Lab-Grown Meat Market Launch May Happen In 2021

Food technology company Mosa Meat is hoping to bring its lab-grown meat to the market in 2021, it has announced. The company, which is located in the Netherlands, has raised about $8.7 million dollars to help fund its goal, which will involve developing a way to produce the meat at a much lower cost than existing methods. The goal highlights rapid growth in the budding market, coming only a handful of years after the first lab-grown burger was produced in 2013.

Lab-grown meat is exactly what it sounds like — meat (beef, primarily) that is grown in a lab using cultured cells, eliminating the need to raise and slaughter animals. Developments over the past several years have already drastically reduced the cost of producing this "cultured meat," as Mosa calls it. It's only a matter of time before cruelty-free meat becomes a common ingredient.

Despite backlash from the existing meat industry, which has attempted to block the use of "confusing" terms like beef, Mosa Meat is forging ahead to bring its product to the market. The company has announced that it successfully raised millions to fund its development of cheaper lab-grown meat production. If everything goes as planned, the company plans to launch its product in 2021.

Cultured meats present many potential benefits, including greatly reducing the amount of water that is needed to produce meat the traditional way. Raising animals requires crops to be grown that are then harvested and used to feed animals, which are ultimately slaughtered for meat. Lab-grown meat removes those requirements while eliminating the cruelty aspect.

Cows in particular greatly contribute to climate change due to their methane emissions. Though we've seen some promising solutions to this, namely a certain type of seaweed, eliminating the use of cattle entirely could have a major positive environmental impact.

SOURCE: Mosa Meat