So now there's going to be a fee for the fie faux food?
From AgfunderNews, October 8:
The nascent cultivated meat industry will struggle to survive unless there is a “massive infusion” of capital from governments that see strategic value in making ‘real’ meat without animals, delegates were told at the Future Food-Tech innovation summit in London last week.
While funding for many agrifoodtech segments has fallen sharply since early 2022 as generalists have fled the sector, private capital going into cultivated meat has almost dried up. Preliminary AgFunder data shows that funding peaked at $989 million in 2021, dipped to $807 million in 2022 and then fell precipitously in 2023 (-78%) to just $177 million, against a backdrop of a 50% drop in agrifoodtech investing that year.
And worryingly for startups in the space, there is little evidence that things have picked up in 2024, with just two notable rounds in the sector to date (Mosa Meat’s $43 million raise in April and Ever After Foods’ $10 million raise in June).
Against this backdrop, firms have been slashing headcount, consolidating, and in the case of New Age Eats and SCiFi Foods, calling it quits (click here and here). Others have become embroiled in battles with co-manufacturers over allegedly unpaid bills.
Looking ahead, “There’s a valley of death we’re not going to cross as an industry without a massive infusion of public investment,” said Robert Jones, VP global public affairs at Dutch startup Mosa Meat, during a panel session at last week’s summit.
To some extent, this is already happening, noted Jones, highlighting the €60 million ($66 million) earmarked by the Dutch government in 2022 to support the formation of an ecosystem around cellular agriculture. But given the drop off in private capital, it’s still just a drop in the ocean, he acknowledged....
....MUCH MORE
And when government funding doesn't work? We all know the next step. From March 2018:
"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....
