The Economics of Cellular Agriculture

Cellular agriculture is the production of animal products, such as meat, seafood, milk, and eggs, with no or minimal use of animals. This system includes both precision-fermented proteins and fats (e.g., from meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy) treated by encoding genetic material into an organism and cell-cultured meats and seafood. Between 2015 and 2023, cumulative invested capital in cell-cultured meat and seafood reached $3.1 billion. During the same period, invested capital in precision fermentation reached $2.1 billion. These increases are partially in response to growing interest in the environmental and animal welfare dimensions of conventional livestock production, concerns about disease transmission between humans and animals, and issues of global access to protein. Although novel, products using cellular agriculture have been commercialized to meet rising consumer demand for animal-free foods that are close substitutes to conventional dairy, eggs, meat, and seafood. Using data from publicly available sources, this report introduces the economics of cell-cultured and precision fermentation foods and documents the growth in the sector. Areas of emphasis are market drivers, structural aspects of the industry, the U.S. regulatory environment, government research funding, and market challenges as of 2023.