SPECIAL STORY FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE October 2023 61 on in vitro food production: cell culture to produce “meat”, but this technology is still in the research and development stage. In addition, although the cell-based food technology is well developed by private companies, it is less present in academic research. Indeed, up to February 13th, 2023, around 826 scientific publications were present in the Web of Science (including 108 in 2020; 180 in 2021 and 242 in 2022) with a high proportion of review papers (19%), while more than 25,000 articles were present in the press media. The authors of scientific research are mainly from the USA (200 articles), the United Kingdom (93 articles), China (73 articles), Germany (59 articles) and the Netherlands (55 articles). Most of the scientific articles deals with technical issues, with less focus on other challenges, particularly with environmental impacts (Hocquette et al., 2023). As a consequence of weak academic research in this area, cell-based food has not yet proven yet to be as healthy or so nutritious compared to meat from farm animals due to a lack of data. Research in nutrition with digestibility approaches needs to be conducted to study the absorption of nutrients from cell-based food by the human digestive tract. Regarding interactions with the environment, only a few studies have been conducted so far with no clear conclusion. In addition, livestock farming systems have weaknesses but also benefits not considered yet in the comparison with cell-based food. In terms of potential consumer acceptance, there is still a great uncertainty despite several studies since the motives and barriers for willingness to buy and eat cell-based food depend on many factors including cultural factors with various interactions between them. THE FUTURE OF CELL-BASED FOOD Some companies believe that cell-based food will initially be a niche market for high-quality products with expected animal and planetary benefits, to which the richest consumers (who also have the highest willingness to pay) are the most sensitive. However, in this scenario, the small deployment of "cultured meat" would never be such as to significantly reduce the environmental impact of livestock farming, which is one of the goals of this new technology. In a second phase, if the dynamism of investors continues, if the cost of production decreases, and if government support is present, the development of the cell-based food sector would extend to the mass market, which may result in a decrease in livestock and in the number of farms and, consequently, in a desertification of the countryside (Chriki et al., 2022). On the contrary, urban employment for the production of cell-based food would increase. This would change the balance within or between countries, with highly developed urban regions in which the production facilities would develop, damaging the livelihoods and income levels of rural populations in territories traditionally dependent on livestock. The concentration of investment in a few hands is also likely to lead to an imbalance of economic power (Mancini and Antonioli, 2022). The development of cell-based food is likely to cause a shift from conventional meat production to a highend market. Consequently, meat would become an expensive luxury product (Mancini and Antonioli, 2022).
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