Fifteen years ago, I mentioned to my brilliant director at University of California, Davis, California Biomass Collaborative, that I thought we were heading to a future where we could produce milk and meat without animals, through cellular regeneration.  We had not been working together for very long and he was respectfully skeptical.  A few days later he mentioned that he would have to change his view on that (he had learned from his sources that it was actually happening).

That was fifteen years ago, and it is still not convention.  Although we are commercializing laboratory production of food, feed, fuel, and fiber.  We are much much closer.

In December 2024, ERS produced a report, The Economics of Cellular Agriculture.  It is a timely summary of two technologies and the regulatory framework that is being established.  This is a summary of the ERS report with some context.

Last week, beginning on January 7, 2025, Biomass Rules began reviewing cultured processes that occur on farms.  Investors are moving the cellular transformation of value-added plant parts off the farm.  The attached chart from the ERS summary shows that global capital investments in cell-cultured meat and seafood of $3.1 billion have occurred since 2013 and precision fermentation $2.1 billion has been invested.  The numbers within each chart bar are the number of companies investing in this cell-cultured space.

Some may be concerned that since 2021, that number and value of investments have dropped off.  The cycle has shifted, but this process is not quick.  The ERS, Economics of Cellular Agriculture does a thorough job of chronicling the evolution of the rules.  The most recent rule discussed was a USDA, Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) where a notice of rulemaking on this topic was published for public comment in 2023.

USDA, FSIS has responsibilities for farm-derived crop, livestock, and poultry products, while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has responsibilities for all the other food products.  Of course, non-food farm products are overseen by other agencies (biogas from microbial anaerobic digesters are under EPA regulations).

While the report adds value to describing the technologies considered and the evolution of the federal regulatory framework, it also does a good job of highlighting the cultural challenges, as well as gaps in what remains to be improved in the process.  The top four cultural challenges are:

1. Consumer concerns about the environment
2. Animal welfare
3. Public health and food safety
4. Food access

Much like every new technology from microwave ovens to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), there are barriers to acceptance.  ERS reports that over 80 percent of the respondents to the ANPR were most comfortable with cell-cultured food being labeled as different, such as ‘lab-raised’.  There are a multitude of complexities regarding these labels.  For instance, the meat industry does not favor meat-substitutes as being labeled as meat.  Similar challenges exist for milk substitutes labeled with the word ‘milk’.

Biomass Rules bias is that we have been fermenting and transforming protein and carbohydrates into food with microbial processes since we began producing food.  The January 7th post as well as the January 8th post on US Fish and Microalgae Farms Count at USDA, identify farmed single-cell technologies already in place on US farms.  Cellular cultures are only another refinement of agriCULTURE.

The barriers to forward progress culturally and regulatorily slow the commercialization process down and add costs.  But the nature of capital investments is that they are multiyear commitments.  If the investment does not pay off as quickly as intended, it does not mean the investment was lost.  Billions of dollars in investment have already been made.  Some products have been heralded as saving the world such as the recent meat substitutes, only to hit slow demand once the excitement wore off.

These new products generally cost more.  With food inflation still a current topic of conversation this does not help costly new food products.  Also, on the political horizon is the issue of highly processed foods.  This is less of a food safety issue and more a food dogma issue.  It is confounded because there is limited clarity of what is highly processed and what is not.

An interest of Biomass Rules in this issue is how it impacts the demand for farm products.

• If large food companies can eventually produce most of our milk, cheese, and ice cream without the need for cows, it will change the nature of dairy farming.
• Currently, USDA keeps track of farm production data so well the supply chain is transparent.  But once food production is no longer monitored by USDA on the farm, it will become proprietary business information and less publicly available.

As documented in the ERS, Economics of Cellular Agriculture, FSIS and FDA keep track of agricultural and non-agricultural pathways, respectively.  How each agency enters into to food regulation will likely influence whether lab-raised food is considered transformed as a farm or a factory.

Cultured agriculture will be a sea-change event.  It will fundamentally change the dependence on man and food produced with natural resources in the environment.  Whether it is commercially viable in 2 years of 10 years is not as pressing a question as how to assure information transparency for the public.  Stay tuned!