Cultivated Meat: Technologies, Commercialization and Challenges

Cultivated meat is an emerging substitute for conventional meat that is not associated with animal farming and slaughtering. Instead, animal cells are cultivated in bioreactors and post-processed into “artificial” meat products. Although this new technology solves several ethical and environmental problems, there are techno-economic challenges that need to be addressed to make the commercial-scale production of cultivated meat a real perspective. This book addresses fundamental aspects of new food systems, animal cell culture and cultivated meat production, including cell lines, culture media, microcarriers and scaffolds, bioreactors, downstream processes, formulation, packaging, quality control, scale-up, and waste management. Also, aspects related to commercialization, market, patents, legislation, global and regional policies, and sustainability metrics such as life-cycle assessment, together with a bioeconomy perspective analysis, are reviewed. Finally, case studies are presented and the challenges and future prospects for cultivated meat production are proposed. This book is a collection of 20 chapters written by specialists in the field.