Please note that this report was last updated in 2017.

Cultured animal products are grown via a cell culture rather than via a farmed animal. If these cultured alternatives were available at a similar price to farmed animal products, there could be a massive decrease in the demand for farmed animal products. Informed estimates about when cultured products could reach such prices range from a matter of months to several decades. Timelines that are so dissimilar have dramatically different implications for ACE’s recommendations. This is because, all else equal, the sooner we expect there to be substantial decreases in the number of farmed animals, the more interested we become in causes other than farmed animal advocacy. Even within the cause of farmed animal advocacy, our views of certain interventions could vary quite substantially as a result of changes in our estimated timeline for the availability of cultured alternatives. In this write-up we will compile informed estimates related to cultured animal product timelines and discuss some reasons to trust or distrust them. We will then conclude with our core impressions, offer our own timeline estimates, and provide some brief thoughts on how our evaluations might update in light of our projected timelines.

Table of Contents

The Timeline for Cultured Acellular Animal Products

“Acellular products” are those that do not contain cells. Examples of acellular animal products include dairy products, egg whites, and gelatin. Our understanding is that these acellular animal products can be cultured through a similar process to the one that has been used for decades to culture insulin and rennet.1 Currently, invertase and lysine seem to be cultured at a comparable or cheaper cost per dry weight than the cost per dry weight for conventionally produced milk and egg whites.2 It seems to follow that to achieve cost-competitiveness, acellular animal products may only need to replicate the current production costs achieved for similar molecules that are produced through similar processes—rather than achieve new levels of cost-efficiency. This informs our limited impression that lesser progress is required in order for cultured acellular products to become cost-competitive than the progress required for cultured meats to become cost-competitive.

There have been a number of informed predictions about the timelines for cultured acellular animal products. New Harvest has predicted since January 2016 that cultured milk and cultured egg whites will likely be available in the next few years. Perfect Day predicted in August 2016 that their cultured milk product will launch in late 2017 at a price likely on par with organic milk. In 2016, Geltor said that its cultured gelatin should be widely available in the next four or five years. In a 2016 conversation with The Good Food Institute, we were told that cultured alternatives to dairy proteins, egg proteins, and gelatin should be available in 2-3 years.

Estimated Cultured Ground Meat Timelines by Leaders in the Cultured Ground Meat Field

Our understanding is that culturing ground meat products involves providing the necessary environment (e.g., a suitable temperature, gas mixture, and growth medium) needed for animal cell replication to occur outside of its normal biological context, and that culturing techniques can derive many millions of muscle cells from as little as one cell. Cultured muscle cells can then be grown into muscle fibers—each only a few millimeters thick— and these muscle fibers can then be arranged to form ground meat products.

A number of ground meat products have reportedly been successfully cultured. As a general proof of concept, in 2013 a ground beef burger was cultured as part of a project reportedly costing $330,000. A few days after that proof of concept, the project head (Mark Post) reported that with current technology, cultured meat could be produced at a cost of $70/kg—which we believe was intended as the estimated cost if using mass production techniques. In June 2016 Memphis Meats reportedly cultured a meatball at a cost of $40,000/kg. In March 2017 Memphis Meats then reportedly cultured a chicken product at a cost of $20,000/kg. There have been a number of informed predictions about the timeline for the availability and cost-competitiveness of cultured ground meat products. Table 1 summarizes these estimates made by leaders in the field of cellular agriculture.

