I am excited to see start-ups tackle new forms of food production. However, I am worried that it is going to be similar to how the diamond industry has been able to defend themselves from manufactured/synthetic diamonds.<p>You can see the arguments being very similar here with animal cruelty, purity of the food and pathogens, etc. Synthetic diamonds don't have the flaws of regular diamonds, much less expensive, don't have the same toll on humans and our planet. Yet, the diamond industry has positioned them as not real and most people will gladly pay more for the "real deal".<p>I am optimistic that there is an inevitability to this market, but the first generation of start-ups are going to bear the additional cost of being the educators. It may be decades until the "educator tax" has been paid. From a product perspective this makes for a very unattractive market. The opposite dynamics of network effects. Where the early entrant has significantly higher barriers to entry than later entrants.
...using tons of FBS (fetal bovine serum) in the process.<p>FBS is essentially a magic mix of animal growth factors, and no good serum replacement exists for cell culture.
The bottom line, so to speak:<p>> As of right now, it costs about $18,000 to produce one pound of Memphis Meats' ground beef, compared to the $4 a pound in most US grocery stores, according to the US Department of Agriculture.<p>These figures are obviously a little fuzzy when not broken down to account for subsidies, equipment/research costs amortized over different populations/periods, etc., but that's a pretty big gap to cross.
Meatballs is relatively easy; the challenges are in producing something with a meat-like bite at a competitive price.<p>For the first, I think <a href="http://www.foodnavigator.com/Market-Trends/Plant-based-meat-that-matches-steak-for-texture-The-technology-is-unique-in-the-world" rel="nofollow">http://www.foodnavigator.com/Market-Trends/Plant-based-meat-...</a> (research group at <a href="https://www.wageningenur.nl/en/newsarticle/Steak-from-vegetable-proteins.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.wageningenur.nl/en/newsarticle/Steak-from-vegeta...</a>) is a lot more advanced.
Looking at all the controversy surrounding GMO foods, many of which have had decades of scientific study, it does not portend well to getting the general population to accept this. In addition, if you do get this accepted, any food-borne illnesses related to this (even if not the fault of the producer) or allergies will result in tons of bad publicity.<p>As some posters have already mentioned, this is not a field where you want to be the first.
Ironically, while at least some of the motivation for this is to prevent animal suffering, once we figure out how to grow meat directly, we will have little use for many livestock species and this could actually cause them to greatly decrease in numbers if not disappear entirely. I'm interested to see what we do with pigs, etc if we aren't going to eat them.
I showed this article to a coworker who pointed out an interesting idea - that this technology could be used to produce meat in Space, or on Mars. Interesting thought.