently closed in June. SCiFi CEO Joshua March shared on LinkedIn: “Unfortunately, in this funding environment, we could not raise the capital that we needed to commercialize the SCiFi burger, and SCiFi Foods ran out of time.”....

....MUCH MORE

Previously:
Questions America Wants Answered: Is Eating Lab Grown Human Flesh Cannibalism?

And a few hundred more including a surprising number with Bill Gates in a starring role:  

"Can Stem Cell Meat Save the Planet?"

"Where’s The Beef? China Signs $300 Million Deal with Israel to Import ‘Lab Meat’"
I may have to cool it with the 'Frankenmeat' talk.
Meat the Future?
We had been looking at this stuff through the lens of the world's richest guy and what he's up to: 
Bill Gates Invests In Another Lab-Grown Meat Company

"Bill Gates headlines an all-star list of investors pumping $75 million into meatless burgers" 
Mr. Gates also partnered with Li Ka-Shing and Khosla on Hampton Creek which is attempting to pivot from Just Mayo into laboratory-grown 'meat'.*

*"Mayo-scandal firm Hampton Creek from San Francisco going whole hog for Frankenmeat: report"
Just Mayo Guy, Hampton Creek's Josh Tetrick, Pivots to Industrial Scale Ingredient Supply Biz
Hampton Creek: Remember All Our Vegetarian Talk? Never Mind  

Related to the laboratory meat, from the Hill, January 19:
Which could be a big deal, not so much for the potential Jewish market but for the orders-of-magnitude larger Muslim market, a question we've considered a couple times in reference to the plant-based (fie!) stuff:
Next Up, Kosher Pork (but is it halal?)
In January 2020 we looked at "Can Plant-Based "Pork" Sell In Muslim South Asia?".
Another question is what about lab-grown meat based on stem cells?
To date there has been no formal determination by Muslim jurists such as those at Al-Azhar University but the questions are coming into focus, and trust me, we are watching.
See, if interested:
The U.S. National Library of Medicine: "Cultured Meat in Islamic Perspective", December 2018
And Green Queen: "Q&A w/ CellAgri Founder Ahmed Khan: Can Cell-Based Meat Be Halal?", May 2021. And that's for beef. For pork? It will be an uphill climb for the marketers. 

And of course there is more than one route to mass adoption:

"Companies Are Betting on Lab-Grown Meat, but None Know How to Get You to Eat It":

The dream of any right-thinking change agent is to mandate that people use your product.
If that approach is not feasible the fallback is to tax the competition

Here at Totalitarian Marketing Group we supply strategies for the power-mad while making life easier for the top 0.0000001%. TMG, when nudge just isn't fast enough....

January 2020
Can Plant-Based "Pork" Sell In Muslim South Asia?
As we've pointed out, Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population and India has the second largest.
Including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia and 11 million or so folks in the Philippines and you've got what the marketeer coyly refers to as "a large addressable market".

It's like the old joke about the two shoe sellers sent to Kenya in the early years of the last century:
1) "Terrible market, nobody wears shoes here".
2) "Wonderful market, nobody wears shoes here".

December 2019
"Washington Post Denies Claim New Estrogen-Packed 'Impossible Whopper' Will Make Men Grow Breasts"

However, three years later:
Following On The News That Beyond Meat's COO Is Not Just A Carnivore But A Cannibal.... (BYND):
Meanwhile, one of the biggest backers of faux meat has man boobs:

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