R&D consultant and ‘innovation analyst’ Maya Benami argued on LinkedIn that such an approach — incorporating meat grown from cultivated animal cells, rather than from the animals themselves — had potential to address big issues of economic viability, sustainability and labour facing farmers.
She pointed to the example of RESPECTfarms in the Netherlands, which has adapted its business model from a decades-old conventional family farm, to a producer of cultivated meat which takes tissue from its cows and grows the animal cells in a bioreactor.
Among those to criticise her thesis were farmers and rural professionals (including some from New Zealand) who pointed to the many fundamental obstacles to such an approach, including energy usage and availability of necessary expertise. And of course, people argued, the concept is predicated on there being sufficient consumer demand for this cultivated or cultured meat in the first place.
It is easy to see why radical new thinking like this is surfacing when the challenges to conventional livestock farming are so becoming so numerous and intractable.
If you have been following the news even occasionally in New Zealand, you will know how much pressure farming industries are under, particularly sheep farmers. On top of rising costs and poor prices for sheep meat (and wool already being unviable economically), sheep farmers have faced challenges around weather/drought, managing environmental impacts and changing consumer trends. As New Zealand’s sheep numbers continue to decline, major meat producer Alliance Group recently confirmed it will close its Smithfield meat processing plant, affecting about 600 staff.
Rather than contemplating cultivated meat production, which can be set up anywhere in the world and much closer to markets, the more immediate lure for New Zealand’s sheep farmers has been turning over grazing land to more lucrative forestry.
There are no easy answers to the situation facing our livestock farmers. We can’t control the dynamics that exist in our export markets. Our power is in driving the appeal of our product to highly discerning customers. What we can control is what we do in New Zealand and the value proposition we present to the world. To get better market outcomes we need to show we are best in class; standing still and defending is insufficient in a rapidly evolving world.
