Technology

How much does it cost to maintain such a factory compared to how much does it cost to keep livestock for the same amount of produce?

I didn't say it's not possible to culture it, I'm saying it's more expensive and less sustainable. The food industry is huge, current livestock production is already among the largest CO2 producers. So if we want to replace them we should choose an option that is cheaper and produces less waste, not more. Otherwise the costs of food as well as the CO2 levels are gonna skyrocket.

It's hard to compare with current bioreactors because for making it our primary meat source you'd need a scale that hasn't existed ever before in the pharmaceutical industry. The cell density needs to be relatively low, so you need huge tanks for tiny amounts. Also.. meat cultures are particularly sensitive to both bacterial AND viral infections. Meat production is slow and the smallest contamination at the start can very easily make the end result not up to standards.

Quoting from this article.

“A key difference in the CE Delft study is that everything was assumed to be food-grade,” Swartz said. That distinction, of whether facilities will be able to operate at food- or pharma-grade specs, will perhaps more than anything determine the future viability of cultivated meat.

The Open Philanthropy report assumes the opposite: that cultivated meat production will need to take place in aseptic “clean rooms” where virtually no contamination exists. For his cost accounting, Humbird projected the need for a Class 8 clean room—an enclosed space where piped-in, purified oxygen blows away threatening particles as masked, hooded workers come in and out, likely through an airlock or sterile gowning room. To meet international standards for airborne particulate matter, the air inside would be replaced at a rate of 10 to 25 times an hour, compared to 2 to 4 times in a conventional building. The area where the cell lines are maintained and seeded would need a Class 6 clean room, an even more intensive specification that runs with an air replacement rate of 90 to 180 times per hour.

The simple reason: In cell culture, sterility is paramount. Animal cells “grow so slowly that if we get any bacteria in a culture—well, then we’ve just got a bacteria culture,” Humbird said. “Bacteria grow every 20 minutes, and the animal cells are stuck at 24 hours. You’re going to crush the culture in hours with a contamination event.”

Viruses also present a unique problem. Because cultured animal cells are alive, they can get infected just the way living animals can.

“There are documented cases of, basically, operators getting the culture sick,” Humbird said. “Not even because the operator themselves had a cold. But there was a virus particle on a glove. Or not cleaned out of a line. The culture has no immune system. If there’s virus particles in there that can infect the cells, they will. And generally, the cells just die, and then there’s no product anymore. You just dump it.”

If even a single speck of bacteria can spoil batches and halt production, clean rooms may turn out to be a basic, necessary precondition. It may not matter if governments end up allowing cultured meat facilities to produce at food-grade specs, critics say—cells are so intensely vulnerable that they’ll likely need protection to survive.

This is referencing a very in-depth paper by PhD, PE, Chemical Engineer David Humbird.