Exploring the future of in vitro meat, a scenario research

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Amsterdam, September 2020

Exploring the future of in vitro meat

Scenarios for a new meat future

A master’s thesis research

Kelly Streekstra | 10617701

Master: Earth Sciences, Major: Science Communication

Examiner: dr. J.C. (Coyan) Tromp, Co-assessor: prof. dr. M.D. (Marc) Davidson,

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Summary

Background: There is a surge in international efforts to develop in vitro meat (IVM). This emerging product aims to satisfy the global growth in demand for meat with a product that is animal friendly and more sustainable than conventional meat. This emerging food product could have major repercussions for the future of our meat consumption. However, the future of this innovation is highly uncertain as of yet. At the moment, a systemic scenario research exploring the future of IVM is missing and regulatory agencies around the world are not yet preparing for IVM at a speed that matches that of IVM’s technological advancements.

This research’s contribution: To contribute to this gap in research and practice, this thesis aims to develop a set of scenarios exploring the role of IVM in the Netherlands in the year 2050. These scenarios aim to create a relevant, plausible, and radical mapping of the future, in order to enable a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary insight in the transitionary effects of changes in the protein-industry. The main research question therefore was ‘What could be the role of in vitro meat for the Dutch food system in 2050, and what could be the potential impact of IVM on the food system, on environmental, socio-cultural and regulatory factors?’. In addition, the external objective of this thesis is to contribute to the regulatory preparedness of the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM), and to serve as a learning instrument for the RIVM’s understanding of IVM.

Methods: This research analysed potential changes of the future of IVM through the theoretical lens of transitions for sustainable development (Grin, Rotmans, & Schot, 2010). To explore the future, the method of scenarios was adopted, which is part of the theory of foresight (Nekkers, 2020). Firstly, a trends and development research informed a morphological field comprising changes in the food system and in technological protein-innovations. Secondly, a set of transition-scenarios were derived from this morphological field, and the implications thereof were explored through feedback from respondents. This research was informed by interviews, discussion sessions, a

scenario survey, a literature review and by attending live events. Supervision was offered by futurists from the scenario bureau Futureconsult1_.

Findings: This research found 4 major trends in the food system and 5 trends at the level of upcoming innovations that are most influential for the future of IVM. In the food system, policy interventions may enhance; the societal paradox of natural versus synthetic foods may change; the consumption-attitude may shift from the consumer to the citizen, and the status of meat in our diets may change. As for the innovations, the degree of meat mimicking of animal product replacements may vary, and the speed of (market) development, environmental impact, branding, scale and meat-like characteristics of IVM may differ in the future. The potential future outings of these key

uncertainties are variated throughout the scenarios. Five scenarios describe the edges of the plausible future:

• In ‘meat to the max’, the clean meat revolution takes place within the meat sector itself.

Consumption of clean meat is stimulated by the government because of its proven health benefits and the product reaches the consumer in an affordable way.

• In the ‘hybrid hope’ scenario, cultured cells upgrade the plant based meat products to offer cheap hybrid product lines that are indistinguishable from real meat. These are seen as the ultimate transitionary end product.

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• In ‘protein palette’, the cultural value of food changes from a functionality to a lifestyle. All protein sources exist alongside each other: cultured meat is a specialty product created in ‘carneries’; meanwhile, plant based products supply the majority of cheaper protein sources.

• In ‘GMO-NO!’, the synthetic aspects and perceived disruptiveness of IVM led to widespread protests. Eventually, these products were prohibited in the EU. This increased the pressure on the meat sector. The consumption of meat is minimised as a result, and our diets are kept as natural as possible.

• Lastly, in ‘going veggie’, IVM remained too expensive, while other meat-alternatives succeeded to grow their markets. A transition a plant-based and unprocessed diet takes place, and the culinary cultures diminish their past associations with the traditionally dominant meat products.

Discussion and conclusions: These scenarios assisted in efforts to question the present thinking of the future of IVM. They highlighted how meat analogues and IVM are based on the assumption that society's desire for meat wouldn’t change, and they pointed to the need to compare the

sustainability of IVM to conventional meat as well as other upcoming meat analogues. Overall, this research finds that the scenarios are thus different that we may anticipate a major transition for the future of our protein consumption. What’s more, the role and presence of IVM in the future is thus uncertain, that the possible innovations and transitions may benefit from continuous efforts in exploring the future. Scenario research like this can help to pose critical questions to the present thinking.

The scenarios proved to be an appropriate tool to cross disciplines and incite thinking about the future. Experts from the RIVM indicated that the research raised awareness of the complexity of the emerging technology of IVM; they are currently considering using the scenarios for the Safe

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Acknowledgements

Over the course of my research, I got to talk to some of the most curious, inspiring and thoughtful experts I have ever met. The way they were eager to share, learn, and explore with me was astounding, and made my thesis feel more than worthwhile.

Being able to connect my research to two organisations added a whole different perspective to the project. The people at the RIVM were highly engaged and willing to think critically with me. Learning how my research inspired them and how it may prove useful meant a great deal to me.

Futureconsult offered me a lively lunch table and office to join, and a diverse set of brains to pick at any moment. The company also introduced me to the world of futurists and consulting, and helped me navigate the workings of scenario-research in a fun and hands-on manner.

Finally, there are three ‘power women’ that I’d like to thank specifically:

I feel extremely lucky to have met Adriënne Sips at a symposium. She managed to enthuse experts from a variety of departments at the RIVM to work together on this project. I couldn’t have hoped for a better connection between my master’s research and its relevance in practice.

My UvA supervisor Coyan Tromp was a continuous source of trust and encouragement. She granted me the freedom to dedicate my thesis to a topic far beyond the disciplines of my master’s degree. And, of course, Maja Bosch. Maja has been my internship supervisor for a full year, and within a few months she already asked me some questions and shared some observations that helped me grow tremendously. Her sharp eye continued to review my ideas and texts throughout the entire year, and her insights truly lifted my work to a higher level.

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Preface

In a panel conversation at the Tegenlicht meetup about “vleeskwekers” at Pakhuis de Zwijger in 2018, the audience was introduced to Jaap Korteweg. Korteweg is the founder of De Vegetarische Slager (the Vegetarian Butcher), an organisation dedicated to recreating the sensation and experience of meat products with vegetarian ingredients. To Korteweg, ‘going sustainable’ means going fully vegetarian; in style. As a vegetarian myself, I found it hard to disagree with his view. On the chair next to Korteweg sat Koert van Mensvoort, founder of Next Nature Network and author of the In Vitro Meat Cookbook: 45 recipes of the future. Koert unambiguously describes himself as in favour of eating meat: a ‘guilty pleasure’ that he hopes will soon be replaced by culinary specialties based on artificially grown in vitro meat.

These visions for the future were initially introduced as competitors. But Van Mensvoort started off the debate by countering that idea of them being opponents. If we’re designing the ideal train for the world of the future, he argued, why wouldn’t there still be a place in that world for an electrical car? Korteweg was the first to firmly agree.

