The climate impact and land use of cultivated meat: Evaluating agricultural feedstock production

microorganisms, scaling is complex due to slow animal cell growth rates combined with shear force-induced cell damages, metabolic inhibition, and aseptic maintenance challenges. Perfu- sion technology offers a potential solution, although it limits bioreactor sizes. Elevated hygiene demands, combined with the need for richer nutrient mediums for animal cells, especially stem cells, further amplify the challenges [37]. 2.2 Environmental implications and challenges of CM LCAs Finally, the environmental impact of CM will be crucial to its success [31]. Evaluating the envi- ronmental impact of food products requires examining land use efficiency [63] and under- standing the carbon opportunity costs associated with land use [64]. In this study, we employ land use as a metric to explore the potential environmental advan- tages of CM. While a singular focus on land use does not fully encompass all environmental ramifications of meat production, it remains an informative, albeit partial, metric for this anal- ysis due to two main reasons. First, land use encompasses a significant majority of the environ- mental costs associated with pork production, especially soy cultivation for feed production [65–67]. Second, land use serves as a potent indicator of the biodiversity impacts tied to vari- ous agricultural products [68]. LCAs for CM have been conducted to evaluate the environmental impacts of this technol- ogy [38, 41, 42, 43, 50, 59, 62, 69]. These assessments typically cover the entire product life-

cycle, from raw material production and energy use to cell cultivation, processing, and packaging. LCAs of CM evaluate various environmental impacts, including emissions (e.g., CO2), acidification, eutrophication, and health metrics (carcinogens, ecotoxicity, toxicity). They also assess resource use, such as energy demand, fossil resource scarcity, and land use, providing a comprehensive view of CM’s sustainability. In summary, existing LCAs indicate that CM represents a technological shift in meat pro- duction, using more energy but requiring less and different feed than conventional meat. CM minimizes emissions and performs well on several environmental indicators, but its sustain- ability depends on renewable energy and efficient resource management. Despite some uncer- tainties, CM shows promise for a lower carbon footprint and reduced environmental impact, particularly as energy systems decarbonize. Studies highlight CM’s lower biotic resource use and potential environmental benefits, although energy use remains a critical challenge, empha- sizing the need for decarbonized energy sources and innovative solutions [42]. Sinke et al. (2023) [41] see energy and culture medium as the main two future challenges. Energy demand is high due to bioreactor systems and scales, calculation methods that are conservative, heat dynamics at larger scales, and variability in heating/cooling efficiency; however, there is a lack of large-scale empirical data on the energy demand of producing CM at large scales [42].

Several LCAs examine different methodologies for producing cell media for CM, emphasiz- ing various biological pathways. Some focus on using crops as the base material for cell media [41, 42, 50], while others explore using bacteria or alternative microorganisms [61, 70]. Conse- quently, the specific composition and production processes of cell media significantly affect resource utilization in CM production. Recent LCAs report that the land use of CM is consistently lower than that of conventional meat, with values ranging from 0.4 to 6.9 m2/kg meat [41, 42, 43, 50, 61]. This variation is due to differences in raw material selection, databases, and case study locations. This study uses a specific example that accounts for crop rotation restrictions and local yields. Energy use and culture medium directly impact land use, considering feed and sustainable energy production. Most LCAs use agricultural modeling databases to calculate land use for CM. However, incor- porating agricultural realities and modeling crop rotation effects pose challenges [42, 43]. We PLOS ONE Evaluating agricultural feedstock for cultivated meat PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316480 January 22, 2025 5 / 27