It’s basically an issue of scale. Proteins like soy and pea are produced on a mass scale for very low costs, however the cultivated meat business remains to be reliant on provide chains that exist for the pharmaceutical business, the place margins are a lot larger. In Oxford within the UK, scientists at cultivated meat agency Ivy Farm Technologies are making a hybrid pork meatball made up of 51 p.c pig cells, 7 p.c pea protein, after which onion, herbs, and seasoning. The single cultivated meatball I attempted at Ivy Farm’s pilot plant price round $20 to supply, and 95 p.c of that price was pushed by the animal cells, in response to Ivy’s CEO, Rich Dillon.

This is why mixing is more likely to be the primary strategy utilized by cultivated meat corporations to get merchandise out, says Steve Molino, an investor at Clear Current Capital, a enterprise capital agency that focuses on cultivated and plant-based meat. A blended burger can be a lot, a lot nearer to the value of a standard burger than would a totally cultivated burger. It’ll additionally assist cope with one other downside more likely to face cultivated meat early on: The whole quantity of meat produced is more likely to be tiny.

There are not any large-scale cultivated meat vegetation within the US. Upside Foods has the most important pilot plant, which might produce 50,000 kilos of cultivated meat annually. In 2021, by means of comparability, 51 billion pounds of hen was produced within the US alone. Even for cultivated meat to make up a fraction of 1 p.c of hen meat provide within the US would take a quantum leap by way of manufacturing. “The amount that is going to be supplied is so, so small that even enthusiasts are going to be waiting—and we’re going to be able to eat up all that supply very, very quickly,” says Molino. Mixing animal cells with plant-based protein will assist this restricted provide go so much additional, and permit corporations to claw again extra of the price of constructing cultivated meat factories. 

This would possibly sound like penny-pinching, however mixing meat with vegetation is nothing new, Dillon factors out. Some sausages are simply 42 percent pork, and it’s comparatively uncommon to discover a minced meat product that doesn’t have a minimum of just a few additional components added to bind, bulk, or taste. Conventional meat producers have additionally experimented with making mixing a advantage—a method to market meat that’s higher for individuals and has a decrease carbon footprint. In the UK, grocery store Tesco sells a beef meatball blended with butternut squash and onion. It’s not clear whether or not this type of mixing has a lot enchantment, nonetheless. US meat agency Tyson briefly made blended meat-and-plant burgers and nuggets earlier than pulling them from shelves in 2020.

Mixing plant protein and animal cells additionally lets cultivated meat corporations experiment with the perfect composition for a brand new product. “There are all these different levers to pull,” says Emma Lewis, chief industrial and product officer at Ivy Farm Technologies. They can play with the ratio of fats and muscle cells for a juicier or leaner meatball and attempt to dial in particular dietary qualities. Ivy Farms has additionally been working with a premium burger restaurant that’s eager about creating burgers manufactured from a mix of cultivated beef and standard meat. “It could be the most sustainable meat out there, or potentially the most nutritional burger, and still taste exactly the same,” says Dillon.