Studies are ongoing by a team of farmers, researchers, and start-ups across the UK on how the advances in cultured meat or “lab-grown” meat will affect farming.
The research is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in the Transforming Food Systems Programme, and led by the Royal Agricultural University (RAU).
A new study, Cultured Meat and Farmers, will run over two years, looking at farmers’ attitudes to cultured meat, potential opportunities and risks, and how, if production is scaled up, it could affect agriculture.
The Frontiers paper reports the first phase of the project, which investigates farmers’ attitudes to the technology.
So far the research shows that some UK farmers see the advances as potential competition to traditional meat production, while others have suggested it could create a premium for pasture-reared meat.
Results
For the study, six focus groups were undertaken with 75 farmers from a variety of farming sectors and regions.
Farmers raised “perceived opportunities and risks” associated with cultured meat.
The study also covered cultured meat’s potential impacts on the environment and on jobs, farming or rural communities and connecting with the land.
Among the threats that were discussed were potential effects on health, and where the product would be pitched in the market, as either a high value or low value protein.
One farmer in the study said: “We need to be raising all sorts of questions about things like waste products and sourcing the inputs and that sort of thing.
“We should be pinning them down on that now. They’re telling us this is the future; they’ve got to tell us what it means.”
The study highlighted that cultured meat is likely to have “deep-seated ethical, environmental, and socio-economic impacts” on the livelihoods of many rural communities.
Senior Lecturer in Animal Health and Welfare at the RAU, Dr. Lisa Morgans said:
“To ensure disruptive technologies like cultured meat are developed in an ethical and responsible way, it is essential that we engage with, and include, farmers in the research process.”
Cultured meat research
The team is now partnering with nine case study farms spread across the UK and representing a wide range of farming systems.
They will explore how each farm could respond to this new technology, for example how it could best compete, or how it could supply ingredients, or even produce cultured meat, on farm.
The findings will be used to produce a heat map of the winners and losers in future scenarios where cultured meat is on sale.
The outputs from the project will support policymakers and investors to consider the technology’s multiple impacts on farming and rural communities.
These further findings are due to be published late in 2024.
