Private Cultivated-Meat Failures Reaffirm Need for Public Research

Recently, two notable cultivated-meat companies failed. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, cultivated meat is grown from livestock cells, without slaughter. These economic developments are dispiriting for those of us who have followed the nascent industry with a good deal of hope about the potential animal welfare, public health and environmental benefits it will offer. Still, the news reaffirms something I’ve long believed, which is that we need a massive infusion of public funding into cultivated-meat research to advance the science.

Believer Meats shut down after allegedly failing to pay a construction firm over $34 million to build a cellular-agriculture facility in North Carolina. The Israeli startup, formerly known as Future Meat Technologies, had just received approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration to produce and sell its cultivated chicken in America. Anne Schubert, a representative for the company, wrote on LinkedIn: “While the outcome is not what any of us hoped for, I am incredibly proud of what we accomplished together.”

Similarly, Meatable began winding down operations after it proved unable to secure necessary funding from new or existing investors. The Dutch firm had been planning to build a commercial-scale factory to produce cultivated pork in Singapore, where Meatable was awaiting regulatory approval for the product. The company’s dissolution was announced by Jim Mellon, executive chairman of Agronomics, an investor in the startup: “We believe the decision has been taken responsibly and in the best interests of all stakeholders.”

The headlines out of the private sector aren’t all bad. For instance, Mosa Meat, another Dutch firm, recently raised more than $17 million from existing investors, which will allow the company to operate into 2028. Of course, the cofounder of Mosa Meat, Mark Post, unveiled the first cultivated burger in 2013. Still, it would be misleading to suggest the immediate, general outlook of commercial enterprises in the cellular-agriculture space was anything but dire. Investment has dropped significantly — year after year — since reaching a high in 2021.

In many ways, this shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s become increasingly clear that researching cultivated meat is a long-term project. Private companies are built to pursue short term profits. Relying on the latter to do the former was arguably doomed to fail. What’s needed is forward-thinking politicians to support state and federal funding for cellular-agriculture development. Ideally, the total public investment would amount to hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars. All of the cultivated-meat industry’s potential benefits remain.

The success of cellular agriculture means less animal suffering and premature death, since livestock are removed from the process. It means a lower risk of zoonotic viruses making the jump to humans and sparking deadly pandemics. It means fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than animal agriculture, one of the leading causes of climate change. One day, cultivated meat that is cheaper than slaughtered offerings and indistinguishable in taste will be readily available. The question is whether this will be in a few decades or in a great deal longer.

For the sake of animal welfare, public health and the environment, let’s make it sooner rather than later. We should build a network of coordinating cultivated-meat research facilities, modeled on the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture, at farming schools across the country. Private funding is drying up because it wasn’t really fit for purpose at this juncture. Capitalism requires investors be skittish, short-sighted and self-interested. They will return once publicly-funded research makes cultivated meat a more economically-viable product.

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