From that moment on, my pen was scratching the lines of my notebook. I was drawn to this harmonious and self-critical movement of commercially and ideologically oriented developers, researchers, innovators, designers and visionaries, working towards a more sustainable ‘meat’ system.

To stay with Van Mensvoort’s metaphor: as of now, the train is our greenest option. Similarly, going fully vegetarian is a fast-track to sustainability, built for the many who are happy with the known. However, some tend to favour the freedom of their own wheels. The electric car is a shining status object, the ‘just’ version for the wealthy, though its environmental benefits are still debated. Might in vitro meat indeed follow in the tracks of our shiny show-off electric cars?

Besides the train (the vegetarian meal), and the electrical car (in vitro meat), we shouldn’t lose sight of the third party in this transitory exploration. Our old reliable: the trusted, loved, rough, rusty, true piece of real bloody meat. Our carnivorous culture — with gourmette every Christmas and hotdogs on the street — would need a lot of convincing to change to alternatives. And whenever I return from my vegetarian bubble in Amsterdam to my hometown in Flevoland, I doubt whether a transition from the ‘carniculture’ is likely to happen anytime soon.

At the Tegenlicht event, the audience was asked to raise their hands if they would buy a clean meat burger if it was for sale in their supermarket. Nearly everyone present raised their hands. Still, I wouldn’t describe this event and its audience as “a warm welcome” to in vitro meat. Instead, a rich critical and envisioning debate arose, full of laughter, fast flowing questions, and metaphors. What kind of future do we see for in vitro meat, how does it fit in the food sector, how could it suit the world? The opinions diverged and the conditions for its developments were contrasted.

Walking out of this event, I started to wonder: what role do we want in vitro meat to fulfil? What niche in the ecosystem of meat will be most fitting for this technology, if at all?

Thus far, I dare to conclude that the future of sustainable and new meat is still up for us to envision, design, build and anticipate. With my master’s thesis, I hope to do just that.

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1 Introduction

1.1 From in vivo to in vitro?

One day, we might eat meat as we know it, with one difference: its creation did not require an animal to be slaughtered. This emerging technology goes by many names: cultivated meat, lab grown meat, clean meat, Frankenstein meat, and the oldest and most neutral term: in vitro meat. It is a novel production approach that, rather than growing the animal to harvest its meat, only grows the required cells, stimulating them to develop the structures we recognise as meat. This innovation falls under the so-called cellular agriculture revolution: a shift from agriculture on the level of the

organism (in vivo) to the level of the cell (in vitro) (Mattick, 2018; Shapiro, 2018; L. Specht, 2018). In 2013, Dutch researcher Mark Post served the first lab grown burger in a televised event. The burger was funded by Sergey Brin, then-CEO of Google. In the following years, a number of start-up companies around the world have set out to develop, improve and scale up this emerging

technology. At the time of writing, 77 start-ups worldwide are actively working on IVM (The Good Food Institute company database, accessed 18/19/20) ; most companies state that they’re nearly ready for the first consumer trials of their products.

In 2018, a petition in the Netherlands stated “In vitro meat is here! We want to taste it.”(van Mensvoort, 2018), when a piece of IVM from American start-up JUST was confiscated by the Dutch food safety authority as it hadn’t passed the European Novel Foods regulations yet. Moreover, on January 30, 2020, the Dutch parliament debated on the opportunities of in vitro meat. It then passed resolutions calling for an increase in ambition for IVM (Tweede Kamer, 2020).

IVM could have many positive implications. Innovators state it will become a more animal friendly alternative to conventional meat. In addition, there are potential public health benefits: IVM production does not contribute to antibiotic resistance and its production avoids the risk of

spreading livestock-born pathogens. IVM might also be a more sustainable alternative to ‘real’ meat: its production uses less water, significantly less land, and causes less CO2-eq emissions than its animal counterpart (Mattick, Landis, Allenby, & Genovese, 2015; Smetana, Mathys, Knoch, & Heinz, 2015; Tuomisto & Teixeira de Mattos, 2014). Therefore, this emerging technology can be understood as an answer to the need for protein production that is more sustainable, nutritious, and animal-welfare-conscious (Stephens et al., 2018).

It is widely understood that environmental and animal welfare concerns call for a worldwide

reduction in meat consumption. Currently, the livestock industry is already one of the most resource intensive industries in the world in terms of land use and greenhouse gas emissions (Alexander et al., 2017; Post, 2012; L. Specht, 2018). About half of the greenhouse gas emissions of the food system comes from the livestock sector2 (Our world in data, Environmental Impacts of Food) and the expansion of livestock production has dominated the agricultural land use change over the past 50 years (Alexander et al., 2017). Meanwhile, livestock products only account for 17% of the global supply in calories (Our world in data, Land use change). In the Netherlands, nearly a third of our land

2_{Of all emissions from the food system, 31% comes from livestock and fisheries, 6% from crops for animal feed,} 16% of land use for livestock, amounting to 52% of all food production emissions. See for more information this page on food production greenhouse gas emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

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surface is used by farms specialising in livestock grazing, and nearly half of all Dutch farms specialise in grazing livestock (CBS, 2019).

According to UN predictions, the world will have about 9.7 billion inhabitants by 2050 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019). Globally, this is understood to lead to a significant increase in the demand for meat (Alexander et al., 2017; Alexandratos & Bruinsma, 2012; Post, 2012; E. A. Specht, Welch, Rees Clayton, & Lagally, 2018): demand is expected to grow from 258 million tonnes in 2006 to 455 million tonnes in 2050 (Alexandratos & Bruinsma, 2012). The conventional livestock industry may not be able to fully satisfy this growing demand for the environmental pressures this would entail (Alexander et al., 2017). What’s more, we are likely to have reached a biological limit in how efficient we can make animals at growing meat (Tallentire, Leinonen, & Kyriazakis, 2018). For instance, it is found that chicken cannot become more efficient at growing meat, for they will likely experience significant harm to their welfare (Zuidhof, Schneider, Carney, Korver, & Robinson, 2014).

Therefore, companies worldwide have set out to change the consumption patterns of the meat consumer. As of 2020, there’s a growing market in plant-, mycoprotein- and insect-based meat substitutes, as well as other alternatives.

Despite the developments that have taken place for in vitro meat, the cell-based meat industry is still widely regarded as being in a nascent stage (Cameron & Neill, 2019; Stephens et al., 2018). No IVM company has made any commercial sales at the time of writing. Before IVM could function in our food system, many elements of these products need to be designed; technological hurdles need to be solved, production methods need to be set up at proper scales, and the product needs to be accepted and regarded as safe by policy makers and consumers alike (Hocquette, 2016; Stephens et al., 2018). Furthermore, public debate about IVM - and the wider issue of (industrially produced) meat - may impact the future of IVM (Stephens, Sexton, & Driessen, 2019; van der Weele & Driessen, 2019). Thus, the future of IVM is highly uncertain, and its future potentially has enormous societal and environmental impact.

