The United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has completed its first pre-market consultation for a food product made from cultivated animal cells. The cultivated chicken product, made by UPSIDE Foods, still has to pass further approval stages before it can be sold to consumers in the US, including inspection of the manufacturing facilities by the United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service. The process described in the consultation documents uses genetic engineering, antibiotics and bovine serum at various stages, although antibiotics are not used in the main cell growth and differentiation phases.

This paper reviews 43 existing studies on the environmental sustainability and nutritional characteristics of plant-based animal alternatives (PB-APAs) compared to animal products. PB-APAs, such as Beyond Meat and Oatly milk, are foods which seek to mimic animal products. They do not include minimally processed plant-based foods such as legumes and nuts.

The Good Food Institute has launched a database of over 500 research papers, books, reports, patents and theses on plant-based meats and proteins. The database can be searched and filtered, for example by keyword.

This report from the OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate assesses the opportunities and challenges of three alternatives to meat: plant-based (marketed as nearly equivalent to meat), insects and cultured meat. Its modelling results suggest that a shift from meat towards meat alternatives in high and upper middle income countries could lower global land use and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use; it would also lower global prices of meats, soybeans and cereals, producing benefits for consumers but putting economic pressure on farmers.

This report by The Food Foundation sets out the state of the UK’s food system, covering the areas of food affordability, availability and appeal. Headline findings include: the poorest fifth of households would need to spend 47% of their disposable income to afford the Government’s recommended healthy diet, compared to 11% for the richest fifth; a greater proportion (22%) of workers in the food system earn minimum wage or less, compared to 8% across the whole UK; healthier foods are nearly three times more expensive per calorie than less healthy foods; and plant-based milks are on average 60% more expensive than dairy milk.

Consumers are familiar with alternative proteins and many would eat more of them if barriers around health, taste and price were to be resolved, according to this report by consultancy BCG and investment firm Blue Horizon. The report also tracks investment in the alternative proteins sector (which has risen from $1 billion in 2019 to $5 billion in 2021) as well as regulatory support. The report calculates that substituting 8% of animal-sourced foods with alternative proteins could reduce 1.5% of global emissions in 2030; furthermore, plant-based proteins could generate at least three times more carbon savings per $1 trillion invested than decarbonisation in other sectors such as cement, iron, buildings and so on.

This book argues in favour of using cultural change to shift human diets away from farmed meat and dairy products, on the grounds of health, environmental impact and animal welfare.

Replacing 20% of ruminant meat consumption with microbial protein - specifically mycoprotein from fungal mycelium - could offset increases in global pasture area, reduce methane emissions, and halve annual CO2 emissions from deforestation, according to this life cycle assessment (LCA). However, reductions in emissions from deforestation may plateau as the proportion of meat replaced by microbial protein grows. The paper discusses the methodological limitations of static (as opposed to dynamic) LCA.