Table 1. A summary of projected timelines for cultured ground meat by leaders in the field of cellular agriculture. Predictor Year of Prediction Summary of Prediction In Vitro Meat Symposium3 2008 The first commercial cultured meat products will be available in the next 5–10 years (i.e., 2013–2018) at prices competitive with European beef. Mark Post 2013 It will probably take 10–20 years (i.e., 2023–2033) before the product is in supermarkets. Mark Post 2015 If production were scaled up to the necessary level, cost-competitive cultured ground meat will likely be available in 7–10 years (i.e., 2022–2025). Mark Post 2015 Felt confident that MosaMeat4 would bring a product to market in the next 5 years (i.e., by the beginning of 2021). Peter Verstate 2016 Premium priced cultured products should be available in 5 years (i.e., 2021), and 5 years after that (i.e., 2026) the products should be cost-competitive. Bruce Friedrich 2016 It will be 3–5 years (i.e., 2019–2021) before cultured products are cost-competitive with organic grass fed beef and closer to a decade (i.e., ~2026) before they are cost-competitive with conventional meat. Mark Post 2016 It is “just a matter of several years” before they are ready to sell cultured meat at an estimated price of $10–$20 per burger. Memphis Meats 2016 Expects to have products available for purchase within 5 years (i.e., expects products to be available by the beginning of 2022). Mark Post 2017 Estimates that it will take 3–4 years (i.e., 2020–2021) before cultured burgers are on the market for £10–11 (~$12–$14 USD) per burger, and in around 7 years time (~2024) they will be in supermarkets at lower prices. Peter Verstate 2017 Admitted it will take at least 5–10 years to improve the [production] process and make it cost-effective. Commoditizing the cultured (or ‘clean’) meat will take even longer. Mark Post 2017 For small-scale, somewhat expensive products, most companies will have cultured meat products on the market in 3–4 years (i.e., 2020–2021). It will probably take another 3–4 years (i.e., 2023–2025) for the price to come down to the level where it’s acceptable for the broader public.

As of early 2017, the prediction that was reportedly from the 2008 In Vitro Meat Symposium seems much too optimistic. Recent predictions from leaders in the field seem to be that some cultured ground meat products will be on the market by around 2021. The recent predictions from leaders in the field seem to be that some cultured ground meat products will be cost-competitive by around 2026.

Estimates From Other Scientists or Informed Sources that Closely Relate to Cultured Ground Meat Timelines

In 2015, Givewell spoke with a scientist with 18 years of experience in the tissue engineering industry who predicted that without a major technological breakthrough it seems unlikely that cost-competitive cultured meat will be available in the next 10–15 years. We do not know the identity of that scientist or the considerations that informed that estimate. Still, we think this estimate is most likely made by a credible source because GiveWell has a strong track record of using credible sources in their investigations. We are also operating under the assumption that the scientist’s reportedly large amount of experience most likely translates to a large amount of relevant knowledge. As this estimate seems to be the only informed cultured ground meat timeline estimate that is not from a cultured ground meat proponent—and it is much more of a pessimistic estimate than that of proponents—it therefore seems to provide somewhat significant evidence in support of the hypothesis that timelines predicted by proponents of cultured ground meat are too optimistic. That estimate would also be consistent with a situation in which the scientist is thinking about a different scenario than the cultured meat proponents are thinking of, or is less aware of the desired solutions.

The Open Philanthropy Project’s Animal Product Alternatives report lists three different estimates of the possible future costs of cultured meat. The first from Vandenburgh (2004) estimates that cultured meat would cost $5 million/kg, however we think it is of little use for predicting future costs of cultured meat.5 The second from Exmoor (2008) estimates that cultured meat would cost €3.3–3.5/kg. The last from Van der Weele & Tramper (2014) estimates that at “not extreme” prices for the medium required to grow cultured meat, the medium alone would cost at least €391/kg of cultured meat and that at the lowest possible cost of the medium, the medium alone would cost at least €8/kg of cultured meat. It is worth noting that many cultured meat proponents most likely want to avoid using the type of medium used in the Van der Weele & Tramper estimate to lower production costs. To give a sense of what the Exmoor and Van der Weele & Tramper estimates imply for cost-competitiveness, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in U.S. cities, ground beef currently costs approximately $3.5/lb,6 equivalent to ~€7.20/kg (this includes government subsidies). This implies that at Exmoor’s estimated costs, cultured ground meat would currently be cost-competitive and at Van der Weele & Tramper’s estimated costs, it would probably be very difficult to achieve cost-competitiveness. We were unable to find any additional cost estimates in a moderate but not extensive literature search.

