The promise of cultivated meat is captivating—a sustainable, ethical alternative to conventional meat production. While the technical, environmental, and societal challenges are immense, they also present unique opportunities for innovation across various biotechnology sectors.
In this article, bioprocess expert Steven Lang offers a deep dive into the world of cultivated meat. Drawing from his extensive experience, Lang explores the complex landscape of this emerging technology—from tackling production scaling challenges to navigating crucial socio-economic barriers. Through our analysis, we uncover the vital innovations, leadership strategies, and collaborative approaches needed to transform cultivated meat from a promising concept into a cost-effective, viable alternative to traditional meat production.
This concept is discussed in greater detail in an episode of the Smart Biotech Scientist Podcast, hosted by David Brühlmann, founder of Brühlmann Consulting.
The Socio-Economic Hurdles of Cultivated Meat
Science vs. Socio-economic Challenges
While the scientific advancements in cultivated meat have been impressive, Steven believes socio-economic factors are the real barrier to success.
He notes, "I have great confidence in our ability to continue the 40+ years of biopharmaceutical trajectory to solve some scientific challenges to produce safe and tasty cultivated meat. However, I'm not certain we have the societal or economic leadership necessary to make it a reality."
This reflects his concern that while science is progressing, the societal and economic systems may not be equipped to embrace the technology fully. As cultivated meat companies strive to prove the potential of their products, they face the complex challenge of navigating political, economic, and cultural resistance, which could delay or even undermine their efforts.
The Journey into Biotech: Steven's Story
A Lifelong Passion for Genetics
Steven's career in biotech began in his youth when his father, keeping up with scientific advancements, introduced him to the potential of genetics. "From that point, I focused all my education on learning more about genetics and molecular biology," Steven recalls. This early interest in genetics led him to pursue a career in molecular microbiology, which later became a key foundation for his work in cultivated meat.
Transitioning from Molecular Biology to Management
It wasn't until his postdoctoral work that Steven ventured beyond the traditional lab environment. He became fascinated with organizational behavior and leadership, realizing that a deep understanding of these areas could amplify his impact on scientific projects. This led him to pursue an MBA, where he learned about managing teams and fostering collaboration between diverse scientific disciplines.
Key Career Moments: From J&J to Cultivated Meat
Steven's professional journey includes pivotal moments that shaped his approach to biotech. One of the most influential experiences came at Johnson & Johnson's biologics arm, Centocor, where he was tasked with reducing the cost of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). This challenge taught him the importance of analyzing the critical path from cell lines to the final product and the relationship between cost, quality, and efficiency.
The Shift to Cultivated Meat
So, why the transition into cultivated meat? For Steven, the appeal of cultivated meat lies in its technical challenge. Applying biomanufacturing technology, typically used for high-cost products like biopharmaceuticals, to a low-margin food commodity like meat was fascinating and daunting.
He also recognized that cultivated meat solves many interconnected problems—technical, business, cultural, and environmental—making it a deeply complex and rewarding field.
The Current Viability of Cultivated Meat
Is Cultivated Meat Ready for Market?
Steven's answer is cautious but optimistic when asked whether cultivated meat is a viable alternative to conventional meat: "Honestly, not quite yet. I think we'll get there, but we need more time." According to him, the industry still faces significant challenges in meeting the minimal viable product (MVP) requirements, which include achieving the right taste and texture, lowering costs, and scaling production to meet demand.
Moreover, he points out that the industry needs to address several socio-economic factors, such as consumer demand and political resistance, before cultivated meat can become mainstream.
Will Cultivated Meat Face a Tech Bubble?
With over $3 billion in venture capital investment and few products in the market, Steven acknowledges the risk of a "tech bubble." While the potential is there, he believes that venture capitalists will soon be looking for an exit, and companies that survive must have strong leadership and innovation to navigate the messy path of scientific progress.
A minimal viable product for a cultivated meat company has to first of all, match or exceed the taste and texture of conventional meat. Second, it needs to reduce the cost of the finished product. And then finally, it has to immensely scale that production to even have a small fraction of the conventional meat market.
The Technical Challenges of Scaling Cultivated Meat Production
Understanding the Scale of the Challenge
Scaling cultivated meat production is a monumental task. As Steven explains, the goal is to produce billions of kilos of meat cost-effectively. To put this into perspective, global meat production is about 6 billion kilos per week. Even capturing just 1% of that market would require 12,000 100,000-liter bioreactors operating 24/7.