1.2 The research objectives

Experts from many disciplines have begun to think about the future that IVM could bring about, seeing how it could impact our climate goals, animal rights, our dinner plates, and the food system. The current future conceptualisations of IVM are mainly envisioned by innovators and designers based on the potential outcomes of technical developments of IVM (Böhm, Ferrari, & Woll, 2018; Ferrari & Lösch, 2017; van Mensvoort & Grievink, 2014). However, many factors about the future of IVM remain so-called ‘known unknowns’. A variety of trends can influence the global food system, and there are many directions that tissue engineering for consumption may still develop into, leaving the future highly uncertain. To understand potential sustainable transitions it is beneficial to combine the view of technological changes with systemic changes (Herrero, M, Thornton, PK, Mason-D’Croz, D et al., 2020). Making a set of scenarios on the future of IVM can help explore the plausible futures and the uncertainties therein. These scenarios could assist in preparations for these futures.

A set of scenarios for the (Dutch) future of IVM hasn’t been researched before. Therefore, the internal objective of this research is to contribute to this research gap by developing a set of

scenarios that explore the future of IVM in the Netherlands in 2050, and to research the implications of these scenarios.

The purpose of this thesis is not solely to develop these scenarios, however. Rather, they are a means to an end. Ramirez and Wilkinson (2016) explain: “scenarios are best thought of as services, not products”. They are part of a wider intervention. Throughout the world, regulatory bodies are only in the earliest stages of engagement with the emerging technology of IVM, which is expected to pose a practical bottleneck or delay to the speed of market development of IVM. The practical

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service that this scenario study aims to contribute to, is the early engagement of regulators with the emerging technology of IVM.

The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM) is an independent (scientific) research institute that acts as a trusted advisor to the government. The RIVM is committed to public health and a safe and healthy environment, and is constantly exploring how to be proactive with respect to emerging technologies by developing methods for regulatory preparedness within their Safe Innovation Approach (SIA). “Safe Innovation can be seen as a process to ensure that potential risks of innovations can be timely addressed throughout the R&D process and not only in the later stages before going to market.” SIA comprises of Safe-by-design and regulatory preparedness. ‘Safe-by-design recommends industry to integrate safety considerations as early as possible into the innovation process’, while regulatory preparedness ‘aims to improve anticipation of regulators in order that they can facilitate the development of adaptable (safety) regulation that can keep up with the pace of knowledge generation and innovation’ (Soeteman-Hernández, Apostolova, et al., 2019; Soeteman-Hernández, Bekker, et al., 2019).

Because IVM is in such an early stage of its innovation process, the RIVM was interested to explore IVM through the lens of regulatory preparedness. What’s more, a research into the future of IVM could help regulators and policy makers gain insight into the social, policy, ethical, safety and political implications of the introduction of IVM. This was done through a set of ‘appealing narratives’ to help colleagues imagine different futures of IVM.

The external objective of this research is to contribute to the RIVM’s regulatory preparedness within the ‘Safe Innovation Approach’ by serving as a learning and orientational instrument for their

understanding of IVM, its plausible futures, and its implications to society, policy, politics, industry and the environment.

1.3 Contribution by this research

Following from the research objectives described above, this thesis will be guided by the following research question:

What could be the role of in vitro meat for the Dutch food system in 2050, and what could be the potential impact of IVM on the food system, on environmental, socio-cultural and regulatory factors? In addition, two sub-questions refer to the internal objective:

- The trend research:

What key trends and developments may influence the future of in vitro meat? - The scenario research:

What scenarios may comprise the future of in vitro meat in the Netherlands in 2050? - Analysing the implications of the scenarios:

What are the systemic implications of the IVM-scenarios for the food system and for environmental, socio-cultural and regulatory factors?

A scenario research will be the main method to answer these research questions and contribute to the objectives. Therefore, this research is conducted during a thesis-internship at Futureconsult, a company specialised in the scenario methodology. This company provided valuable daily supervision by Maja Bosch, as well as other employees.

The scenario methodology aims to describe multiple plausible, relevant, imaginative and legitimate scenarios that differ strongly from one another (Dammers, van ’t Klooster, & de Wit, 2017). The scenarios were derived as follows. Through literature research, participatory sessions and interviews with stakeholders and experts, a trend analysis on the future of IVM resulted in a bandwidth of plausible outcomes for key trends. Afterwards, a set of scenarios based developed to offer an insight

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into the plausible futures of IVM. These scenarios were discussed for their systemic implications through conversations and a survey.

To ensure maximum knowledge utilisation, this research hereby defines a separate sub-question to guide the alignment of this research to the interests of the RIVM:

- In what way could the RIVM engage in regulatory preparedness for IVM?

To contribute to the regulatory preparedness for IVM at an early phase, I conducted interviews and participatory sessions with employees of the RIVM.

In the following chapters, I will describe the methods and theoretical framework of this study. I go on to describe the current state and context of IVM and the (Dutch) food system in the contextual background. Two chapters comprise the results: first, in the trends and developments chapter, I will explore what ingredients for the future are plausible, radical and relevant from the key uncertainties in the future of IVM. Second, I describe the 5 scenarios for the future of IVM and lay out the

implications of each scenario. In the discussion section, the overarching insights and impacts of these scenarios are discussed. Then, I will offer a reflection for the objectives, the limitations of this

research, and conclude the findings of this research.

In the Annex, supporting documents are added, including background information, complementary insight into the adopted methods, and a selection of the dataset of this research.

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2 Theory and methodology

2.1 Theoretical framework

2.1.1 Transitions theory

This research adopts the theoretical lens of transitions to study the changes that IVM can be a part of. The study of sustainable change via transformation is described by (Grin, Rotmans, & Schot, 2010). Transitions are defined as intervening and irreversible changes of systems in society (Grin et al., 2010). This perspective on large-scale change is depicted in Fout! Verwijzingsbron niet

gevonden.. This multi-level perspective on change describes how landscape pressures (the top arrows) influence the existing regime (the middle. If a regime changes or is about to change, niches for novel practices open up in the system, leading to a reconfiguration of the system. As such it envisions that innovations like IVM, indicated by the green arrows on the bottom, may or may not be taken up into the leading structure or ‘regime’ to contribute to a transition.

Figure 1 The multi-level perspective on transition governance. Image as published in (Grin et al., 2010).

2.1.2 Scenario-theory: foresight

Transitions can take place in many forms and a wealth of changes or trends can influence the future. Therefore a more integral study exploring both the negative and positive influences of contextual trends and technological developments is valuable to research IVM’s future. To explore the future of IVM, the theoretical lens of foresight is adopted. Foresight is understood best when compared to forecasting: where forecasting extrapolates current trends, foresight explores the plausible extremes these current trends may extend into, and positions them into context of other trends and

developments (Nekkers, 2020). The method of foresight that this study is adopting is that of the scenario theory.

