As COP29 unfolds, Che Connon, managing director of BSF Enterprise and CEO of 3D Bio Tissues, sees a pivotal moment for cultivated meat to secure essential support for scaling. With cultivated meat companies refining production and cost-efficiency, COP29 offers a unique chance to mobilise financial backing for rapid industry growth. Will this year’s summit propel the sector toward commercial viability and greater sustainability?

This year’s COP29 (11 - 22 November) has been dubbed the 'climate finance COP' for its central goal: enabling action to help finance the transition to net zero and enabling action towards commitments on important sectors – from protecting our forests to reforming food systems.

Reforming and replacing the traditional meat production processes with a sustainable alternative is one of the most fundamental changes we need to make to reduce greenhouse gas levels.

Finding an alternative method can help to eliminate the slaughter of 70 billion farm animals a year and the suffering of 47 billion factory-farmed animals. It would reduce greenhouse gases used in meat production by 96%, reduce land used in meat production by 99% and water by 96%, while also reducing energy usage by up to 45%. Not to mention greatly reducing antibiotic resistance and the deforestation needed for livestock agriculture.

Volume and scale

Two of the greatest barriers to growing the cell-cultivated meat industry have been volume and scale – how quickly commercial quantities of meat can be created – and the cost of producing cell-cultivated meat. Governments across the world are making progress in establishing regulatory frameworks for the consumption of cultivated meat, but it will be for nothing unless we can create the products at a price that is affordable for the consumers. This task relies heavily on external sources, such as venture capital, industry, academia and the retail market to generate funding.

To achieve this, private finance isn’t just a helpful addition to biodiversity funding but essential in meeting demand. As public funding commitments lag, private capital provides something governments often struggle with – adaptability and innovation.

However, investment confidence in recent years in the sector has been weakened due to several companies that attempted to scale too quickly without developing the necessary technology to create high-quality cultivated meat products that can meet consumer expectations. This has damaged perceptions of the industry.

While the climate crisis continues to grow every day, real progress must be made if we are to find sustainable food sources. Technology and operational progress continue to be made in the cultivated meat market. We have now reached the second wave, with smaller specialist companies that have spent years working on developing technical IP to make novel products are now coming to market.

Cell boosters

Central to achieving price parity is using tissue engineering technology to help generate cultivated meat at scale. Tissue engineering solutions that use serum-free and animal-free cell boosters to stimulate cells to produce structural elements can eliminate the requirement of conventional plant-based scaffolds, blends or fillers – as have been universally adopted by the industry to date to make low-quality plant-based alternatives – to ensure the structural integrity of cultivated meat products that can create high-quality tasting products such as steaks that resemble the same texture as traditional farming methods.

The cell-booster products when used within media facilitates macromolecular crowding in culture, which creates pockets of higher concentration of soluble growth factors, improves enzyme kinetics and provides cells with a native-like biophysical and biochemical environment.

These media additives we and others have developed have been shown to increase cell proliferation rates and production yield in meat production. They also reduce the need for expensive and environmentally damaging recombinant growth factors and proteins while simultaneously facilitating tissue production via extracellular matrix establishment and eliminating the need for serum without inhibiting cell growth. All of these can reduce a company’s media costs by up 75%.

Business model

This is step one of a two-stage process. The next is to find a suitable business model that can allow manufacturers to deliver production quantities at the scale supermarkets and restaurants will require. The current approach within the market to achieve this has been a transition toward a white-label model, providing a cost-effective and scalable source of media additives to individual manufacturers allowing them to integrate and scale the technology through their product design process.

This model can significantly reduce costs of production, packaging and shipment, ensuring that the large volumes required by the cultivated meat companies can be guaranteed.

This week provides the opportunity to put the cultivated meat market back on the COP29 agenda, showcase the great strides being made across the industry and, more importantly, re-ignite investor confidence in the integral role finance can play in delivering food security and sustainability.

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