The challenge is not just scaling the production process but also ensuring the science behind it—cell biology, nutritional loading, and intensification—can meet the demands of such large-scale operations. The need for innovation in these areas is critical, as the cultivated meat industry requires biomanufacturing solutions capable of operating at scales far larger than current biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes.
Innovations Needed for Success
Several innovations will be required to reach the necessary production scales. Steven emphasizes that advances in cell engineering and process optimization are key.
Understanding the connection between the critical quality attributes (CQAs) of cultivated meat—such as sensory and nutritional attributes—and the underlying biology of cell signaling is essential. These insights will allow scientists to optimize the process for better taste and texture, which is crucial for consumer acceptance.
Additionally, the efficiency of converting raw materials into biomass will need to be significantly improved. "How can we take feedstocks and raw materials and efficiently convert them into high-value protein?" Steven asks. Answering this question will require innovations in process engineering and supply chain management.
The Role of Media and Supply Chain Innovation
Media quality is another major challenge. Cultivated meat production demands vast media, and the industry currently relies on expensive, high-quality ingredients.
Alternative raw materials and innovative sourcing strategies will be crucial to driving down costs. "We need a supply chain out there looking for high-quality alternative raw materials at a lower cost," Steven notes.
To maintain the integrity of the production process, ensuring consistency in the media used for cell culture will also require advanced quality systems and analytics.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Cultivated Meat
While Steven acknowledges the challenges ahead, he remains hopeful. The cultivated meat industry is at a crossroads, where innovative scientific, engineering, and business breakthroughs will determine whether it can overcome its hurdles and become a mainstream part of the food system.
As Steven aptly concludes, "It takes a village." The collaboration of scientists, engineers, and leaders from various disciplines will be essential to deliver on the promise of cultivated meat.
The Socio-economic Challenges of Cultivated Meat Production
Is It Science or Society Holding Back Cultivated Meat?
While much of the media focuses on the scientific aspects of cultivated meat, Steven argues that the real barriers to success lie in the science and socio-economic landscape.
While technological advancements in biomanufacturing have made significant strides in creating safe, nutritious, and scalable cultivated meat, the economic and societal leadership to make it a widespread reality is still lacking. This includes overcoming political hurdles, creating public demand, and achieving regulatory frameworks.
Steven suggests that this is an area where the industry might face pushback, especially from entrenched interests in the traditional meat industry. Overcoming these socio-economic challenges will require strong leadership and collaboration across multiple sectors.
From Biotech to Cultivated Meat: Steven's Personal Journey
A Career That Bridged the Gap Between Science and Leadership
His early interest in genetics and molecular biology shaped Steven's journey into biotech and cultivated meat. However, it wasn't until his postdoctoral work that he realized the importance of leadership, management, and collaboration within scientific endeavors. This led him to pursue an MBA, allowing him to merge his scientific expertise with a focus on driving business strategy and leadership in the biotech sector.
Steven's transition from traditional biopharmaceuticals to cultivated meat was motivated by the technical challenge of scaling biomanufacturing processes for a low-margin food product. With deep roots in biopharma, Steven was inspired by the challenge of adapting expensive biomanufacturing technology to produce a mass-market product like meat at an affordable price.
The Roadblocks in Scaling Cultivated Meat
Biomanufacturing Challenges: Reaching the Scale We Need
One of the most significant challenges in the cultivated meat industry is the scale required to meet global demand. According to Steven, the world currently produces about 6 billion kilograms of meat per week. To capture even 1% of this market, we would need to produce 60 million kilograms per week—a daunting task considering the cost-efficiency and production scalability required.
Steven emphasizes that the bioreactor scale needed to meet such demands is far beyond what is currently being achieved in the biotech industry, primarily focusing on smaller, more personalized biomanufacturing technologies. Scaling up requires overcoming significant scientific hurdles in cell biology, media optimization, and process efficiency.
Innovation in Bioreactor Design and Media Quality
Significant innovation in bioreactor design is required to make cultivated meat a reality. Even if scientists can achieve 50% cell density in a bioreactor, a 100,000-liter bioreactor would still only yield a small fraction of the total meat required.
This highlights the challenge of scaling up to meet the global demand for meat. It will require advanced engineering, collaborative research, and cell culture media innovations to reduce costs and improve efficiency at massive scales.
Sensory Science: Creating Meat That Tastes Like Meat
Connecting the Biology to Sensory Experience
A critical component of cultivated meat's success is its ability to match the sensory attributes of traditional beef, such as taste, texture, and aroma.