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Scenarios are a fitting instrument to do this integral and system-level study of the future, because scenarios aim to make the uncertain complex future comprehensive to regulators, policymakers, innovators and general stakeholders of IVM; “scenarios effectively organize a variety of seemingly unrelated economic, technological, political and social information and translate it into a framework for judgement” (Wack, 1985: p 146).

This research will form a contrasting set of scenarios like Dammers et al. (2017) define them: scenarios that aim to make a relevant, plausible, legitimate and imaginative mapping of the future. Scenarios exist in a variety of types, tailored to their purpose. Dammers, van ‘t Klooster and de Wit (2017) describe 8 different purposes for scenarios, ranging from vision-formulation to risk

governance scenarios. This research will adopt the framework of transition scenarios, fitting the transitions theory, and suiting the nature of changes that the introduction of IVM may bring to the existing regime.

The theory of transition scenarios focuses to develop explorative, descriptive and qualitative scenarios in a participative manner. Scenarios are strongly explorative when the trends and developments of today are projected to their plausible extremes by the method of foresight. The scenarios are ‘descriptive’ or otherwise termed ‘contextual’, when they explore the autonomic developments and uncontrollable events that can influence the future (Dammers et al., 2017; Nekkers, 2020). The scenarios will exhibit a qualitative nature, meaning they will be based on narratives that help the reader imagine these futures and the pathways that lead up to them. Lastly the method to develop the scenarios will be participative: stakeholders will be actively involved in the process. A participative of scenario development is integral to the legitimacy of the scenarios and their prevalence in practice.

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2.2 Methodology

This research comprised four parts. First, a research into the key trends and developments was conducted. Secondly, trends and developments comprise the most important parameters and their corresponding ingredients of the future, and are summarized in a morphological field. Third, scenarios were formed to explore the future. Fourth, these scenarios were tested with the experts, to explore what these scenarios might imply. And lastly, a reflection on the use of these scenarios for the policy process of the RIVM was conducted to aid the external objective.

2.2.1 Data for this research

This research was informed by multiple types of data with differing qualities. To explore “what is” and the early expectations of the future, I consult academic and grey literature. Academic literature best captures the existing knowledge, and can be consulted and referred to continuously. To derive information on the opinions and ideas that are debated today and that have a strong influence on the public, I will conduct research in the grey literature (news articles, journalism, etc) as well (Gray, 2004). Events and webinars also aim to grasp the current opinions and knowledge, and were attended throughout the research.

Figure 2 The methodological overview of this research.

Top level in orange: The four steps of this scenario-research methodology. First, the directions of contextual trends and technological developments in IVM-engineering and other novel foods are researched. The plausible outcomes of the key trends will be captured in the morphological field. These outcomes are combined in a set of scenarios for the future of IVM. And lastly, the implications of these future scenarios are outlined. This approach is combined and interpreted from various sources: (Dammers et al., 2017; Nekkers, 2020; Ramírez & Wilkinson, 2016; Ritchey, 2015).

Mid-level in blue: The research questions of this thesis are aligned with the methodological steps. The morphological field is both a conclusion of RQ1, and an ingredient to RQ2. The scenarios answer RQ2, and within the scenario descriptions various implications of this future are already described, which is why the scenarios also partly cover RQ3.

Bottom level in grey: The phases of data consultation in this research, aligned within the steps of the scenario methodology. Data phase 1 aimed to inform the trends, the morphological field, and analyse which scenarios may be possible. Data phase 2 aimed to collect feedback on the prototype-scenarios, and to research the implications of the scenarios. Data from phase 1 was, when applicable, reused in the data analysis of phase 2.

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To explore the more uncertain data, such as plausible futures, trends, and their implications, it was necessary to pose further questions and create a sense of rapport. For this type of information, I conducted participative research to engage with experts through interviews, conversations (informal interviews), interactive sessions and a survey. The characteristics and qualities of these datatypes are further illustrated in Figure 3.

Data gathering methods

All written data was collected through an iterative process described by Gray (2004), and was managed in Mendeley. All interviews, conversations, participative sessions and attended events were transcribed and summarized, checked with the respondents upon request, and was added to the dataset. Lastly, a survey developed through SurveyMonkey and two scenario conversations replaced the intended live sessions that were cancelled due to Covid-19. For a more thorough description of the adopted data gathering methods, please view section A2.1 in the appendix, and view an example of the survey in section A2.3 the appendix.

Live data: Interviews, conversations, participatory sessions, survey and events

Future studies are generally based on a rich and diverse group of voices. Therefore, this research focused to build and maintain a knowledge network, comprising people and organisations who share their future views with the researcher. There were two pools of expertise that were consulted regularly: policymakers of the RIVM and futurists at Futureconsult. To expand upon that, external experts with specific policy, technological, food system and socio-cultural insights were consulted. The figure below outlines the experts that were consulted by this research.

Figure 3 Types of data adopted by this research plotted against differing qualities and characteristics.

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16 Data analysis of data from the live data

The summaries of each of the live data records were labelled and coded using Atlas.ti software. The method of coding was adopted to gather all data from different experts around a single topic, to enable a synthesis of the results.

The coding was done by the hand of two approaches. First, through content analysis: a deductive method that codes the data by the hand of pre-defined codes within the preliminary conceptual models. This resulted in labels such as “trend, food policy, x”. The next coding step was, through the grounded theory method: an inductive method, where categories, codes and labels arise while analysing the data (Gray, 2004). This approach helped the code to be finalized as “trend, food policy, price alterations”. Eventually, the morphological field corresponds to the final coding scheme. After careful selection of the complete dataset, a total of 525 quotes were analysed in Atlas.ti. In the Appendixes A3 and A5 of this research, a selection of these quotes per trend- and for several

discussion sections is given.

2.2.2 Scenario development methods

2.2.2.1 Step 1: looking into the future

To explore the future, patterns of change were researched. Two main categories are recognized within these uncontrollable changes in the future: trends and developments. This research conceptualizes trends as changes in the food system (regime), or in landscape pressures. These comprise the context of IVM, covering demographic and socio-cultural, environmental and

ecological, and policy and regulatory and food industry changes. Developments refer to the specific technological and branding methods that IVM may still develop in the future.

Figure 4 The pool of experts for this research, plotted against the method of data gathering and their category of expertise. All experts are referred to anonymously in this research. The ID’s (numbered 1 to 20) are referred to when data is used in-text.

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To find these trends and developments, the data of phase 1 is used. An early conceptual model in Figure 5 was developed through a literature review during the research proposal, this model was used as a labelling tool to organize the found data into the trends and developments.

Of these trends, a selection is made. Only the trends and developments that have the highest impact on the future of IVM are described in chapter 4; the key uncertainties (Nekkers, 2020). These key uncertainties are found when plotting the trends and developments on an uncertainty and impact grid, see figure 7. Key trends have a high impact and a high uncertainty. When the impact is high but the uncertainty low, the trend or development will be a theme throughout all scenarios. The plotting and deciding on the key uncertainties was informed by interview- and participatory data, and finalized with the help of futurists from Futureconsult.

