Plant-based and lab-grown meat startup: an Indian opportunity

François de la Rochefoucauld, the French author and moralist who was known for his maxims, said, “To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art”. These words have never been more relevant. While it is essential to eat intelligently to keep ourselves healthy, in the world of today, our food habits impact the survival of our species. As people get wealthier, they are consuming more and more meat. Animal agriculture is responsible for 14 per cent to 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions more than the entire transportation sector. According to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 80 per cent of the land clearing in countries which had Amazon forest cover can directly be attributed to cattle ranching. In fact, if one was to feed a chicken nine calories of food one would only get back one calorie by way of meat. These concerns coupled with the birth of zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistance emanating from industrial agriculture make for grim reading. The more one reads, the more one realises that the planet is unable to bear the burden of our food habits.

In 2050, the world’s population is going to be 10 billion and feeding this population with the current food system is impossible. Bill Gates in his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster advocates for innovation in food technology and speaks of cultivated and plant-based meat. Cultivated meat is meat that is grown in a facility and not on an animal’s body. Cultivated meat is made from the same cell types arranged in similar structure as animal tissue and tastes, looks and feels like the meat people eat today. Plant-based meat is, like the name suggests, made from plants. It is made with various texturisation technologies, the most commercial one being extrusion. The technologies have the potential to make plant-based meat products like kheema or a chicken breast and even a fish fillet.

Gates encourages developed countries to move to consuming such plant-based meats while recognising that developing countries will take some time to develop such products. Data shows that cultivated meat uses 95 per cent less land, 78 per cent less water, causes 92 per cent less global warming and 93 per cent less air pollution. Cultivated meat has made great progress in the last six months; Singapore has permitted the sale of cultivated chicken meat. The Singaporean government has a “30 by 30” goal which is an effort to meet 30 per cent of the city state’s nutritional needs locally by 2030. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tasted cultivated meat and went on to provide government support to the alternative protein sector. Canada has invested millions in the plant protein sector. Educational institutes in the Netherlands and the United States have developed university courses in this sector. The alternative protein sector holds great promise for the world. According to management consultants A T Kearney, the plant-based meat sector is expected to be $370 billion by 2030.

The sector solves different problems for different countries and certain major global issues like climate change. In India, the alternative protein sector can help us fight malnutrition sustainably. Over 34 per cent of children in India are stunted and 189.2 million people are undernourished. Harnessing the power of plant protein can help us combat malnutrition today and investing in research on cultivated meat can help us feed our growing population sustainably in the times to come. The alternative protein sector is being led by Indian minds worldwide. Uma Valeti, a medical professional born in Vijayawada, is the CEO of a food technology company which grows sustainable cultured meat. In 2018, Tyson Ventures, Tyson Food’s venture capital arm, invested in his company. A company that makes animal-free dairy products, is co-founded by Perumal Gandhi, an Indian engineer trained in Chennai. It recently raised $300 million to accomplish its mission. Both these companies are headquartered in the US.Sandhya Sriram, a biotechnologist-turned-entrepreneur trained at the University of Madras, co-founded an enterprise which is working to bring cultivated sea food to markets based in Singapore.

One wonders what India needs to do to catch up with this global race to develop alternative proteins. India’s agricultural biodiversity, ranging from pulses to pongamia seeds provide a large canvas for this sector. Products made from plant protein can be shelf stable and when nutritionally-rich, inexpensive products are devised they can be added into mid-day meals for children and help us in our fight against malnutrition. “The space race for smart protein is well underway. Whether it’s plant-based meats made from millets or cultivated meat produced directly from animal cells, these foods are transformative. India can be a global leader in this transformation with our talent, our agricultural biodiversity and our manufacturing industry. It is imperative that we capitalise on this opportunity to build a more secure, sustainable and just food system,” explains Varun Deshpande, director of The Good Food Institute, India (GFI).

The key catalyst for the sector will be government support. We will need to develop courses in universities that teach food technology students how India can harness the potential of its agricultural biodiversity to develop products from smart proteins, build collaboration between government research centres and biopharma companies and, perhaps, like Israel have a dedicated government board to oversee its growth and development securing India’s place as a leader and smart protein giant.

