Lab-grown meat is worse than real thing for climate. But will it always remain that way?

Current methods of producing lab-grown meat make their environmental impact much greater than retail beef, suggested a new study.

Until now, lab-grown meat cultured from animal cells has been thought to be more environmentally friendly than real beef since it was estimated to need less land, water and greenhouse gases than raising cattle.

The global heating potential of lab-based meat produced using current methods could, however, be up to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef, according to a yet-to-be peer-reviewed study, posted as a preprint in the bioRxiv platform.

Researchers, including those from the University of California, Davis, conducted a life-cycle assessment of the energy needed and greenhouse gases emitted in all stages of production of lab-grown, animal cell-based meat (ACBM) and compared that to those of real beef.

They said one of the main challenges with lab-grown meat is the use of highly refined or purified growth media – the ingredients needed to help animal cells multiply.

“If companies are having to purify growth media to pharmaceutical levels, it uses more resources, which then increases global warming potential,” study lead author Derrick Risner said.

“If this product continues to be produced using the ‘pharma’ approach, it’s going to be worse for the environment and more expensive than conventional beef production,” Dr Risner said.

Scientists defined the global heating potential in the study as the carbon dioxide equivalents emitted for each kilogramme of meat produced.

They found that for meat produced using these purified media, the global warming potential could be four to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef.

To reduce the carbon footprint, scientists said one of the goals of the lab-grown meat industry would be to use food-grade ingredients or cultures without the use of energy-intensive pharma-grade ingredients and processes.

Researchers found cultured meat can be much more environmentally competitive under this scenario, but with a wide range.

With food-grade cultures, they estimated that cultured meat’s global heating potential could be between 80 per cent lower to 26 per cent above that of conventional beef production.

“The results indicate that the environmental impact of near-term ACBM production is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production if a highly refined growth medium is utilised for ACBM production,” researchers wrote in the study.

However, they said the leap from “pharma to food” still represents a significant technical challenge for system scale-up.

“Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea,” said Edward Spang, another author of the study.

“It’s possible we could reduce its environmental impact in the future, but it will require significant technical advancement to simultaneously increase the performance and decrease the cost of the cell culture media,” Dr Spang said.