2.2.2.2 Step 2: morphological field

To derive what these trends mean for the future of IVM, this research uses the general

morphological field method. This method was originally developed by Zwicky (1969), is adopted by for instance the Dutch research institute Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL, 2019a, 2019b), and described by Ritchey (2013, 2015) as well as Nekkers (2020).

To form a morphological field as is illustrated in Figure 7 A morphological field The potential

outcomes per trend or development are outlined. Logical combinations of these outcomes form the ingredients for a scenario. Figure inspired by the theory on morphological field theory developed by Zwicky (1969Figure 7, the key uncertainties coincided with the most important parameters (each column) for the future of IVM. Through foresight, a set of mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive future values of these key uncertainties are defined. Hereafter these values will be referred to as the ‘ingredients for the future’.

Figure 5 Conceptual model of the research identifying the coding early labels of IVM-developments, and contextual trends.

Figure 6 The impact-uncertainty matrix to determine the key trends and developments, with exemplary plotting of trends and developments. Matrix is derived from (Nekkers, 2020).

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Figure 7 A morphological field The potential outcomes per trend or development are outlined. Logical combinations of these outcomes form the ingredients for a scenario. Figure inspired by the theory on morphological field theory developed by Zwicky (1969).

2.2.2.3 Step 3: scenario development

As indicated in Figure 7, the morphological field offers the main ingredients for the scenarios. To form the scenarios, two goals are relevant in this step: 1) the scenarios explore the interesting combinations of outcomes of the morphological field that could logically co-occur, and 2) the scenario set explores a wide bandwidth of the possible future.

Data phase 1 commenced the first scenario storylines, which informed the insight and intuition of the researcher. More combinations were sought as well. This resulted in an iterative process to obtain the final scenario set. For instance, a test was conducted to see if the scenarios were significantly different from one another by outlining their characteristics throughout the morphological field and making sure that a) no ingredient for the future was missed, and b) the spread of the ingredients per scenario was diffuse. With the missing ingredients, new scenarios were formed, and scenarios were changed where necessary to comply to these checks and goals. The prototype scenario set was shared with experts of this research through the survey, and discussed with Futureconsult, to iterate further on the scenarios.

I tested the quality of the scenarios by requesting an estimation of the “plausibility”, “relevance” and “radicality” of each scenario, a test described by Nekkers (2020) that focusses to evaluate the quality of the scenario set. If these were characteristics are balanced, the scenario falls within the interesting and explorative bandwidth of the future. Moreover, I asked if this scenario set deepened and

broadened the perspectives of the respondents on the future of IVM, and if the scenario set missed anything.

2.2.3 Implications

The implications of the scenarios were found by asking respondents of the survey and in scenario conversations to reflect on the potential environmental, socio-cultural, regulatory, food-system and animal rights and wellbeing implications. The data from phase 1 was reviewed again for datapoints on implications, and was analysed together with the data from phase 2. The data was organized per implication-category and per scenario, and these findings were summarized in the results.

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2.3 Theory and methods to the external objective

2.3.1 Theory to the external objective: the safe innovation approach

These scenarios aim to contribute to a wider intervention in the anticipation of the future of IVM. Namely, to contribute to the practical gap identified in this study: a lack of Regulatory Preparedness (RP) for innovations such as IVM.

The process of RP is described by Soeteman-Hernández et al (2019), and is part of a wider

intervention that the scenarios of this research can contribute to: the ‘Safe Innovation Approach” (SIA). The RIVM is working to further develop and implement SIA and RP for emerging technologies. Therefore this theoretical lens may enhance the ability to integrate this research into the future work of regulators and the RIVM.

SIA was developed by consortium-experts of two European nanotechnology projects: NanoReg2 and NANoREG, both of which the RIVM was part of. This model is designed to contribute to the

development of “a resilient system able to anticipate and adapt to technological

innovations”(Soeteman-Hernández, Apostolova, et al., 2019). The theoretical framework of this research’ external objective can be illustrated by Figure 10. SIA is achieved by two general

approaches: the responsibility of the industry to ensure Safe-by-Design (indicated in yellow in the framework, adopted from (Owen, Macnaghten, & Stilgoe, 2012)), and the responsibility of regulators to ensure regulatory preparedness (indicated in green in the framework, an interpretation from Soeteman-Hernández, Bekker, et al., (2019)).

Figure 8 Theoretical framework of the external objective of this research, positioning the theory of scenario-planning (orange) in the Safe Innovation Framework (blue, yellow and green). Figure is an adapted conceptualisation of the frameworks described by various publications: (Dammers et al., 2017; Owen et al., 2012; Soeteman-Hernández, Apostolova, et al., 2019; Soeteman-Hernández, Bekker, et al., 2019)

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The scenarios of this research aim to contribute to the anticipation step of regulatory preparedness, when regulators and policymakers anticipate on regulatory challenges posed by innovations such as IVM. Alternative future-scenarios, horizon scans and foresight are specifically indicated to contribute to anticipation-actions (Soeteman-Hernández, Bekker, et al., 2019). In addition, scenarios may also offer a common framework of understanding amongst innovators and regulators that can support the other actions of RP.

Scenarios could also serve the industry as an early tool to estimate what forms of the future product and technology are societally “responsible”. However only very limited contact with the industry was possible in this study, whereas an interested network was found amongst regulators. Therefore, this research focuses to contribute more to regulatory preparedness.

2.3.2 Methods to aid the external objective

This research contributes to an early exploratory steps in RP, by presenting the knowledge and insights of the scenarios to the policymakers and researchers of RIVM as well as 3 experts working within other regulatory organisations, and involving them in the scenario process. To engage and inform: the sessions, interviews and survey were consciously designed to be participative and informative.

To enable the integration of this research into SIA, a final meeting was organised at the end of the thesis process with SIA experts at the RIVM. In this meeting I gathered insight into the effects of this research within the SIA framework, and discussed this thesis’ suggestions for further research and regulatory steps. The meeting-guide is outlined in the appendix.

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3 Trends and Developments

This chapter covers the first sub question of this research: ‘what are the trends and developments that influence the future of IVM?’. It summarises these influences in a morphological field. The trends are mostly informed by interviews, participative sessions, conversations and events. The findings are sometimes supported in text by the found literature. In appendix 3 a selection of relevant and interesting quotes to this research is offered, organised towards the headings of this chapter.

3.1 The course of time: morphological field

The most uncertain dimensions for the future of IVM are described in this chapter, and their possible values for 2050 are indicated. Together, these form the ingredients for the future. To reach this overview, the most important trends and developments for the future of IVM were selected, otherwise termed the key uncertainties. The potential future values of these key uncertainties are organised in the morphological field below.

Figure 9 The morphological field of this research, comprising trends in the food system, developments in the upcoming technologies and the defined values for the future.

