...but does laboratory-grown meat have a brighter future? Alex Rankine reports
Analysis
“We were promised flying cars and instead we got 140 characters,” quipped Peter Thiel back in 2013. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur’s dig at the banality of Twitter and other modern social media is a reminder that the future rarely turns out in the way we were promised it would – often it is rather more dismal. A 1960s futurist would be astounded to learn that not only do people in 2024 not holiday on the Moon, but also Man hasn’t even been back there since 1972.
It’s a similar story with meat substitutes. Around 2020 there was a boom in companies modestly promising to transform the way that humanity eats. According to their heady predictions, by now a decent chunk of us were supposed to be well on the way to eating mainly plant-based meals. The proposition made commercial sense: UK sales of meat substitutes rose 40% in the five years to 2019. Concerns about carbon emissions from the meat and dairy industry, plus a growing sensitivity to animal welfare, meant that more and more people were identifying as “flexitarians” – those who try to avoid meat, but do indulge in the occasional lamb chop.
As with all good modern market stories, the dish was garnished with a generous dollop of “technology”. The story went that these plant-based food businesses were not merely selling tofu and soybeans in pretty, recyclable packaging, but had instead achieved astounding scientific advances that made plants taste almost like meat. Food reviewers marvelled at American burger business Impossible Foods, whose boffins had found a way to transform soybeans into heme, one of the molecules responsible for making food taste “meaty”. Burgers made by Beyond Meat, the listed business that more than any other came to represent the trend, became known for appearing to “bleed” – the result of a beetroot-juice extract – when they were cut. Beyond Meat listed in 2019 and briefly rocketed to a valuation of over $14bn. It has since crashed 97%. Similarly, shares in Oatly (Nasdaq: OTLY), a Swedish maker of non-dairy milk, are down 95% since listing in 2021.
All sizzle and no steak
The problem, bluntly, is that shoppers don’t seem to like these products very much, at least not enough to pay premium prices – pound for pound, plant-based burgers tend to go for about a 30% premium over regular burgers. In a cost-of-living crisis, that
