Will lab-grown meat, or cultured meat, find takers in India?
The Hindu
On July 1, 2023, California-based food technology startup Upside Foods partnered with a Michelin-starred restaurant, Bar Crenn in San Francisco, to serve cultivated chicken to diners for the first time. This came close on the heels of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granting approval last month to Upside Foods and another brand, Good Meat, to start producing and selling chicken made in a lab. Meanwhile, Australian cell-based meat company Vow Food has just made a bid to the Food Standards Australian New Zealand (FSANZ) to sell lab-grown quail. Though the number of startups and ventures in the cultivated meat space has gone up to over 100 globally, it has taken off to a slow start in India. But industry players believe this trend will change with more investment and awareness.
In 1964, British science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story titled ‘The Food of the Gods’, set in a world where any sort of food, including meat, could be created using technology. Little more than half a century later, the idea of human-engineered meat is no longer something out of speculative fiction.
On July 1, California-based food technology startup Upside Foods partnered with a Michelin-starred restaurant, Bar Crenn in San Francisco, to serve cultivated chicken to diners for the first time.
This came close on the heels of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granting approval last month to Upside Foods and another brand, Good Meat, to start producing and selling chicken made in a lab. Meanwhile, Australian cell-based meat company Vow Food has just made a bid to the Food Standards Australian New Zealand (FSANZ) to sell lab-grown quail.
Expected to grow into a $1.99 billion industry by 2035, cultivated meat, also called cultured or lab-grown meat, is not exactly new science. The technology behind this has already been used for decades in the pharmaceutical industry, a vital aspect of cancer research, vaccine development, drug screening and virology. “We always have viable solutions to be able to create alternative protein solutions that go beyond animals. It was about aligning the technology to this particular goal,” says Bengaluru-based chef-entrepreneur Manu Chandra. “I think one needs to look at it through a prism of long-term sustainability rather than an instant trend that starts and then fades away.”
Though the number of startups and ventures in the cultivated meat space has gone up to over 100 globally, it has taken off to a slow start in India. But industry players believe this trend will change with more investment and awareness. “Even if we are not primary consumers of this product, there will be worldwide demand. We can look at it as a biotechnology-based economic growth driver and as a way of feeding the world,” says Bharath Bakaraju of Phyx44 Private Limited, a Bengaluru-based company that is working on creating milk through precision fermentation. “We have proved to be very good at biotechnology. Over 50% of the world’s vaccines are produced here.”
N. Madhusudhana Rao, CEO of Atal Incubation Centre, CCMB, Hyderabad, where the country’s first research on cell-based meat was conducted in 2019, agrees that the country has the talent needed to jump on the cultivated meat bandwagon. “We are competent to do it if there is sufficient support,” he says, adding that it is required with the steady rise in demand for meat in India.
The global demand for poultry alone is projected to increase 850% by 2040, according to Good Food Institute (GFI), a non-profit think tank and international network of organisations working to accelerate alternative protein innovation. Building future food systems that will ensure an adequate supply of this protein is therefore very important, says Radhika Ramesh, policy specialist, GFI India. “That is where smart protein comes in,” she says.