Besides these key uncertainties in the morphological field, this research identified meta-trends that form the motivation for change in the food system throughout all scenarios. These are the increasing global population, the increasing overall economic wealth, the increasing environmental changes and pressures worldwide, and the increasing impacts of the food system on the environmental and ecological factors. These are trends that have a high impact on the scenarios with high certainty, therefore, they will be the so called “certain themes” throughout the scenario set.

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3.2 Sphere of the food system

In the food system, a few major changes are deemed most impactful and uncertain to the future of IVM: policy interventions may increase; the societal value of natural versus synthetic foods may change; the consumption-characterisation may shift from the consumer to the citizen, and the status of meat in our diets may change. The following sections elaborate on these findings.

3.2.1 Food Governance

At present, discussions of policy with respect to IVM mostly focus on safety regulations. Complying to the novel foods regulations of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is a prerequisite for market entry, and there’s a consensus amongst respondents that no concessions will be made on food safety.

Respondents also discussed that governments may consider influencing the food system in other ways in the future. Since the industrial age, our food system has been characterised by the free market, its prices and its workings (C. Steel, 2018). However, this free market principle has

increasingly come under scrutiny. Throughout this research, one apparent trend is the idea that the government should intervene in its citizens’ diets, for environmental and animal welfare reasons, as well as to stop market monopolies.

How exactly these types of food governance will take form, is uncertain. Candel and Pereira (2017) describe a development from policies on food, that indirectly affect the food system through for instance agriculture or health policies, to food policies that directly influence the food system. Currently, the Dutch ministries inform people on healthy diets through initiatives like the Voedingscentrum and its ‘Schijf van Vijf’ (Voedingscentrum, 2020). Additionally, the protein transition is strongly established within policy plans (Hoogland & Rotmans, 2008), and respondents point out the food governance instrument of governmental funding for the protein transition and sustainable food production innovations.

However, these interventions could change to have a more direct influence. Respondents indicate that top-down price alterations of foods could be a plausible governmental intervention; this measure is sometimes compared to the industrial carbon tax. An early signal of this intervention is the True Animal Protein Price (TAPP) coalition (2020), which proposes to increase the prices of meat and decrease the prices of plant-based proteins through a petition that has raised over 50.000 Dutch signatures. However, some respondents criticise price alterations, explaining how increasing the prices would be a form of income politics. Another intervention respondents deem plausible is to (partially) prohibit certain foods from consumption. This can be compared to regulations on tobacco. These types of interventions require a strong support base and sufficient research that underlines the needs and benefits of these interventions. Therefore, some respondents are doubtful that government interventions like these are possible. It is also plausible that policies will continue to protect the agricultural system from disruptive changes and focus to continue consumer and market freedom.

Therefore, this research varies in the degree and the manner of policy interventions in what the consumer eats as follows: 1) banning certain foods, 2) changing the prices of foods, and 3) informing the public on the properties of food, thereby protecting and stimulating consumer and market freedom.

3.2.2 Attitudes toward food origins

One question currently under consideration around the world, is how to feed a growing population sustainably in the future. This question is approached in various ways, but the most common

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approach is to increase efficiency, often by scaling up production. As a result, the food industry is regularly characterised as high-tech. However, further increases in efficiency are often heavily criticized due to their implications for animal welfare and environmental pollution.

In addition, a commonly heard critique has to do with the degree of technological intervention in the food we eat. Most respondents mentioned the debate surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For instance, in 2017, 17 out of 29 member states of the EU voted to ban GMOs (European Commission, 2017). The same resistance towards GMO-derived products can be witnessed in the supermarket: for example, one US-based brand promotes its tomatoes as ‘GMO-free’, even though none of the tomatoes sold in supermarkets are genetically modified (Shapiro, 2018). Respondents indicate how the public’s suspicion of GM foods is strengthened by a distrust of big tech companies that attempt to gain monopoly positions in the food market.

Instead of a trend towards more enhanced synthetic foods, most respondents recognise a trend towards a higher regard of natural foods. These are also known as the ‘whole’ foods: organic, un- or minimally processed, and resembling their natural origins. Respondents also indicate how production methods are increasingly labelled to improve transparency. One example of this is the ‘Beter Leven’ (’better life’) quality mark on eggs, meat and dairy products.

Respondents expect that the higher the societal regards of these ‘whole’ foods rises, the lesser society will appreciate the production process of IVM. An initial ‘yuck-effect’ towards IVM is described as a potential limitation to consumer acceptance (Bekker, Fischer, Tobi, & Trijp, 2017; Hopkins, 2015). However, this ‘yuck-effect’ is also found to quickly disappear when consumers familiarise themselves with the positive effects of synthetic foods for animal welfare and the environment (Van der Weele, 2010).

In between these two different perspectives on valuing food origins and production processes, adherents of which are referred to as Wizards (valuing technological fixes) and Prophets (valuing natural processes (Mann, 2019), respondents hypothesise there might be room for a novel ‘productionist paradigm’ that breaks open the wizard-prophet debate. Some experts indicate how circular agriculture, and future foods like IVM, do not seem to fit in with either of these approaches. Another signal is that the Next Nature Network stimulates people to move from an idea of nature versus technology towards nature with technology (Next Nature Network, nd).

Considering the above, this research varies between 1) an emphasised cultural appreciation of the natural (the prophet), 2) an appreciation of the technological foods (the wizards), and 3) a novel future foods storyline.

3.2.3 Changing status of meat

Whereas many respondents expressed that they expect and hope society will eventually completely stop eating meat, others stated that we will always keep desiring and consuming meat. One thing these respondents do seem to agree on, is that the status of meat within our diets is changing. Currently, around 4-5% of Dutch consumers identify as vegetarian (De Waart, 2017); about half of the Netherlands self-identifies as flexitarian (Wageningen University & Research, 2020). In the future, our meat consumption may reduce further: the Dutch Climate Agreement aims to lessen the share of livestock protein in our diets from 60% to 40%, thereby raising the share of plant-based protein (Sectortafel Landbouw en landgebruik Klimaatakkoord, 2019).

As for worldwide future predictions, these vary wildly: the UN expects worldwide meat consumption to rise significantly over the next decades, whereas others expect demand for animal meat to have fallen by 70% by the year 2030 due to the rise of alternatives (Tubb & Seba, 2019).

Altogether, there seems to be an increasing pressure on (Dutch) consumers to lessen their meat consumption. Respondents recognise how arguments against the consumption of meat are

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strengthened by insights on animal husbandry and animal rights (Animal Ethics, 2019), by the

negative health impacts of meat consumption (Zheng, Y et al. 2019) and by the negative public health effects of the livestock industry (EFSA, 2019).

