Lab-grown meat is here. You can only find it at a handful of restaurants in the U.S. and Singapore. Will that change in 2024? Perhaps. Ultimately, it’s a matter of time.

While many startups can make lab-grown meat, they can’t do it in a cost-effective way yet. But hundreds of top scientists around the world backed by billions of dollars are trying to solve the cost issue. When they can, its impact should not be underestimated.

Let’s consider what a lab-grown meat future looks like.

Lab-grown meat is grown in metal bioreactors. Instead of an animal being fed grain, cells are “fed” via a nutrient bath with chemical growth hormones meant to mimic blood. After a few weeks, enough cellular mass has developed that a company can create patties or meatballs.

Advocates–many of whom are animal rights activists–say lab-grown meat is a “clean” analogue to natural meat, while supposedly having benefits for the environment or personal health.

There’s a downside they don’t mention: how lab-grown meat could displace family farmers.

If lab-grown meat takes off and begins to replace natural meat, then the number of livestock–and livestock producers–will fall. Some families that have been farming or ranching for generations will see their legacies end. Processors will also be affected by fewer livestock.

The next effect will be feed. Lots of grain grown in this country is fed to livestock. If lab-grown meat is able to displace a large portion of the farm-raised meat market, then that will reduce the feed crops grown. (With plant-based imitation meat, soy or peas might be grown to be processed for protein. But the chemical growth medium for lab-grown meat is a pharmaceutical product.)

This in turn could have a depressing effect on land values–to say nothing of all the rural job loss linked to raising and processing livestock.

Meanwhile, further centralization of the food supply in the hands of fewer and fewer people is also likely. Only two lab-grown meat companies have received approval to date, and they have raised about $1 billion between them. Lab-grown meat companies are filing patent application after patent application to control the technology. Given the challenges that startups are currently facing, smaller ones will likely be absorbed by larger companies.

Investors in lab-grown meat companies include some already very wealthy individuals including Bill Gates. Gates has already attracted attention for buying up hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.

But lab-grown meat companies may have forgotten one thing. The biggest factor in determining the ballgame is consumer sentiment. Will people eat lab-grown meat?

That’s a conversation we’re starting at LabMeat.com.

While proponents of lab-grown meat like to act as if this product is a better version of natural meat, there are significant differences.

One is the use of immortalized cells. These are cells that have been modified so that they replicate indefinitely, behaving like a tumor. Immortalized cells were developed to assist medical research. They have never been a food for humans, and there are no long-term health studies.

Another big question is what, exactly, companies use in their synthetic growth serum. According to patent filings, there could be a host of chemical growth factors used, and some have been linked to negative health effects.

Additionally, Bloomberg News reported that one company’s samples of lab-grown chicken had higher levels of lead, a heavy metal, than samples of farm-raised chicken.

There are significant questions about lab-grown meat itself. Advocates are going to paper over inconvenient truths or inquiries. So it’s up to other people to start raising issues and having conversations.

There are two ways to look at lab-grown meat’s future: Either it flops, or it doesn’t. With the amount of scientific brainpower and investor money, I tend to assume they will eventually figure out how to scale it. And breakthroughs could occur at any time.

In the meantime, consumers need to learn about what’s behind this new technology so they can make an informed decision for their future family dinner table.

Lab-Grown Meat: 2024’s “Dark Horse Candidate”?

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