We are very uncertain about how much cultured meat could cost in the future, and have not thoroughly vetted any of the mentioned estimates. These estimates appear to be back-of-the-envelope style calculations that vary widely. The Exmoor estimate generally seems to support the timelines estimated by proponents but seems preliminary in nature and uses moderately unsupported assumptions that may be too optimistic.7 The Van der Weele & Tramper estimate is preliminary in nature, possibly pessimistic and provides limited justification for some important assumptions.8 Our current interpretation is that the Van der Weele & Tramper estimate does not strongly suggest that the timelines estimated by cultured meat proponents are off by more than a decade. One important input that significantly differs between the Exmoor and the Van der Weele & Tramper estimate is the cost of industrial quantities of growth medium.

Estimated Timelines for Culturing Whole Pieces of Muscle Tissue

For many popular animal products, a cultured whole piece of muscle tissue is required for the cultured alternative. For instance, this would be needed for the cultured alternative to steaks, breasts, wings, and fillets. Our understanding is that it is significantly less challenging to culture fine strands of muscle than to culture a whole piece of muscle tissue. New Harvest notes that culturing whole pieces of muscle tissue requires technology that does not exist and may take longer than a decade to develop. Open Phil guesses that culturing these alternatives is in roughly the same ballpark of difficulty as creating in vitro organs suitable for transplant operations. However, Open Phil notes some differences: the greater price pressures on the cultured meats, and the fact that cultured meat need not replicate as many natural functions. We don’t know how accurate that comparison in difficulty is and we don’t have a thorough sense of when we should expect in vitro transplant organs. Based on a cursory examination, it seems likely that in vitro transplant organs are decades away.9

Established cultured meat companies MosaMeat and Memphis Meats are currently working on cultured ground meats rather than culturing large whole pieces of muscle tissue. The less established companies SuperMeat and Integriculture are working on the more challenging prospect of culturing whole pieces of muscle tissue. Integriculture recently appeared to predict 10 that by 2019 they would produce cost-competitive cultured foie gras.11 Last year SuperMeat predicted in their funding proposal (as well as in at least two interviews) that their cultured chicken liver would be available within five years if they received enough funding—though this timeline is no longer listed in SuperMeat’s current crowdfunding proposal.12 If SuperMeat were to culture a chicken liver, it may take more than a decade for that type of cultured meat to become cost-competitive. As a comparison, the current estimate from leaders in the field for the length of time between the proof of concept and achieving cost-competitiveness for cultured ground meat is slightly more than a decade. We would guess it may take longer for cultured whole pieces of muscle tissue to reach cost-competitiveness after the proof of concept because of our understanding (albeit limited) that the technology involved with culturing whole pieces of muscle tissue is more difficult to develop.

Recent advances in the cellular agriculture field could be significant progress towards cost-competitive cultured whole pieces of muscle tissue.13 We haven’t yet encountered adequate evidence of such progress, and more substantiated claims could lead us to largely revise our estimated timeline for this type of cultured meat. For this reason, and because we generally have a poor sense of how long it will take to create the technologies required for culturing these products and a poor sense of how long it would take for the products to reach cost-competitiveness once that technology is available, we are the most uncertain about the timeline for this type of cultured alternative.

A Short Discussion of Reasons to Trust or Distrust the Estimated Timelines by Proponents of Cultured Animal Products

Much of the trustworthiness of the estimated timelines by the aforementioned proponents stems from their apparent expertise on this topic. They seem to have thorough knowledge of the underlying scientific, engineering, and technical challenges involved, and are very informed about the current capabilities of at least some cultured animal product companies. Probably the strongest evidence conflicting with the estimated timelines of some cultured animal product proponents are conflicting estimates from other scientists. Those disagreements include an experienced tissue engineering scientist’s estimated timeline and Van der Weele & Tramper’s cost estimate. Cultured ground meat proponents are probably more informed on this topic than these other scientists, and the estimates made by proponents are more recent than estimates from scientists who disagree—so the estimates by proponents may be based on more up-to-date information.