The discovery and development of imitation, artificial, faux or mock meat has been going on for very long. Worldwide lab-grown meat is often promoted on grounds of health, environment and ethics, but we must beware of the “ethics” claim because not all meat substitutes are of non-animal origin.

In 2009 scientists of a laboratory in The Netherlands began working on developing meat in a test tube. They took cells from a living pig and cultured them in an animal foetus “broth”. The resultant lab-grown “soggy pork” turned out to be structure-less.

How the Meat was Grown in the Lab

In 2013, the Dutch scientists again grew meat in the laboratory. It was pronounced to be “close to, but not that juicy” as real meat.A living cow was subjected to a biopsy to extract some stem -cells. The aim was to make them develop and multiply in the lab.The cells were used to grow 20,000 muscle fibres in individual culture wells, each one a tiny hoop of greyish-white piece suspended in a gel-like growth medium that contained antibiotics and serum extracted from cow foetuses.Some stem cells were transferred into smaller dishes where they first coalesced into small strips.The resultant fibres and strips were pressed together, coloured with beetroot juice and mixed with saffron, caramel, breadcrumbs and some binding ingredients to form a beef-burger.Netherland’s Mosa Meat who claim to have introduced the world’s first cultivated beef hamburger used this technology and they continue to produce the lab-meat directly from cow cells.

Cultured Meat

Cultured meat – also known as clean meat, lab-grown meat, cell-based meat, slaughter-free meat, shmeat, vitro meat, in vitro meat, hydroponic meat, test tube meat, vat-grown meat, victimless meat and synthetic meat – begins as flesh taken as a biopsy from a living animal (from donor herds of cows, bulls, chickens, fish, pigs, goats or sheep kept for this purpose), or flesh from a slaughtered animal (or even human stem cells), and grown in a laboratory. The meat substitute strives to be similar to the flavour, texture and other characteristics of animal flesh.
For example Memphis Meats website in 2018 clearly states “we make food by sourcing high-quality cells from animals and cultivating them into meat.” Another producer is Israel based Aleph Farms which grows beef steaks from non-genetically engineered cells isolated from living cows.

In February 2019 the Maharashtra state government signed a MOU with Good Food Institute (of USA) for cell-based research and production of meat. Cells will be taken from animals and grown in petri dishes in a lab. The Humane Society International India has partnered GFI and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (Hyderabad) to produce and promote clean meat.

Not really Vegan

Although many plant-based meat alternatives claim to be made primarily from plants, they aren’t all that different from ultra processed food products and can very well contain animal derived substances.
In July 2016, Impossible Foods’ burger made its debut in a New York restaurant. It claims to be vegan but can not be so because this so-called meat is tested on animals. The ingredient which gives it the characteristic colour and taste of meat and catalyzes all the other flavours when meat is cooked is heme protein which has for this burger been specially derived from plants (GM soy) using a fermentation process. In other words the key ingredient is modified yeast and GM yeast is produced using heme protein or with rennin. (Rennin is animal rennet which comes from stomachs of unweaned calves, the use of which is banned in India for cheese making.) Moreover, iron salt is used as flavouring and egg albumin as a binding agent for such burgers. It also contains methylcellulose, oils and food starch. In short, the mock meat is of non-veg origin, is ultra-processed and unhealthy. From the health point of view the biggest drawback of mock meat is sodium. One portion of a mock meat burger contains around 40% salt of the recommended daily value. Remember plenty of evidence links ultra-processed foods to obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer and other chronic diseases including kidney and obstructive pulmonary diseases.

In 2020 Singapore approved sale of lab-grown meat grown from animal muscle cells, to be sold as nuggets.

Non-animal Origin Alternatives – or so they say!

In 1967 British scientists discovered a microfungus high in protein.

