Thread · HN Continuity

I worked in this industry for almost five years. Even the “fermented” alternative meats (bacterial, fungal cell culture) which were basically a drop-in fit with existing large scale fermentation plants were still not cost-competitive with chicken. Some were on par with beef if you made some hand-wavy assumptions about scale.

The killer was usually the downstream processing required to clean out off-flavors and colors, which was required to get even a passable product (these are just protein powder fillers at this point, not whole cuts), but ballooned CapEx and cut yield such that cost went back up to like, A5 Wagyu levels.

I’ve sat in the awkward tasting sessions the author describes, and they’re all the same. The attendees muster up a “that’s pretty good” - but we all know nobody would ever choose to buy this unless they were forced to.

Now that I’ve been out of it for a while, it’s pretty obvious to me what the problems are. Cost, obviously. Taste and texture simply aren’t there. And “the knowing” is real. I never got over imagining the whole factory process involved in the production. I’m sure vegans would say the same about animal farming, though. So my conclusion was, the only way this technology becomes relevant is if people are forced to use it. And that’s either because you’re cruelty-free by choice (small fraction of the population), or because the cost of meat suddenly skyrockets, which today, is not looking that likely. Keep in mind as well that meat costs would likely be driven by feed costs in such a scenario, which also impacts cultivated meat. So it’s ultimately a process efficiency play, and you’re competing against eons of evolution.