A viable market?
One of the greatest concerns and challenges of the prospective lab-meat industry is convincing consumers to use the in-vitro alternative.
In a 2012 study by UK polling group YouGov, 62% of British participants said they would probably not eat artificial meat grown in a laboratory, while 75% of vegan and vegetarian participants responded the same way.
However, those aged 18 – 24 responded most positively, with 30% reporting a willingness to try it.
This poll was taken before the 2013 unveiling of Mark Post’s lab-burger and before much public discussion and information about the process, and the social and environmental implications of lab meat.
Pioneers of the industry are of course more optimistic and, as Fargacs mentioned, the public has been attuned to cell culturing in one form or another for millennia.
Mark Post told FoodNavigator that building consumer acceptance would rely on “Information, information and developing narratives to show small scale implementation of technology; also working through gaps (age, culture) that are more receptive than others, and remaining transparent.”
Uma Valeti, co-founder of Memphis Meats, said on a podcast that the public needs to be made aware that cultured meat is natural and not synthetic or artificial. “There is nothing natural about the conventional meats we are eating now… the chickens we are eating grow six to seven times faster than what they would in the natural environment, cows give about ten times more milk and turkeys are so top heavy that they cannot even stand up to breathe.
"Moreover, because they are grown in such intensely confined conditions - let’s say one thousand pigs in a small pen that’s full of faeces, they have to pump these animals full of antibiotics which leads to antibiotic resistance and superbugs and sets up the stage for really bad zoonotic diseases like the bird flu or swine flu we hear about every year.”
Only smaller, unrepresentative polls have been conducted so far - the majority of them conducted over social media like Twitter and Reddit.
