Cultured meat is produced by culturing animal muscle tissue in a laboratory without growing the whole animals. Its development is currently in a research stage. An earlier study showed that cultured meat production could potentially have substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions, land use and water use compared to conventionally produced meat. The aim of this paper is to amend the previous study by considering alternative production scenarios. The impacts of replacing cyanobacteria based nutrient media with plant based media are assessed. This paper includes more specific modelling of a bioreactor suitable for cultured meat production. Further, this study estimates the water footprint of cultured meat based on a method that is compliant with life cycle assessment. The environmental impacts of cultured meat are compared with conventionally produced meat and with plant based protein sources. It is concluded that regardless of the high uncertainty ranges cultured meat has potential to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and land use when compared to conventionally produced meat.
TUOMISTO Hanna Leena;
ELLIS Marianne J.;
HAASTRUP Palle;
2015-04-17
ACLCA
JRC91013
978-0-9882145-7-6,
https://aclca.org/,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC91013,
This document is only visible at the Commission level.
You are not authorized to publish or distribute it outside the European Commission.
This is a public document. You can share this publication.
Additional supporting files
| File name | Description | File type | |
|---|
