Abstract
Cellular agriculture, the manufacturing of animal-sourced foods by cell cultures, may promote food security by providing a food source that is available, accessible, utilized, and stable. The extent to which cellular agriculture can promote food security, however, will depend in part on the supply system by which it produces food. Many cellular agriculture companies appear poised to follow a centralized supply system, in which production is concentrated within a small number of large plants and products are distributed over a wide area. This model benefits from economies of scale, but has several weaknesses to food security. By being built of a handful of plants with products distributed by a large transportation network, the centralized model is vulnerable to closures, as became clear for animal-sourced centralized system during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cellular agriculture systems are being built now; therefore, alternative supply system models of decentralized and distributed systems should be considered as the systems of cellular agriculture production are established. This paper defines both the requirements of food security and three possible supply system models that cellular agriculture could take and evaluates each model based on the requirements of food security.
Highlights
The Food Security Challenges Addressed by Cellular AgricultureCellular agriculture, the manufacturing of animal-sourced foods by cell culture, has garnered increased interest in the past decade as an alternative to the animal-sourced meat, seafood, dairy, and egg industries
Most support for cellular agriculture has come from the potential benefits that culturing animal products could have to animal welfare, sustainability, and reduced need for antibiotics; as a new food source, widely adopted cellular agriculture may improve global food security (Painter et al, 2020)
Decentralized models, where smaller plants are dispersed throughout the market, would shorten the supply chain and could allow for more regional specialization and flexibility but lack the same efficiency of centralized systems
Summary
Reviewed by: Evan Fraser, University of Guelph, Canada Lenore Newman, University of the Fraser Valley, Canada. Many cellular agriculture companies appear poised to follow a centralized supply system, in which production is concentrated within a small number of large plants and products are distributed over a wide area. This model benefits from economies of scale, but has several weaknesses to food security. Cellular agriculture systems are being built ; alternative supply system models of decentralized and distributed systems should be considered as the systems of cellular agriculture production are established.
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