How cultivated meat technology could transform animal welfare outcomes and the welfare considerations in its development.
Cultivated meat technology represents potentially the most transformative welfare technology in the history of food production. If the technology achieves price parity with conventional meat at scale, it could eliminate the welfare costs of conventional animal agriculture for the vast majority of meat consumed — addressing the suffering of billions of animals annually. The welfare considerations in the development phase include the sourcing of starter cells, the use of fetal bovine serum in growth media (requiring pregnant cow slaughter), and the ongoing animal involvement in cell bank maintenance. These are transitional welfare costs worth taking seriously, and the cultivated meat field has responded by investing heavily in animal-free growth media alternatives. The welfare trajectory from development to scale represents a pathway from current high welfare costs to dramatically lower welfare costs per unit of food produced.