It’s not deemed very likely that these arguments would, on their own, cause a significant change in our diet. Taken together however, they are having an observable effect. That is to say: consumers seem increasingly in doubt over their meat consumption. This rise in doubt, or ambivalence, is described by multiple experts. It is expected that protein innovations, when successful, could change the regard of eating slaughtered meat. Van der Weele and Driessen (2019) describe how specifically IVM could facilitate this conversation. They find that as “normal meat is becoming more

unambiguously associated with animal suffering and environmental destruction, the space for dwelling in ambivalence about meat diminishes”. Thus, despite a lack in behaviour change, the precursory phase for a behaviour change is strengthening, enhancing the possibility that society may be ready for a major diet change.

Following this, it is still very possible that the desire for meat remains in the future. What’s more, if animal-based meat would become more rare following the rise of alternatives, its perceived status may only become higher. However, meat consumption is also highly criticised, making it possible for the status of meat to minimise in the future. Therefore, this research variates the changing status of meat from 1) elevating to 2) minimising.

3.2.4 Characterising consumers

Respondents indicate how food has been approached as a highly functional commodity in the Netherlands, meant to feed us as cheaply and efficiently as possible. After the Hongerwinter (hunger winter) of 1944-45, the Dutch seemed to have a motto: no more hunger, ever. With that as a

baseline, the solutions quickly point towards cheap and nutritious (fast) food. In this paradigm, the consumer is seen as seeking comfort in the form of cheap, tasty and readily accessible food. However, this too may be changing. Other values, such as how healthy or novel a food is (internal benefit with regards to the consumer) are increasingly receiving attention, as well as sustainability of the diet (external benefit with regards to the consumer). Some signals of this trend are the ‘slow food’ movement, the rise in sales of cooking books, and the ubiquitousness of healthy & sustainable food influencers and campaigns.

Specifically, eating healthy is a much repeated trend throughout this research, and personalising food to the dietary needs of an individual consumer is becoming a way to approach this increasing food value. However, some respondents indicate how this rising trend of ‘conscious’ eating may merely be a hype, contained within urban and higher socio-economic spheres.

These changes in drivers for consumption are found to connect to the following shift. There’s a trend to move from the ‘consumer’ with behaviour to the ‘citizen’ with values (Van der Weele & Driessen, 2019). Bakker and Dagevos (2012) describe this shift as beneficial: “A more wide-ranging concept of ethical consumption can leave the negative verdict behind that consumers are mainly an obstacle for sustainability and lead to a more optimistic view on modern consumers as allies and agents of change.”

Extrapolating from these trends, we can hypothesise that in the future, we measure the drivers of consumption differently: from food-behaviour to food-values. This would then also lead to a shift in marketing and public understanding of what defines consumption. Branding of products could further focus on citizen values, and marketing research would focus on measuring values, rather than behaviour, to understand the potential of a product. This is specifically important for meat, as the behaviour of eating meat does not align with these changing values.

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Therefore, this research varies the consumption-characterisation from 1) the consumer, who seeks comfort during consumption and whose understanding is defined by food-behaviour, to 2) the citizen, who seeks to eat consciously and whose understanding is defined by food-values.

3.3 Sphere of upcoming products and technologies

On the level of upcoming technologies, the following developments may be key to the future of IVM: first, the degree of meat-mimicking of animal product replacements may vary. Second, developments of IVM are still very uncertain. We do not yet know the speed with which IVM will be developed, what its environmental impact will be, how it will be marketed, at what scale it will be produced, and what specific meat-characteristics it will have. The following paragraphs outline these key

developments.

3.3.1 The protein innovations

Over the past decade, there has been a significant rise in the amount of meat alternatives. In 2019, the growth of the plant based meat, eggs and dairy outpaced that of conventional products in the US (Crosser, 2020b). In the Netherlands, sales of meat replacements has risen by 30% in 2019 (Distrifood & Onderzoeksbureau Nielsen, 2020). This trend of replacing the animal in the food system extends beyond meat products: there’s also a rise in alternatives for dairy products, for instance.

These alternatives can be made from different protein sources such as plants, algae, or insects. Another emerging technology in this field closely linked to that of tissue engineering is precision-fermentation based cellular agriculture (pFCA) (L. Specht & Crosser, 2020). This technology focuses on making the complex molecules that we know from animal products like milk, egg yolk, and gelatine through microorganisms. pFCA is further outlined in appendix A1.1.

These upcoming meat alternatives are closely connected3_{: meat alternatives on the market are} already using precision fermentation or other fermentation techniques to develop meat-like tastes. Respondents indicate that each of these products adheres to a different timeline of development and has a different prospect for market growth. However, there is a consensus that these meat alternatives will significantly increase their markets in the coming years. This will thus be a theme throughout all scenarios.

Respondents also have varying perspectives on the synergy of these animal-product alternatives and IVM. These products could exist alongside each other and perhaps positively influence each others market growth. Alternatively, they might obstruct the future of IVM if they succeed earlier. An impactful underlying uncertainty for this, is the degree to which these upcoming replacements will succeed in their mimicry of animal products, and to what extent they will continue to do so. This trend of product mimicking, also referred to as biomimicry (Crosser, 2020b), is blurring the

boundaries between plant and animal based alternatives (Van der Weele & Driessen, 2019). As such, our understanding of what comprises ‘meat’ or ‘animal products’ may change, which could influence the market proposition of IVM.

A countermovement to this is that lobby groups from the meat industry argue against meat-mimicking in the branding of these products (Sexton, Garnett, & Lorimer, 2019). Therefore, rather

3_{An eloquent example of this connection is how the founder of the Dutch “vegetarian butcher” Jaap Korteweg} is now working to develop milk from grass through the pFCA technologies.

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than understanding this product as ‘meat’, these upcoming alternatives could also be understood and designed in the future as simply a ‘protein alternative’.

Considering the above, this research varies in the future in the degree to which the growing market of meat and animal product alternatives will try to mimic their ‘original’ competitors. Either they 1) mimic animal products, or 2) create a protein alternative that is less focused to resemble animal products.

3.3.2 In vitro meat

The key developments within IVM are the timing of its market entry, and the many possibilities in the future characteristics of the product.

3.3.2.1 Speed of market entry

The sentence “In five years, in vitro meat is expected to have reached the market” has echoed around the world of IVM for years (Shapiro, 2018). However, this may portray the imminence of in vitro meat inadequately. Other research concludes that IVM is still a nascent technology, and that it still needs to overcome regulatory admissions (Stephens et al., 2018). As such, there’s two key factors influencing the speed with which this technology will make it from the lab to our plate: that of technological and industrial development, and that of its regulatory pathways.

The speed of technological development is determined by several major bottlenecks. The most important of these are: scaling up production levels from lab to factory; finding a suitable alternative to foetal bovine serum, and developing scaffolds for the structure of meat. After the proof of concept is delivered, a functioning industry needs to develop before at scale production can take place. Several respondents indicate that the commercial nature of IVM research complicates knowledge exchange, and that this is seen as a limiting factor to the speed of R&D.

