Important Takeaways:

• “It’s going to go down as one of the biggest failures in food history. Business schools will be presenting lessons on lab-grown meat,” says Julian Mellentin, a food consultant whose company has advised alternative protein companies – and told them not to do it.
• But in what may be the most shameless pivot that a startup sector has ever made, it now wants you and me, the taxpayers, to bail them out of their folly. And guess what: the Government is sympathetic.
• Since the first lab-grown burger was demonstrated more than a decade ago, billions of pounds have been thrown at the technology. It involves extracting cells derived from animal fetuses and cultivating the cells in sterile bioreactors, a process that takes a lot of energy and expense. The resulting slurry is then stretched and shaped to resemble animal tissue, although the backers – who include Bill Gates and Richard Branson – understandably prefer the euphemism “cultivated meat”.
• We were told that this innovation would transform how we eat and farm – but this month, leading industry figures admitted the game was all but up. Which is where you come in.
• In reality, it never stood a chance. The economics were always stacked against meat bioreactors. The process requires pharmaceutical industry-level lab conditions, very expensive nutrients – which amount to about two thirds of the cost – specialized labor and long timescales. Optimistically, producers would be doing well to hit $63 (£48) per kilo wholesale as a break-even price, one study found. That made the output not remotely competitive with premium meat products.
• SCiFi Foods, backed by the band Coldplay and Andreessen Horowitz, closed down this year. Israel’s Aleph Farms has laid off 30pc of its staff. Upside Foods cancelled its plans for its first production bioreactor.
• But the real reason is not so much economics as it is lack of demand, expressed in the form of public disgust.

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