Steven explains that analytical science will play a pivotal role in linking the biological processes of cultivated meat production to the sensory experience consumers expect from meat products. The goal is to create a product that meets nutritional standards and satisfies human sensory preferences, which vary significantly across cultures and individual tastes.
The challenge lies in developing accurate analytics to measure nutritional and compositional attributes of the biomass while ensuring that the sensory qualities align with consumer expectations. This requires a deep understanding of cell biology, nutritional science, and sensory science to fine-tune the cultivated meat to meet the diverse preferences of global consumers.
The Role of Sensory Scientists in the Process
As Steven shares, the process of improving sensory attributes in cultivated meat is an iterative one. For example, a breakthrough that increases the amount of a beneficial fatty acid like omega-3 might inadvertently affect the flavor profile, leading to off-flavors or unpleasant aromas.
Therefore, the collaboration between biologists, engineers, and sensory scientists is critical to ensure that any improvements in the nutritional composition do not compromise the overall consumer experience.
In the analytics, what we're trying to do in cultivated meat is to be able to define surrogates that we can measure objectively that then can tie to the human perception and be able to pull those levers in appropriate ways so that we can tune biomass to meet sensory perceptions on the human palate without having to go through the human tasting process.
The Regulatory Landscape: Paving the Way for Widespread Adoption
Cultivated Meat and Regulatory Innovation
The regulatory landscape for cultivated meat is another area of significant importance. While regulatory standards for food products are based on long-established frameworks, cultivated meat poses a novel challenge because it involves cellular agriculture and biotechnology.
Steven highlights that biopharmaceutical models largely shape current regulations, but these frameworks may need to be adapted to address the specific nature of cultivated meat.
Countries like Singapore and the U.S. are at the forefront of regulatory approval for cultivated meat, but as the industry matures, Steven sees an opportunity for regulatory innovation.
He notes that the cultivated meat industry could drive improvements in regulatory processes that might benefit other sectors, such as biopharmaceuticals, by creating more efficient and adaptable pathways for approval.
Looking to the Future: Five to Ten Years of Cultivated Meat Innovation
The Road Ahead: From Product Development to Consumer Acceptance
Looking five to ten years ahead, Steven sees a clear path toward more viable cultivated meat products but warns that the industry must navigate several hurdles.
First, he points out the risk of early consumer backlash if initial products do not meet expectations. Drawing comparisons to the early days of plant-based burgers, Steven notes that poor early experiences with cultivated meat could damage consumer trust and slow adoption, much like what happened with veggie burgers.
For cultivated meat to succeed, Steven believes that product quality, scalability, and cost-effectiveness must be prioritized. The value proposition for cultivated meat needs to be clearly defined, and the industry must work hard to avoid producing "poor facsimiles" of traditional meat.
Getting the consumer experience right is crucial to ensuring long-term success.
Collaboration Across Disciplines: The Key to Success
Ultimately, Steven stresses that success in the cultivated meat industry will depend on collaboration across diverse fields.
This includes scientists, engineers, business leaders, regulatory bodies, and consumers working together to address the industry's multifaceted challenges. As Steven puts it, it will take more than innovation in science and technology—it will require collaboration across disciplines to drive the necessary change.
Conclusion
The cultivated meat industry is on the cusp of revolutionizing food production but faces significant scientific, economic, and societal challenges. As Steven notes, the promise of cultivated meat extends beyond food production and has the potential to spur innovation across the biotechnology sector, particularly in cell culture and biomanufacturing.
The cultivated meat industry can become a major player in the global food system by fostering collaboration, embracing regulatory innovation, and focusing on the consumer experience. As Steven points out, the lessons learned from this industry may not only reshape how we produce food but could also have far-reaching implications for advancing other biotech endeavors, such as medical therapies and biopharmaceuticals.
About Steven Lang
Steven Lang is a biopharmaceutical executive with 20 years of leadership experience in large corporations, small contract research organizations and startups. His expertise spans discovery to development, process and data improvements, organizational dynamics & communications, financial & strategic planning in both biopharmaceutical and food industries.
Connect with Steven Lang on LinkedIn.
David Brühlmann is a strategic advisor who helps C-level biotech leaders reduce development and manufacturing costs to make life-saving therapies accessible to more patients worldwide.
He is also a biotech technology innovation coach, technology transfer leader, and host of the Smart Biotech Scientist podcast—the go-to podcast for biotech scientists who want to master biopharma CMC development and biomanufacturing.
Hear It From The Horse’s Mouth
Want to listen to the full interview? Go to Smart Biotech Scientist Podcast.
Want to hear more? Do visit the podcast page and check out other episodes.
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