In 1995 Tofurky, a meat analogue made from a blend of wheat protein and organic tofu, debuted in America, and 3 million had been sold by 2012.For centuries, tofu and tempeh made from soy, are consumed in Asia and considered an adequate source of protein by those who do not eat carcasses.Similarly, seitan made from gluten and is called “wheat meat”.In 1896 John Harvey Kellogg, an American Seventh-Day Adventist, created the first “meatless meat” from peanuts and named it Nuttose.Another company started in 2018 called Wild Earth Inc has launched a dog treat made from protein produced by a fungus known as koji, the Japanese version of baker’s yeast that grows rapidly inside tanks along with sugar and nutrients at the right balmy temperature.
Lab-grown “clean meat” may become available in India by 2025, allowing consumers to enjoy animal products without supporting inhumane and unsustainable industrial animal agriculture, scientists say.

Animal welfare organisation Humane Society International (HSI) India and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad have joined hands to develop lab-grown meat in India.The partnership looks to promote the technology to develop clean meat while bringing start-ups and regulators together under the same roof.Internationally, clean meat is available in some countries,But in India, we expect it to be available by 2025.

The effort to develop clean meat has emerged due to the unsustainable methods of large-scale industrial animal agriculture as per HSI.The practices neglect basic animal welfare, and consequently pose a threat to the environment and food security.In 2013, the first cultured beef burger (clean meat) was produced and cooked. At that point, the cost of that one patty was $375,000.However, since then, in the past 5 years, Memphis Meat, a clean meat company founded by Indian origin cardiologist Dr Uma Valeti has produced meatballs which cost about $1300 and Mosa Meat, the company which produced the beef patty has now brought it down to $30 per pound.

While the price is still high, research is on across clean meat companies to reduce the cost further by scaling up the production.CCMB will also play a role in researching and providing solutions, For consumers who have a dietary preference for animal meat clean meat can be consumed, while eliminating the drawbacks of the current meat consumption trends.To produce “clean meat” cells from an animal are taken and grown outside of the body in a petri dish.These cells are ‘tricked’ into believing they are still in the body and are made to grow.

Clean meat production requires far less land and water than conventional meat production and therefore alleviates repercussions of exponential climatic change, researchers said.

The technology obliterates the severe environmental damages resulting from poor waste management prevalent in current farming practices. It does not require antibiotics, produces no bacterial contamination and ensures the welfare of animals.The taste will be the same because clean meat is meat. However, instead of slaughtering an entire animal for different part of its body, the technology in clean meat can develop those parts based on biopsy taken from different parts of the animals’ body.

While technology exists to multiply any type of cell, the scaling up of the same in a economically affordable manner as a meat substitute remains a major challenge.There may also be cultural and social factors that will need to be addressed for this to be socially acceptable.Clean meat technology is taking the world by storm with even the biggest meat producers investing in companies developing clean meat.

Clear Meat seeks to solve the problem of animal slaughter through its cell-based meat culture

Co-founder Manvati says that people won’t give up eating meat so easily, given the response to a host of vegan alternatives in the West.

Two scientists at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Siddharth Manvati and Pavan Dhar, founded Clear Meat in 2019. This startup has found a novel way to culture minced chicken meat in the lab and is aiming to place its product in store shelves in a years time. The startup has recently received funding from Gastrotrope, a venture of Mistletoe’s CEO Taizo Son, who is the youngest brother of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.

In the last few years, a number of reports by global bodies have said that animal slaughter leads to disproportionate harm to the environment as compared to its calorific value to humans. A paper published by Oxford scientists in 2018 said that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75%—an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined—and still feed the world.

Co-founder Manvati says that people won’t give up eating meat so easily, given the response to a host of vegan alternatives in the West. He says that achieving the same taste and texture as real meat is the key for plant and cell based alternatives. “There are certain biological pathways which have to be activated in order for the cultured meat to have the right look and feel,” says the biotechnologist.

The startup also has to grapple with the fact that genetically modified food is banned in India. Animal cells live only for 24 hours before disintegrating — so, a way had to be found so that multiplication of cells continued beyond their life cycles. Maintaining genomic stability while doing so was another big scientific challenge.

Walking this tightrope, the startup pany has developed the product from a proof-of-concept stage to a market viable product during the last one year. It is looking at both the B2C and B2B markets—the lab-grown chicken minced meat is likely to be available in stores as well as distributed to restaurant chains. The price point has not been locked yet, but will range from Rs 500 to Rs 800 a kilogram — much higher than what slaughtered chicken costs, i.e., around Rs 200.

