Cultivated meat – soon mainstream on your plate

Hal F, Global Dilemma StageEngelsk

There is no longer any doubt. Consumer adoption of more planetary friendly dietary patterns would have been an amazing solution to several of our biggest challenges. Climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation or water and air pollution. If only…. it wasn’t for the fact that when it comes to food, changing what we eat has proven more difficult than flying a rocket to Mars. 

But. There is a solution to letting people continue to enjoy the products and dishes they have loved since they were kids. And it’s getting closer to becoming mainstream on people’s everyday plates. With only a few muscle cells, we’ll soon be able to produce as much real meat as hundreds of thousands of animals. The promise of cultivated meat is twofold: To provide a radically more sustainable complement to conventional meat production, and b) to do so with zero consumer behavior change. Same meat, new production technology.

Re:meat is currently mobilizing the Scandinavian food value chain by collaborating with farmers, signing pioneer agreements with the leading food and meat producers, and developing the technology together with some of the largest Scandinavian industrial technology providers. Ready for commercialization in 2027, Re:meat’s technology targets a production cost of only €1/kg. 

To fix climate and the environment, we have to fix food. Let’s join forces to proactively design the journey ahead and turn this into Scandinavia’s next green transition initiative.

Read the exciting interview with Jacob Schaldemose Peterson

What is your background, and what do you work with?

After completing my MSc in Industrial Engineering and Management, I joined the Danish company Implement Consulting Group, where I was part of building the Swedish organization from 4 to 150 people. Here I worked extensively with business development, strategy and innovation, with a lot of focus on the food value chain. After a decade of consulting, I decided to found Re:meat where I today act as the CEO. Our mission is to help save the planet by redefining how meat ends up on our plates.

What is the biggest challenge in the green transition of the food industry, in your opinion?

Human behavior change, no doubt. Food is probably the hardest industry to change, due to soft parameters such as social, culture and behavioral impacts our food choices heavily. 

How does the food industry look on the planet's terms, in your opinion? 

The food industry in its current format is one of the most detrimental industries, negatively impacting and not just climate but rapidly pushing us closer and closer to several of the planetary boundaries. However, since changing what people eat has turned out more difficult than flying a rocket to Mars, we need to create and scale solutions that makes behavior change an issue of the past. Here’s where cultivated meat comes in. Same meat, new technology. Simply but, we’re just updating a 10.000-year-old production technology (called “cow”), without changing the consumer products.

What are you looking forward to at the Global Dilemma Conference at FoodTech, and what do you hope participants will gain from attending?

Moving from protecting status quo to curious dialogue throughout the food industry. Food is hard to change, and therefore, we need to collaborate across the value chain to proactively design the future instead of falling victim to it. Personally for Re:meat, I’d like to create fruitful connections with meat and food producers who want to take responsibility for co-creating a bright future for us and future generations. Participants will get a firsthand view into how sustainable meat is produced in the 21st Century.