Lab-grown meat faces challenge from high production costs

If people accept the idea of eating lab-grown meat, the biggest hurdle may be the cost of producing it, scientists say.
The technology needed to grow meat in a lab already exists, and represents a greener and more ethical form of production than current methods, according to a group of Dutch researchers.
"As large parts of the world become more prosperous, the global consumption of meat is expected to rise enormously in the coming decades," the researchers wrote in an article published in the journal Trends in Biotechnology.
"Cultured meat is therefore increasingly seen as a hopeful addition to the set of alternative protein sources," they wrote.

Scientists have been developing techniques to grow artificial organs from stem cells, and similar methods have been used in growing meat.
Dutch researcher Mark Post created the first lab-grown hamburger in 2013 using skeletal muscle stem cells from a cow, as a proof of concept.

In the new article, the authors laid out a possible method of producing lab-grown meat, 'LiveScience' reported.
A biopsy of cells from a living animal could be cultured in a nutrient-rich soup inside a bioreactor, they said.
Cells from this "cell bank" could then be grown in increasingly larger containers, until they are finally processed into a cake similar to minced meat.

Right now, the biggest challenge for lab-grown meat may be the cost of producing it, researchers said.
The authors performed a rough calculation comparing the cost of growing meat versus producing it the traditional way. The biggest factor determining the cost of lab-grown meat seems to be the growth medium used to culture cells, the researchers said.
In the Netherlands, minced meat costs little more than 5 euros per kg, compared with about 391 euros per kg of meat grown using typical growth medium.
Using the cheapest possible growth medium and accounting for the medium alone, 1 kg of meat would cost 8 euros, researchers said.