At a time that the plant-based meat analog industry is currently passing through some growing pains, cell-based meat is encountering its own challenges. Funding took a precipitous dip last year—78% according to a recent analysis conducted by the venture capitalist group AgFunder, Inc. (although some companies were inoculated against that dip by significant injections of capital)—and bollards popped up in the form of regulatory hurdles and out-and-out bans on cell-based meat in countries such as Italy.
While the bans and regulatory issues are largely derived from those how make a living through animal husbandry, the investor flight can be attributed to the challenge of scale-up which seems to have taken far longer to solve than expected. Although some 150 companies out there are competing in the race to get cell-based meat to market, even those who have a successful bench product have found the cost to scale up without losing quality is still just too high. Remember the $300,000 cell-based hamburger from 2015?