Cost of Cultured Meat: workshop, modeling, resources, feedback

Update — April 16, 2026

Date confirmed: Friday, May 8, 11:00am–3:00pm ET (4–8pm UK · 5–9pm CET). Two supplementary sessions have also been added: an informal pre-session on Wed May 6, 11am–12pm ET for those with May 8 conflicts, and a European morning drop-in on May 8, 9–10am ET for EU/UK participants.

The format is now finalized at ~3.5 hours across three structured sessions: (1) Technical Foundations — media costs, growth factors, bioreactors, and gene-edited cell lines (this has become a more central crux than it appeared in March); (2) Scale-up and Industry Realities; (3) Synthesis and AW Funding Implications, with live beliefs elicitation on CM_01 and subquestions. Full agenda at uj-cm-workshop.netlify.app.

A strong group of 24 participants has confirmed across TEA research, bioprocess engineering, CM industry, and AW funding.

We'd particularly welcome more participants with hands-on production experience.

→ Apply/ express interest / indicate availability — async and partial attendance both welcome; ~3 weeks out.

Event: "What will cultivated meat cost?", online workshop, apply here.

We've been building resources for our cultivated meat Pivotal Questions project. We're running an online workshop^[1] on CM cost trajectories and implications for animal welfare funding decisions. We're also sharing our (~first pass/illustrative) interactive cost modeling tool, and a production/cost explainer.  We're looking for your participation input and feedback.^[2]

More details and CTAs below, but it's basically all in the links and the event post.

Looking for

Workshop participation: We have a good set of applied researchers joining, but could use more, along with funders and practitioners who care about this question.  Bioprocess engineers, cell biologists, animal welfare funders, CM industry practitioners,  forecasters and techno-economic analysts; people with both 'optimistic' and skeptical views.  Apply here, and indicate your interests and schedule constraints.  Encourage relevant people to apply/sign-up/share.

Participation can be live (the workshop) or async (beliefs elicitation, annotation, written feedback). We'll adapt based on contributions and acknowledge all input. Anonymous contributions are welcome.

Feedback on the overall approach:  The workshop structure, potential Delphi-style belief elicitation, and the way we're framing the pivotal questions for the workshop. You can respond here in comments or annotate any of the linked pages directly via Hypothes.is (get an account, click the < tab on the right edge of any page). We'll adapt based on feedback and acknowledge contributions (or you can stay anonymous).

Feedback on the cost model and explainers:

1. The approach, the interface, the parameter values, modeling choices, things we've gotten wrong, sources we've missed.
2. We're aiming to provide a platform to foster cost-focused discussion and collaborative modeling, and surface consensus, disagreements, and cruxes. Maybe there's an easier way to do this?

Again, here, via email or (preferably) via hypothes.is.

The question

Animal welfare funders need to decide how to allocate across ~evidenced interventions (corporate campaigns, etc.) and more speculative ones like cultivated meat development. For CM, the production cost seems like an important crux. "CM can plausibly approach cost parity with conventional meat" seems likely to be a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for investments in developing and promoting CM to be impact-competitive.

Existing TEAs, forecasts, and reports disagree substantially. For ~pure cellular meat content Humbird (2021) projected $37/kg (fed-batch), while  Pasitka et al. (2024) estimate $13.75/kg (large perfusion). However, the latter study is linked to Believer Meats, which could have had a commercial incentive to overstate.^[3] GFI's Dec 2025 amino acid supply chain report suggests some of Humbird's input costs were too high by 2–10x.^[4]  A recent post by Hannah McKay (of Rethink Priorities) suggests AI/AGI may substantially address the scaling and cost issues. But the question seems unresolved.

The workshop (Friday, May 8, 2026)

Workshop main page →

Fully online, ~3.5 hours of live sessions over 4 hours with breaks. You can drop in for specific segments. The About page covers the motivation, the key cruxes we're organizing around, suggested reading, and offers an example agenda.^[5]  The exact structure is still tbd, and open to participants' interest and your suggestions.

Also see the beliefs form, especially for asynchronous participation.  The focal question (CM_01 on Metaculus): what will be the average production cost per edible kg of cultured chicken in 2036?

Resources page: suggested reading organized by topic (core TEAs, media costs, forecasting, environmental), plus links to the interactive tools (mentioned below).

The cost modeling tool

**Interactive cost model **

This is an interactive Monte Carlo simulation we've been building to structure discussion and make assumptions explicit and adjustable. It's a work-in-progress, much is AI-generated, and it needs further scrutiny.  We'd appreciate feedback on the model structure, parameter ranges, and assumptions, as well the format and legibility. We're also open to suggestions for alternative approaches to facilitating collaborative modeling

The dashboard lets you adjust parameters (plant capacity, utilization rates, technology adoption probabilities, industry maturity) and runs 30,000 simulations. You get cost distributions, component breakdowns, sensitivity analysis (tornado charts showing which parameters matter most), and probability thresholds (e.g., "what's the chance costs fall below $10/kg?"). The technical reference page explains the actual computations.

How cultured chicken is made (cost-focused explainer)

This is a detailed walkthrough of the production process: cell banking, seed train, production bioreactors, media composition, growth factors, harvest, and downstream processing,  written from a cost perspective. Each section explains what the step involves, why it affects costs, and where the key uncertainties are. It includes embedded explainers, comparison tables, and links to the primary literature. If you're less familiar with the bioprocess side, this may be a good starting point

What would be most helpful

Beyond general feedback and participation, a few specific things:

• If you work in bioprocess engineering or cell biology: the model's parameter ranges for growth factor quantities, media turnover, and micronutrient costs may not be well-grounded. We'd welcome reality checks, even rough ones, and updates -- the model may reflect public academic research rather than
• If you're an animal welfare funder or work on AW funding allocation, we want to make sure the workshop and the pivotal questions are actually framed in ways that connect to your decisions. Let us know if we're asking the right questions. And again, we'd love if you could join the workshop.
• If you've published or reviewed TEAs: we're commissioning Unjournal evaluations of key papers and would welcome suggestions for evaluators or papers we should prioritize.
• If you want to state your beliefs: the beliefs form is open to anyone, and forecasting on CM_01 on Metaculus is also useful. That question is linked to the upcoming Metaculus animal welfare forecasting tournament

This is part of The Unjournal's Pivotal Questions initiative. See also: our previous EA Forum post on this PQ, our evaluation of Rethink Priorities' CM forecasting work, and our animal welfare forecasting tournament on Metaculus.

1. We ran a Wellbeing Measurement workshop in March 2026 with a similar format, and we're learning from that experience. ↩︎
2. Already posted as an event here, but I'm looking for feedback on the approach and resources, and I guess people don't read event posts that way. ↩︎
3. They recently shut down, which might raise some doubt on their estimates, but there may have been a number of factors at play there. ↩︎
4. "Real-world prices for food- and feed-grade amino acids are up to 10× lower than the figures used in a previous, highly-cited study (Humbird 2021)." ↩︎
5. E.g., TEA landscape (~40 min) — where Pasitka, Humbird, CE Delft, and Goodwin disagree, and which assumptions drive the gap.Media costs and growth factors (~45 min) — the biggest variable cost. Whether hydrolysates will replace purified growth factors, what media will realistically cost per kg by 2036.Bioreactors, scale-up, and cell density (~40 min) — pharma-grade vs. food-grade vs. custom equipment, achievable cell densities at scale, batch vs. continuous perfusion.CM_01 beliefs and synthesis (~40 min) — structured belief elicitation on what CM will cost in 2031, 2036, 2051. Where people agree, where they don't, and what evidence would shift views. ↩︎