Could Canadians get behind cell-based meat?

Lab-cultivated meat is on the way, but there are still some hurdles to overcome By Danny Kucharsky

CANADIANS COULD soon be eating lab- grown meat that tastes like conventional meat. Just don’t expect to see it on grocery shelves any time soon.

Lab-grown meat along with other cellbased products are “the future of food,” according to Lejjy Gafour, president of Vancouver-based Cult Food Science, the first publicly traded company in North America to invest in cellular culture companies. “It isn’t that it’s just like meat. It literally is meat, down to the cellular level. Making that clear to consumers will be really important.”

Gafour says the ability to create meat that does not require the slaughter of animals will mean that “people will embrace it for reasons that include sustainability and compassion.” He expects to see cellbased products available within the next five to seven years.

Major meat and food processors are betting heavily on its prospects, says Simon Somogyi, director of the Longo’s Food Retail Laboratory and Arrell chair in the business of food at the University of Guelph. He notes “massive” investments of $4 billion in lab-grown meat have recently been made by companies like Maple Leaf Foods, Nestlé and JBS.

Somogyi says the cost to produce a kilogram of lab-grown meat has dropped from more than $200,000 about 10 years ago to about $20 today. That’s still higher than conventional animal protein but, at the current rate of investment and with declining production costs, lab- grown meat will soon cost the same as conventional meat. “It’s a two-to-threeyear proposition. It’s going to be a reality sooner than later.”

Making lab-grown meat involves taking stem cells from an animal, which are then grown in fermentation vessels, not dissimilar to the giant tanks seen in breweries. Combined with nutrients like amino acids and carbohydrates and a growth factor, the cells ferment and multiply to create meat.

In 2020, Singapore became the first country to grant regulatory approval to lab-grown meat. Chicken nuggets from Good Meat, a division of San Franciscobased Eat Just, are now available in Singapore but have yet to make it to grocery store shelves.

Receiving regulatory approval in Canada and achieving commercial viability will be big stumbling blocks, says Dana McCauley, chief experience officer at the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN) in Guelph, Ont. “There’s really not a lot of scalabilities in the many projects that are out there,” she says. “Right now, it’s just a lot of people doing a lot of disconnected activity.”