Regulatory bodies worldwide have varying timeframes for their admission of novel products to the market, in which they research the safety of the product to inform novel policies. IVM start-ups therefore seek to launch in the jurisdictions where they can pass regulations the fastest. Currently, this will likely be in Singapore, where the regulatory agency has been proactive to ensure its alignment with the state of the industry. The EU and the US have relatively strict regulations, generally take 2 years to approve a novel food, and at the time of writing there is no EFSA Novel Foods application yet. Therefore, the first commercial sale of IVM will most likely not take place in the Netherlands or the United States.

Some respondents expect that once IVM is admitted elsewhere, this may trigger an accelerated introduction in the EU and US. Once the product is admitted in the EU, respondents recognise factors that could lead to a quick buildup of the Dutch IVM industry, such as tax benefits, a rich history in IVM developments, and a strong experience in the life sciences industry.

This leads to a broad time range of estimations for the first commercial sale. In Singapore, this first sale may fall within this same year. In the EU however, respondents expect this moment to be 5 to 10 years away. Large scale production and consumption could come later, and some respondents state that IVM could meet the price of conventional ground meat by 2025 (Tubb & Seba, 2019).

Lastly, some respondents indicate it is possible that IVM won’t enter the market at all. This would be the case if the funding for IVM start-ups dries up before the product is making a sufficient turnover. Moreover, societal debate may also prohibit or slow its introduction (locally).

Therefore, this research varies the speed of market entry alignment of the market entry

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There are multiple ways in which IVM start-ups envision to position themselves within the food market. Currently, the most common idea is to enter the market through high end restaurants, making IVM a status object served in local carneries. Raising the status of IVM this way could aid its competition with conventional meat. However, this limits the market to the wealthier countries or consumers.

Other developments and visions aim to position IVM as a bulk product: affordable to all, offering a better type of meat in the large restaurant-chains and in the supermarkets. For instance, IVM producer Mark Post stated: “I dream that, at some point, McDonald’s will approach me to produce all the hamburgers, all over the world” (Van Mensvoort & Grievink, 2014). American start-up Just depicts its vision as a chicken walking, alive and well, next to the garden pick-nick table where a family eats its (cultured) meat (Eat Just, Inc., 2017, 03:55–04:45). Respondents indicate how an affordable and large scale product would be beneficial to the prospects of IVM, as it wouldn’t impact social inequalities.

How available and affordable IVM will be, is inherently dependent on the plausible scale and efficiency of production of IVM. This is as of yet uncertain, as developing the bioprocesses at large scales is seen as a primary bottleneck for the development of IVM. Moreover, scaling up could be a necessity for the product to reach its goals to minimise animal harm and to reach the optimal sustainability efficiencies. To reach affordable products and scale, some respondents expect hybrid products to exist. These hybrid products, that combine cultured cells with plant based ingredients, are a possible pathway to reduce costs.

For the uncertainty in the plausible scale of production, the affordability of the product and the corresponding branding thereof, this research varies the type of market IVM will develop into between 1) elite status object, to 2) just meat for all.

3.3.2.3 Product characteristics

The characteristics of the future products of IVM are yet highly uncertain, and these characteristics could have a significant impact on public acceptance. In this research, the product characteristics that are deemed most important are the degree to which start-ups aim to copy meat or optimise the product characteristics of meat for health factors, and the degree to which the production process is reliant on animals.

Two factors influence the animal dependency of in vitro meat: the growth factors, and the type of start cell. Most critical conversations around IVM today focus on the animal dependency of the R&D version of these products. Currently, fetal bovine serum (FBS), a fluid from unborn calves that contains essential growth factors, is used to grow the cells. However, there seems to be a consensus that no IVM products that use FBS will appear on the market, as FBS is too expensive, harms animals, and its composition is not sufficiently consistent for large scale production. Start-ups therefore work on different solutions; these are further outlined in Appendix A1.1.

Another factor in the animal dependency variable is the ‘start cell’ for the product. Some start-ups obtain this start cell from a biopsy of a (bovine) muscle (Mosa Meat), leaving the cell intact and letting it grow until it cannot multiply naturally anymore. However, it is also possible to only take cells once, and reprogram them to be able to grow indefinitely into the required cell-types. These are the so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC’s). Besides ‘reprogramming’ the cells (without changes to the DNA itself), respondents indicate that genetic modification (GM) may also be used for the production of IVM.

IVM is envisioned to benefit the safety of meat consumption and of the meat sector, but these benefits are still uncertain. Amongst innovators, there seems to be a general perception that IVM products are safe. However, this safety is argued for mainly by stating that it is ‘safer and healthier

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than animal meat’. Besides the major health benefits derived from not using animals in the production process (i.e. antibiotic resistance, livestock born pathogens), there’s a vision amongst innovators to optimise the meat products towards a healthier version than the traditional meats. For instance, IVM could be used to create a ‘prescription hamburger that lowers your cholesterol’ (Quote by M. Post, described in van Mensvoort & Grievink, 2014). In a controlled production process, the composition can be tailored to the dietary needs. This would optimise and differentiate IVM from real meat, rather than mimicking it.

Therefore, this research varies between 1) optimised & animal independent (most artificial form), to 2) mimicked & animal reliant meat (most ‘natural’ form).

3.3.2.4 Sustainability

One key development for the future of IVM, is how sustainable the production process can become. IVM is framed as more sustainable than real meat, and early life cycle assessments conclude that in vitro meat alternatives can become more sustainable than bovine meat. They do, however, rank close to poultry on the researched environmental indicators (Mattick et al., 2015; Tuomisto & Teixeira de Mattos, 2014). Nevertheless, far less land will be needed for the production of IVM. Combined with a decrease in the size of the livestock sector, this could free agricultural lands worldwide (Tubb & Seba, 2019) for more environmentally friendly practices (Post, 2012. Specht, 2018.). However, respondents explain how these environmental estimations are based on theoretical numbers, rather than production data. Therefore, CE Delft is currently conducting a novel LCA with primary data.

The controlled bioprocesses of IVM offer further opportunities to enhance sustainability. For example, the use of recycling and precise input-supply can optimise IVM production, raising efficiency and minimising losses. Furthermore, these controlled environments don’t emit

uncontrollable greenhouse gases (such as CH4) like livestock do. Thus, running them on green energy would minimise the greenhouse gas emissions of these foods (Parodi et al., 2018). Respondents envision large scale industrial facilities that are self-sufficiently running on green energy, counterbalancing the high energy needs required in the culturing processes.

Although much remains uncertain, the general consensus seems to be that IVM will never be as sustainable as an unprocessed vegan diet. However, it is likely to be significantly more sustainable than real meat. How IVM may compare to other meat alternatives that require processing-steps themselves also remains uncertain. Some are critical of the sustainability potential of IVM (Chriki & Hocquette, 2020), leading some respondents to state that if we can do without IVM and meat, it would ultimately be better from a sustainability perspective.

For the high uncertainty of the future sustainability of IVM, this research variates the environmental impact of IVM production from high to low.

Exploring the future of in vitro meat, a scenario research