However, there are other reasons to think the estimated timelines from cultured meat proponents are optimistic. For one, the reported estimate from the 2008 In Vitro Meat Symposium is most likely much too optimistic. The estimates from proponents also seem to be the result of a selection bias, in that those who are prominent members of organizations in this field are more likely to be optimistic about making progress than those who are not, but we tend to only hear the predictions of those who are. There also seem to be strong incentives for organizations in this field to report more optimistic timelines, as this is likely to result in more media coverage and be more compelling to prospective funders.

We are unsure if the two industry analogs mentioned in Open Phil’s report14 and the previous cultured meat groups who failed or pivoted15 are the best reference class to use in forecasts concerning current cultured meat companies. Even if these other apparently poorly performing companies and groups were an appropriate reference class, the small sample size would mean that their progress far from conclusively determines what we should expect of cultured meat companies. Another possible reference class that could give a much larger sample size is that of biofuel and algae fuel companies. Our limited impression is that biofuel and algae fuel companies also seem to have performed poorly,16 but we are unsure about the extent to which these companies are similar to cultured animal product companies. For our purposes, we would probably be more interested in a reference class forecasting method that used industries rather than companies as the unit of analysis. Since we have a limited idea of what the appropriate reference class for forecasting the timelines of cultured alternatives is and what the outcomes for that reference class were, the seemingly below average performance of possible industry analogs and previous cultured meat groups currently causes us to give only slightly more credence to the idea that projected timelines from cultured animal product proponents are optimistic.

Another way of evaluating the accuracy of proponents’ claimed timelines is to compare them to the timelines that the valuations17 of cultured animal product companies would suggest. With this approach, the probabilities assigned to various cost-competitive scenarios would be constrained in order for the estimated return on investments in cultured animal product companies to seem plausible. However, estimating what current valuations imply or what future valuations of cultured animal product companies would imply about timelines for cost-competitiveness seems to involve a significant amount of time and uncertainty.18 There is also some reason to think that the timelines estimated through valuation-based models would suggest roughly the same timelines as those suggested by taking all of the other available information at the time of the valuation into account—otherwise, the valuation would represent a kind of market anomaly. Still, at the time of investing, investors may have been aware of some information that we are not now aware of (and vice versa), or they could have interpreted the same information differently. A credible valuation-based model could give important insights into their conclusions about the timelines. We have not built a valuation-based model to estimate the timeline for cost-competitive cultured animal products—and at the moment, valuation-based estimates of the timelines for cost-competitiveness have quite a limited influence on our estimated timelines for cost-competitiveness. If a credible valuation-based model were to suggest timelines that were different from our interpretation of the other available evidence at the time of the valuation, then it seems likely that we would update towards the conclusions suggested by that model.

Tentative Conclusions on the Timelines for Cost-Competitive Cultured Animal Products

We are highly uncertain about the timelines for cost-competitive cultured animal products and do not have a strong understanding of the science, technology, or engineering involved in cellular agriculture. We also did not thoroughly vet a number of important claims, given the time we had available to dedicate to this page. We believe this write-up is still most likely useful because it relatively comprehensively compiles informed estimates that relate to timelines. It also highlights and offers some discussion of key reasons to trust or distrust those estimates, and it details ACE’s current interpretation of many important pieces of evidence.

We think that subjective probabilistic forecasts of the timelines for cost-competitive cultured animal products are a suitable way to communicate our current views of the timelines. The general framework that we used to form our own estimated timelines for cost-competitive cultured acellular products and ground meats began with the timeline estimates by informed proponents. We then attempted to account for any reasons to distrust those estimates by ameliorating their estimates in such a way that a previous reason to distrust them would no longer be a reason to distrust them. An example of this type of process would be predicting, as best we could, the timelines proponents would predict if there were no incentives for them to report optimistic-leaning timelines. We used a different process to estimate the timelines for competitive cultured whole pieces of muscle tissue because there were no estimated timelines from informed proponents. For this estimate we relied much more upon Open Phil’s comparison to in vitro organs suitable for transplants, New Harvest’s prediction about how long the technology may take to develop, and a comparison to the predicted amount of time between a proof of concept and cost-competitiveness for cultured ground meat. Basing our prediction on these lesser informed considerations means we are much more uncertain about the timeline for cultured whole pieces of muscle tissue. Adding even more uncertainty to this are the recent claims that, if verified, could lead us to largely change our estimated timeline for cost-competitive cultured whole pieces of muscle tissue. Since we have such large amounts of uncertainty for all of the timelines, our estimates for when there will be cost-competitive cultured animal products could significantly change in the future.