The food safety regulator does not have a policy yet on plant and cell based meat. Manvati says he is optimistic that the FSSAI will come with a set of regulations in the next six months or so. Meanwhile, the product is going through a tasting process so that flavour and texture can be fine tuned. The co-founder says that since the novelty of the technique is the use of a certain reagent which facilitiates the cell culture, the process can be adapted to other meat too in the future.

There is no denying that the plant based and animal product free food sector is rapidly growing.  Every day, there is news of a well known chain releasing a plant based alternative to their traditionally meaty offers, or a big food conglomerate investing in plant based options, or a new exciting company that is producing some sort of meat, dairy, or poultry alternative.

Proveg is an international food awareness organisation raising awareness about the benefits of a plant-based diet for the planet, animals, and the humankind. The organisation has been very instrumental in making animal product free diets mainstream and has started a startup incubator programme in 2018. The programme, first of its kind, supports emerging innovative startups with the goal of reducing animal product consumption. Here are five exciting startups from their equally exciting list of cohorts.

1) ClearMeat

The first lab grown meat product might have been a burger but the clean meat field has grown a lot since 2013 when Mark Post and his team served the $300,000 burger. That cultured meat is the next big thing is news to approximately no one but this doesn’t mean we can’t still be excited about the budding innovations. To me, ClearMeat is one such exciting cultured meat prospect. Based in India, ClearMeat is on its way to produce the world’s first chicken mince and move on to products such as tandoori chicken and chicken tikka masala from there. Chicken is the main source of animal protein in India and as the country’s population steadily grows and the people’s economic power with it, chicken consumption also seems to be growing rapidly. ClearMeat’s goal is to provide sustainable, healthy, and affordable meat alternatives to a growing population.

2) MushLabs

We love a good mushroom. They’re easy to cook, delicious in and of themselves, and have many species that are different but equally tasty — one might even say they’re magic. Mushlabs is employing the magic of the mushrooms and applying it to producing sustainable sustenance in an ingenious way. You might be thinking portobello burgers and mushroom mince, but instead, Mushlabs takes the roots of mushrooms and uses fermentation to produce a protein, fiber, and micronutrient rich ingredient. The production process of Mushlabs uses indoor farming systems that employ vertical stacks to grow plants. Because they are stacked, vertical systems take up considerably less land and, because they are controlled environments, require less water. This makes the potential negative environmental impact of Mushlabs proteins comparably lower than it’s animal counterparts and even plant proteins. Mushlabs might soon be the answer to the questions vegans get the most: “But where do you get your protein?”

3) Legendairy Foods

Numerous people in numerous labs are on the journey to produce meat without the slaughter and intensive farming of animals but the animal farming industry doesn’t end with just meat. Although plant based milks are on the rise even with non vegan consumers, dairy is still very much part of the majority of people’s diet. Legendairy Foods is aiming to give people dairy milk without the destructive environmental and ethical consequences. Through a fermentation process, LegenDairy Foods transform microorganisms and sugar into milk protein and then on to dairy products. Dairy milk without cows. From anecdotal evidence, cheese seems to be the one thing people feel like they can’t give up when the topic of going vegan comes up. To me, real cheese without real cows seems to be the perfect solution to that.

4) Greenwise

Russian startup Greenwise, produces plant-based meat alternatives — meat and jerky — that are structurally almost identical to meat. Their products look, feel, and chew like real meat. Amongst the five companies, Greenwise is the one that I actually got to taste the products of and I can attest to their claim. Their plant-based meat comes in dry form and you can cook it any way you like. It absorbs the taste of whatever you decided to cook it with very well, be it broth spices or a sauce. I think Greenwise is making way in a relatively underdeveloped side of plant-based meat production. A side that is quickly growing with companies like Beyond Burger taking off in terms of media and consumer attention. That is, producing plant-based meat for meat eaters. The products of Greenwise are made to replace meat in dishes without having to compromise on taste or texture. They appeal to a fast growing consumer base of environmentally or ethically conscious people who want to reduce their impact but not ready to give up meat.

