Alamy mentioned that the suggestion that ingesting immortalized cells might be linked to most cancers in people was “so ludicrous as to be laughable.” “So few people have had cultivated meat or have access to it that it feels like these things that are being raised are more fearmongering than anything else,” she says. “It feels like it’s taking advantage of consumers’ unfamiliarity with this product.”
The CEW web site and advert marketing campaign is harking back to an identical marketing campaign focusing on the plant-based meat trade by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), one other US marketing campaign group. One advert the CCF ran through the 2020 Super Bowl featured a mock spelling bee the place college students struggled to spell some components present in plant-based burgers. “You might need a PhD to understand what’s in synthetic meat,” ran the voiceover. Founded by Rick Berman in 1996, the CCF has a protracted historical past of campaigning in opposition to plant-based meat, animal welfare charities, and laws to ban the sale of animal fur.
The newest marketing campaign from CEW additionally criticizes the environmental credentials of cultivated meat, citing a preprint examine that discovered that cultivated meat might have 25 instances the carbon footprint of standard beef. The examine was broadly picked up within the press and drew criticism from the Good Food Institute for detailing unlikely manufacturing strategies counting on very excessive ranges of ingredient purification. Other research have discovered that cultivated meat might have a lot decrease carbon emissions than typical beef, though till producers scale up manufacturing, it’s troublesome to know precisely how emissions-intensive manufacturing is likely to be.
Bryant says that the CEW web site appears to intentionally choose materials that places cultivated meat within the worst potential mild. “It’s presented information to inspire more concern than is warranted,” he says.
In response to the criticisms raised on this article, Hubbard says that “CEW is simply presenting existing research, the opinion of subject matter experts, and a commonsense perspective to Americans so they can make up their own minds. Consumers stand to benefit from a robust debate.”
The way forward for the nascent trade remains to be extremely unsure, with most work in cultivated meat being carried out by privately funded startups. There has been some authorities help for the expertise, nevertheless. In 2021 the US Department of Agriculture gave a $10 million grant to Tufts University in Boston for work on cultivated meat, and there have additionally been authorities grants within the UK, Israel, and the Netherlands.
But some lawmakers are pushing again in opposition to cultivated meat. In November 2023, the Italian parliament handed a regulation prohibiting the use, sale, import, and export of feed “from cell cultures or tissue derived from vertebrate animals.” In Arizona, a invoice searching for to prohibit the labeling of cultivated animal cells as “meat” was launched by state consultant Quang Nguyen in January, whereas laws that might restrict the labeling or gross sales of cultivated meat have additionally been proposed in Florida and Texas.
Alamy says that she hopes the campaigning from CEW doesn’t stymy the chance for patrons within the US and past to ultimately strive cultivated meat and determine for themselves whether or not they’ll purchase it once more. “This is about consumer choice and innovation. We’re really excited to see cultivated meat come to market, and hopeful that consumers, once they have an opportunity to try it, are going to find that it fits into their life and it’s delicious and affordable.”