People in the military won’t have to eat lab-grown meat any time soon after all, according to an announcement from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
The U.S. Department of Defense put out a public call in May requesting proposals for “sustainable food and materials” to reduce emissions related to military operations.
The most recent appropriations bill had up to $500 million dedicated to that aim, which included developing lab-grown meat under a public-private bio-manufacturing coalition called BioMade.
According to the Department of Defense document announcing the request for proposals, projects could include things like production of nutrient-dense military rations via fermentation, using single-carbon feedstocks known as C1 for food production, and novel cell-culture methods like cultivated meat proteins.
An American military fueled by anything but real American meat didn’t sit well with U.S. producers, however.
“We absolutely went ballistic on that,” NCBA President and Wyoming rancher Mark Eisele told Cowboy State Daily. “We just thought it was terrible to use veterans as lab rats in this meat experiment.”
Laboratory grown meat also isn’t yet a tested food product, Eisele said.
“They use an undisclosed combination of chemicals in a bioreactor, and they use terminal cattle cells — muscle cells — that they probably will get from somebody else’s genetics, without any intellectual property reimbursement,” Eisele said. “So, you see two problems right there.”
More Study
Eisele wants to see health and safety studies on lab-grown meat products before they are made available to the general public.
“We don’t know anything about the long-term, or even the short-term, effects of (lab-grown meat),” he said. “They won’t release the chemicals used to make it because they’re calling it proprietary information. We want to make sure that if this goes out, consumers know exactly what they’re getting.”
Not only that, Eisele said, but lab-grown meat uses more energy to produce, and has a much higher carbon footprint than raising beef the old-fashioned way — on a ranch in states like Wyoming.
“It takes 20 to 25 times the energy and resources to produce meat that way, rather than conventionally produce beef that grazes grass on the hill with the sunshine,” he said. Sustainability of lab-grown meat “is just a crazy argument, so that’s why we stood up and made a big fuss about it.”
A secondary issue Eisele and the cattlemen he represents have with lab-grown meat is that some companies have suggested they might mix their products with trimmings from lean hamburger meat.
“The problem there is, in the event of a recall for a salmonella or E. coli outbreak, I can guarantee that beef will be the ones that get the blame,” Eisele said.
Troops Are Grateful
Cattle rancher and veteran Tyler Lindholm was among those cheering the news that laboratory-grown meat won’t be landing on the plates of military servicemen and women anytime soon.
“I can’t imagine troops being a big fan,” Lindholm said. “Being a veteran myself, and having served for five years, I can’t imagine anybody I served with standing up and saying, ‘Yeah, this is great. What a great idea. I’m so glad that the brass has decided to shove lab-grown meat down our throats. The food wasn’t bad enough before. Might as well try to make it worse.’”
Lindholm said that MREs (meals ready to eat) were still very much a thing when he served in the Navy.
“There are several times that we ate them, but most of the time in the Navy our biggest issue was running out of certain types of food,” he said. “There was one time they ran out of any other type of bread besides raisin bread. I remember multiple lunches and dinners where all we had was burger patties. And we ran out of cheese, too, so we had burger patties on raisin bread. And that’s about as good as it sounds.”
Still, Lindholm added, at least that was real beef.
Lindholm said he can’t see any real strategic benefit to adding lab-grown meat to the military menu.
“Lab-grown meat has to come from a very centralized area,” he said. “There’s only so many producers of lab-grown meat in the United States, or even the world. That means you’ve got a very centralized food supply chain with that product.”
The COVID-19 pandemic already showed how easy it is to disrupt a centralized food supply chain, Lindholm added.
Shouldn’t Be Banned
Although Lindholm doesn’t himself want to try cultivated meat products, he stopped short of saying states should ban it.
“It’s kind of antithetical to the stance Wyoming has taken on other food products, such as raw milk and those types of things,” he said. “I personally think we don’t need to ban something like that, because there’s never a chance in hell that it takes off in the state of Wyoming.”
Wyoming Stock Growers Association President Jim Magagna said military people he talked to echoed Lindholm’s sentiment.
“I heard from someone who I work with who has nothing to do with the ranching industry, but had a long successful career in the military,” Magagna said. “And he reached out to me yesterday and said, ‘Thank you, thank you. We really don’t need this in our military.’”
Magagna said he, too, was happy to hear that the Department of Defense backed down, both from the standpoint of the cattle industry in Wyoming, but also military morale in general.
“Our military people deserve the best,” he said. “And we’re talking here about bringing them unproven products where we don’t know how it could affect their strength … or their attitude or anything else. To experiment on our military just seems so totally wrong and unacceptable.”
Lab-Grown Meat Not Widely Available
Lab-grown meat isn’t yet available to the general public on store shelves, although Eisele told Cowboy State Daily there are some restaurants that have served it.
“There are some restaurants in the Washington, D.C., area that have been able to access it,” he said. “It’s a staple of their menu, but it is like 20 to 25 times the price of conventional chicken. And that’s where most of this meat is going to come in at.”
The USDA approved the sale of “cultivated chicken” products for two companies back in 2023 at a restaurant in California and a restaurant in D.C., but neither of them are serving that product now.
The D.C. restaurant serving cultivated chicken was China Chicano, owned by the famous chef José Andrés, as part of an on-again, off-again tasting menu on Tuesdays. The product came from GOOD Meat, a subsidiary of Eat Just.
Reservations for that opportunity, which featured cultivated chicken marinated in anticucho sauce with native potatoes and ahi Amarillo chimichurri, have been paused, according to the restaurant’s website.
The other restaurant was Bar Crenn in San Francisco, where the chicken was fried in a Yucatan spice mixture known as recado negro. It was served with burnt chili aioli as well as edible flowers and greens from the Bleu Belle Farm.
That cultivated chicken came from a company called Upside, but is also on pause.
GOOD Meat had also been selling cultivated chicken at Huber’s, a restaurant in Singapore. They were offering six servings once a week in either a salad or on a kebab stick, but that also is on pause.
Singapore, which imports 90% of its food, has been particularly interested in artificial meat production as a way to improve its food security. It has around 30 companies working on alternative proteins.
Expense Remains High, Consumers Haven’t Embraced It
Consumers have not rushed to embrace lab-grown meat, Magagna told Cowboy State Daily.
In fact, a Purdue University survey in April found that most consumers who buy chicken and beef products view conventionally produced meat as tastier and healthier than lab-grown meat.
However, those who do not regularly buy chicken or beef because of their religious or ethical beliefs were more willing to consider trying the products, suggesting there could be a niche with some consumers.
But the products remain quite expensive now, a significant deterrent to all potential market sectors.
That’s likely also one of the reasons none of the restaurants that were offering the cultivated meat products are offering them now.
While the companies have said publicly that these were all promotions that had simply run their course, they have also publicly talked about the expense of producing these products.
Eat Just, the parent company of GOOD Meat, was charging just $14 U.S. for the chicken meals at Huber’s in Singapore, but its production costs were more like $50 for each chicken nugget, according to a report by Reuters.
“It’s too high and it’s embarrassing,” Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick said in the Reuters’ article. “We lose money every time someone enjoys our cultivated chicken.”
The company has added almost 10 years to its earnings forecast for when it might become profitable.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