That being said, the ranges in our following estimates represent our 90% subjective confidence intervals.19 That is, we expect the true timeline to be within the range given in 90% of cases. We estimate there is a 5% chance that the cost-competitive alternatives will become available before the lower bound of our range and a 5% chance that the cost-competitive alternatives will not yet be available by the upper bound of our range. We would guess that:

More than half of the main broad types 20 of conventional acellular animal products will have at least one cost-competitive cultured alternative in 2.5–30 years.

of conventional acellular animal products will have at least one cost-competitive cultured alternative in 2.5–30 years. More than half of the main broad types 21 of conventional ground meats will have at least one cost-competitive cultured alternative in 4–50 years.

of conventional ground meats will have at least one cost-competitive cultured alternative in 4–50 years. More than half of the main broad types22 of conventional whole pieces of farmed animal muscle tissue will have at least one cost-competitive cultured alternative in 10–70 years.

To give a better sense of the subjective probability distributions that we have for each of the timelines, we also provide a series of our approximate point estimates of the probability that these cost-competitive scenarios would occur within certain timeframes.23

Table 2. Our approximate subjective probability estimates of cost-competitiveness for some types of cultured animal products Approximate estimate of the probability that there will be at least one cost-competitive cultured alternative for more than half of the main broad types of animal products within this animal product category in: Animal product category 5 years time 10 years time 20 years time Acellular 15% 40% 75% Ground Meat 7.5% 20% 55% Whole Pieces of Muscle Tissue 1% 5% 30%

From writing this page we gained a better overall understanding of cultured animal product timelines and now feel more confident in our estimated timelines. However, the timelines that we have estimated here are not largely different from those that we previously would have estimated. Small updates in our estimated timelines could contribute to important changes in our views, but these small changes by themselves seem unlikely to cause large differences in our evaluations. Our present understanding of the effects of interventions lacks the precision that would be necessary for us to make large updates in our views because of small changes in our predictions about when cost-competitive cultured alternatives will be available.

Further Questions

We did not fully investigate a number of important questions that would have informed our view about when cost-competitive cultured alternatives may be available. Further research on those questions—some of which are listed below—could cause us to significantly update our views.

Are there any flaws in the reasoning that cultured animal product proponents give for their estimated timelines?

What timelines for cost-competitive cultured animal products do other scientists in the tissue engineering field estimate?

How do the methodologies and/or assumptions used in the cost estimates of cultured meat proponents differ from those used in the Van der Weele & Tramper estimate?

How much would animal-free growth media cost if it were purchased at industrial scale in a few years time?

Has there been any substantial progress on culturing whole pieces of muscle tissue?

Key Resources

Exmoor Pharma Concepts, 2008. The In Vitro Meat Consortium Preliminary Economics Study.

Open Philanthropy Project, 2015. Animal Product Alternatives Report.

Open Philanthropy Project, 2015. Open Philanthropy Project’s non-verbatim summary of a conversation with a scientist with 18 years experience in the tissue engineering industry.

New Harvest, 2016. What is Cellular Agriculture?

van der Weele, C., & Tramper, J. (2014). Cultured meat: every village its own factory?. Trends in biotechnology, 32(6), 294-296.

Wikipedia, 2017. Cell culture.

Wikipedia, 2017. Growth Medium.

Wikipedia, 2017. Timeline of cellular agriculture.

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