5) Better Nature

Tempeh is a soy product (although it can be made with other beans as well) that is made by fermenting cooked beans into a cake like solid block. It’s a rich source of B12 (a vitamin everyone and not just non meat eaters often lack), protein and dietary fibres. Tempeh originates from Indonesia and is a staple in SouthEast Asian cooking, thus thanks to the large Indonesian community in the Netherlands it’s very easy to find here, you can find it in almost all supermarkets. However, I was surprised to learn that it’s not at all this common or well known in other parts of the world, even the most cosmopolitan ones. Better Nature wants to change this and be the company responsible for making tempeh mainstream. They are taking this ancient food and applying contemporary scientific methods to it in order to make it even tastier and richer in protein and vitamin B12. The result is an affordable and nutritious food product that is at the same time much better for our planet compared to animal proteins.

Did you know that raising livestock for meat, eggs, and milk causes immense damage to the environment? Dairy and beef cattle produce the most amount of enteric methane, which is much more harmful to the environment than any commercial vehicle on the road. The methane produced is essentially a result of animal burping, thanks to the kind of food provided to the cattle to get more milk, meat, and wool. Reports also suggest that methane gas can damage the environment 28 times more than carbon dioxide.

According to the FAS/USDA, there are more than a billion cattle in the world, and India leads the pack with 30 percent of cattle heads. But, in terms of consumption, the US leads with 12 million metric tonnes of beef consumed annually.

Realising the harmful effects, Kartik Dixit from Nagpur, while researching meat consumption and how animal agriculture was destroying the environment, felt it was necessary to tie up with food scientists and researchers to come up with an alternative meat product.

“Lab-grown protein is far more effective for the future of mankind and to save the planet,” Kartik says.

ClearMeat, which claims to be India’s first clean meat startup, is currently working on using chicken cells to create a texture like edible chicken keema. However, the chicken need not be culled; its cells can be extracted, and the bird can walk free.

Market and competition

According to the Institute of the Future in Palo Alto, by 2023, artificially grown meat will be a common sight in supermarkets in the west. In India too, you will probably see it in major cities in the coming decade. According to OECD, India’s meat consumption is the lowest in the world with just two kg per capita when compared to Israel, which stands at 58 kg.

In November 2018, ClearMeat startup was selected by the Pro-Veg Incubator in Berlin to pitch its business idea, and the company ended up securing the second place among 100 others in the global competition. After seeing success here, the company connected with several global funding houses in the US such as the Glasswall Syndicate, which funds ideas that can protect the environment.

The company has currently set up a lab in JNU, and is now working on creating affordable protein. At present the cost of artificially grown meat is two times that of mutton per kilogram, but as the product gains acceptance, Kartik believes the price can be less than Rs 200 per kg. The company’s founders have pooled in their own money into the startup.

“This will be the safest and most hygienic meat available in the market soon,” Kartik says.

The team, however, did not want to give any timelines on delivery of its commercial product. Being a research company in its first year of operations, the founders are on the lookout for venture capital support in India. Their future plans are to retail the product, currently in research phase, in 18 months.

Is India ready for cultured meat

The cultured meat industry has grown rapidly over the last five years. In 2016, there were only four companies in the industry, now there are more than 40 companies across the world working to develop cultured meat.

From free-range chicken to eating ethically is becoming more and more of a head-scratcher. Even for vegans, there are the questions of how sustainably agave was sourced, or whether environment-damaging pesticides were used to grow kale. For a slaughter-free spaghetti bolognese to a chicken burger where no chicken was harmed, food technology is turning science fiction into science facts, one innovation at a time.

Meat alternatives are not new. But a quiet revolution is also taking place in labs, where scientists are working to cultivate meat and seafood grown from cells, with the potential to reduce demand for industrial animal agriculture even further. Cultured meat involves directly culturing the same (or very similar) animal cells that make up conventional meat. Therefore, it is theoretically possible to create meat products completely indistinguishable from conventional meat, and without the need for slaughter.

