Analysis of the Cultured Meat Production System in Function of Its Environmental Footprint: Current Status, Gaps and Recommendations

Cultured meat has been presented as an environmentally friendlier option to conventional meat, but due to the limited data, the studies related to its performance are scarce and based on hypothetical production processes. This work provides a short literature review of the published environmental assessments of cultured meat. The main findings of this critical analysis showed that the lack of real data related to cultured meat decreased the level of accuracy of each study. The missing environmental profile of the process itself, including the proliferation and differentiation phases in bioreactors, along with key ingredients such as growth factors and other recombinant proteins, increase the difficulty of achieving reliable conclusions. In order to bridge the highlighted gaps, a complete production system is modelled and analysed from an engineering and life-cycle perspective. Furthermore, an overview of the supply chains of different products used in the process is provided, together with recommendations on how they should be considered in future life-cycle assessments. In essence, this work provides a structured pathway for upcoming consistent environmental assessments in this field, with the objective of setting the basis to understand the potential of cultured meat.