“Clean” meat, made from cloned cells in labs instead grown on the hoof in fields and feed lots, saves a lot of land and water compared to growing a whole animal. But the cells that will become your faux burger patty or chicken thigh still need to eat.
Currently, that special food costs almost $100 a quart and makes up about 80 percent of the cost of creating critterless meat. To be competitive with meat grown on animals, that cost needs to come close to $1.
Now Multus Media, a British start-up, has found a way to reduce that cost by 80 percent and perhaps even more. It’s been able to genetically alter yeast to produce a growth medium for beef cheaply in quantity and expects to do the same for fish and poultry taste-alikes within two years.
TRENDPOST: The breakthrough in reducing the cost of clean meat’s growth medium comes at a crucial moment. The world’s demand for meat protein is growing along with the world’s population that, as it swells, leaves less land and potable water for growing animals. The need for inexpensive clean meat will grow steadily into the future as the technology is perfected, costs fall, and tastes and textures are refined.