Since the first cultured meat was produced back in 2013, it recently was seen all over the news when in December 2020, the industry received a major boost when Singapore became the first region in the world to grant regulatory approval for commercial sale of a cultured meat products by Eat Just. Many in the industry are hoping this will be the first of many approvals over the next few years, helping cultured meat transition from the prototype stage to consumer products.

Growing market trajectory

IDTechEx has recently released ‘Cultured Meat 2021-2041: Technologies, Markets, Forecasts’, a market research report exploring the technical and market factors that are shaping the emerging industry around cultured meat. The cultured meat industry has grown rapidly over the last five years. In 2016, there were only four companies in the industry, only one of which had developed anything close to a prototype. Now there are more than 40 companies across the world working to develop cultured meat, with dozens of prototype products having been demonstrated and tasted.

The growth of the industry has been reflected by a growth in investment, with the industry having raised close to a billion dollars in private funding since 2015. 2020 was a bumper year for the industry, with companies raising over $300 million.

In India, lab-grown meat may soon make its way to the plates. The Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), along with the National Research Centre on Meat (NCRM) are partnering to produce ‘ahimsa meat’ or slaughter-free meat – mutton and chicken that has been grown from stem cells, without animal rearing. It’s a significant move because India is one of the few countries in the world where the government is funding projects to develop lab meat.

India is tapping the market too

Ashwin Bhadri, CEO of Equinox Labs which is India’s food, water and air testing lab, feels that right now, India is at a budding stage in the Alt meat market in terms of market size but there’s definitely potential there. “Positive positive impact on the environment, reduced animal cruelty and increased sustainability, will make cultured meat more popular in the coming years. The products will have to be according to the taste and texture of Indian consumers who prefer spicier, masala-based dishes. So it will certainly take some time to reach that potential,” he further commented.

In 2050, the world’s population is going to be 10 billion and feeding this population with the current food system is impossible. Bill Gates in his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster advocates for innovation in food technology and speaks of cultivated and plant-based meat.The technologies have the potential to make boneless slaughter free meat products like kheema or a chicken breast and even a fish fillet keeping in mind the Indian tastebuds.

Challenges that can come as a hurdle

However, despite this optimism, the industry still faces some major challenges. It is very expensive to produce cultured meat and no company has yet been able to produce it on a commercial scale.

Rinku Madan, Food Stylist and Independent F&B Consultant commented that lab-grown meat may, in fact, worsen climate change. “Although it is expected to produce more CO2 than the more potent methane, CO2 takes much longer to dissipate,” she stated.

Madan also feels that there won’t be an acceptance for genetically modified or cultured meat coming any time soon in India. “While cultured meat is trying to give consumers everything they love about meat in a more humane way, at the end of the day it is a genetically modified product. India has never shown an inclination to GMO staples like corn, brinjal, papaya etc. Most Millenials though might be a little more accepting considering the benefits cultured meat might have on the environment which would be a huge plus if its true,” she said.

At a summit on the future of protein in 2018, Union Minister Maneka Gandhi had advised the CCMB to produce ahimsa meat on a commercial scale within the next 5 years. CCMB director Rakesh Mishra said the institute will develop technology to take the production process from lab-based to industrial levels – so it may reach consumers in India sooner than thought.

Can India produce clean meat for masses?

But does India have enough infrastructure in terms of labs to curate its own cultured meat if demand arise? Answering the same, Bhadri commented, “The way things stand, India’s cold chain infra is splintered with 40 to 50 percent of food wastage. Only 33 percent of Indians own a refrigerator at home. Therefore, higher shelf life will be a necessity to expand the adoption and we must work towards extending the shelf life of alt meat products.”

Moreover, as mentioned above, price remains a major hurdle to mass consumption at present according to Bhadri. The cost of lab-grown chicken is 3 to 4x more than that of an actual chicken. Innovation will be needed to bring the cost of lab-grown meat, on parity with actual meat rates.

Will we see clean meat in restaurant menus?

Restaurants in India till now have not tapped into this segment while many have already pushing mock meats into their menus. Bhadri anticipates that with India taking its baby steps in the space, agreeable Govt. regulations, increased interest of research and corporate bodies in product development, and willingness of the investors to encourage radical transformation will be critical to shape the ecosystem.

“Restaurants will need to invest heavily in tech and marketing. Taste, convenience and price will be the three pillars for widespread industry adoption and establishing a viable model to be built on these pillars will take time,” he commented.

According to Madan, the Indian restaurant industry, just like the current mindset across the world, has similar sets of reservations about using lab-grown meat. “While cultured meat is deemed safe for human consumption, some questions remain about this type of meat. For instance, some people may have a perception that lab-grown meat is not natural, which may be similar to people’s concerns about genetically modified (GM) foods. Also, the lack of bone and fat in lab-grown meat may compromise the taste of the dish to the consumers,” she said.

Many well-known restaurateurs like the James Beard awardee Dan Barber, say that they don’t see themselves serving ‘lab-grown meat’. According to them, they don’t see the appeal in serving cultured meat.  It also ignores the correspondence between gastronomy and agriculture.

In India there may also be cultural and social factors that will need to be addressed for this to be socially acceptable. But considering the global wave about cultured or clean meat, it is time India begins this dialogue

India’s advantage has always been the availability of excellent, resourceful talent, and our disadvantage has always been the enabling ecosystem supporting that talent. The relative dearth of labs, research funding, degree programs, and patient deep-technology-oriented capital has traditionally meant India’s technologists and entrepreneurs have to be even more resourceful than other countries, or migrate to those other countries – which is very unfortunate. Cultivated meat does, however, benefit from India’s thriving pharmaceutical sector, which is expected to reach US$150 billion by 2025. We’ve already begun tapping into this sector and its proven track record in affordable, high-quality manufacturing. Indian companies are already producing growth factors for use by global companies to cultivate cells, for instance, and Indian entrepreneurs are already in conversation with established international companies in the space for partnership opportunities. GFI India’s work moving forward will center on building up the enabling ecosystem for rapid technology transfer and market development, for example by fostering participation from further biopharma companies, setting up further labs and research consortiums, and nurturing talent from universities to participate in the cultivated meat explosion.

Early studies indicate promisingly high theoretical acceptance from consumers. Our cross-country survey of consumer acceptance regarding plant-based and cultivated meat (Bryant et al., Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2019) indicates 56 percent of Indian consumers would be very or extremely likely to purchase cultivated meat regularly – and since increased familiarity with these foods tends to drive up that acceptance rate, you can expect that India will have a big market for cultivated meat over time. This is very heartening when you consider the rising protein demand in the country over the next decades .we will need to provide affordable, sustainable, delicious protein at scale to satisfy over a billion meat-eating Indians. As with the timelines for the global industry, the path to market for cultivated meat in India depends on regulatory frameworks and on the price of the final product. India is a very price-sensitive market with high chicken consumption (a meat typically priced more cheaply than red meats or other specialty meats), so we expect that cultivated meat may have a longer timeline to come to market in this country than in the rest of the world. The efforts of the Centre of Excellence (a partnership between the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, and the Good Food Institute India) and other work we are doing promise to accelerate that timeline, so that we can deliver affordable, sustainable protein to a growing population as soon as possible.

COVID-19 is accelerating the convergence towards animal-free supply chains globally, and resulting in tragic consequences for the legacy meat industry in India. The pandemic and its effects on consumer perception have meant that demand for chicken has temporarily fallen off a cliff, with farmers needing to cull their stock by burying chickens alive, thereby running tremendous losses. This mirrors recent worrying outbreaks of African swine fever and avian flu in the Indian meat supply. While cultivated meat companies like ClearMeat and research projects like the one at CCMB have needed to pause research work, the long-term prognosis for the sector remains hugely positive – it offers a means of resilience even to legacy animal meat producers who may want to future-proof their business. The drivers for consumers and businesses therefore align perfectly for cultivated meat to succeed in the country over time – but plenty of work remains to drive cost-parity and the enabling ecosystem first! Said, Varun Deshpande, Managing Director at Good Food Institute India

Artificial meat seems to be where electric cars were 10 years ago. Heard of, but not tried. Will Indians accept lab-grown meat? Only time will tell.

DR. B. BHARATI,HOME SCIENCE, BHU

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