In most cultures, eating meat that is derived from animals is part of the accepted culture and a practice that has been there seemingly forever. Most people also have surprisingly strong opinions about meat, more than about any other food. I have seen this in my own vicinity: friends who became vegetarian or even vegan for strong emotional reasons and find the the whole concept of animal meat utterly disgusting. At the same time, other friends of mine find the abstention from meat as ridiculous as the other group finds it essential. These ‘meat lovers’ indulge in barbecues and consider eating meat a rather masculine enterprise. Most people however, are more ambivalent towards meat: they are well aware of the problems that come with modern meat consumption and are positive about meat substitutes and decreasing their meat consumption. In practice however, not so many of them actually live up to their progressive opinions: they keep eating the same amount of meat, thereby maintaining the status quo. We call this the attitude-behavioural intention gap.
It has been quite a while since I published my last article but in the meantime, I haven’t stopped working on this project though. In the past few months, I have given three workshops about the sustainability aspects and the consumer perspective on in vitro meat. In this article, I write about how consumers think about in vitro meat. Without consumers being willing to buy in vitro meat instead of regular, in vivo meat, in vitro meat will not be viable in the future. Therefore, it is very important to learn about the public perception of in vitro meat. This knowledge can then be used to influence the public opinion and respond effectively to it, to make in vitro meat a success. In this article, I combine scientific studies into the consumer acceptance of food technologies and in vitro meat in particular with my experiences from a workshop that I gave last week to a group that mainly consisted of university students and their parents.
In vitro meat as a solution
Meat consumption may be stabilising in the western world, but meat consumption in developing countries is rapidly increasing as their rising middle class wants to live up to the western standard and therefore starts consuming more meat. Due to reasons that I have already mentioned in earlier articles, this growth cannot be sustained in a sustainable fashion. There is a limit to the enormous amounts of land, energy and water used by the livestock that is necessary for our meat industry, that our planet can endure. You could propose to solve this problem by replacing all regular (in vivo) meat by in vitro meat. In vitro meat is predicted to be way more sustainable than regular meat in terms of energy use, emissions, water use and land use. But: would people actually start eating in vitro meat? When you look at what happened with other meat substitutes, you could say that this is debatable and that at most the large majority will profess their sympathy for in vitro meat but will then just stick to eating meat, resulting in no change whatsoever …
What do people think about in vitro meat?
In vitro meat is a topic that interests people and always sparks a lot of discussion because, as I mentioned before, people usually have strong opinions about food and meat in particular. Exemplary of this is the moment in the workshop when I hinted that it is technically possible to produce human in vitro meat. Immediately there was a clear division in the group between the people who would be willing to try this human meat (‘it consists of cells that are very much like farm animal cells’) and people who found this a very distasteful idea. This attention for in vitro meat can work out positively when counterarguments are refuted in an effective way. It could also work out less well and in vitro meat could then follow the fate of genetic modification – a technology which has been received very negatively, especially in Europe.
Immediately there was a clear division in the group between the people who would be willing to try this human meat, and people who found this a very distasteful idea.
It is important to point out that, although the topic in vitro meat has gained a lot of popularity in the last five years, not all people have heard of in vitro meat and few people fully understand the technology behind it. At the start of the workshop, only about 25% of the people were willing to try in vitro meat. People were mainly worried about the taste and texture of in vitro meat (they didn’t think it could ever be like ‘real’ meat), the fact that other people can ‘control what you eat’ through this technology, and the technological side of it (‘what about the use of hormones?’). When I had explained the technology in more depth, people had become slightly more positive about in vitro meat and recognised that it could potentially resemble ‘real’ meat very well. More of them now stated that they would be willing to try it.
Literature
Unfortunately, there are very few studies that investigate the public perception of in vitro meat. The studies that exist are mostly qualitative and besides some small surveys, there is no quantitative data. How interesting it was to see to that people during the workshops expressed the same concerns and hopes as the ones I had already found in literature. The main initial perceptions to in vitro meat that I found in literature were both positive: curiosity and sympathy, and negative: disgust (yuck!) and unnaturalness. The risks that are commonly mentioned are: unnaturalness, health and safety, product flaws (e.g. it doesn’t taste like meat) and loss of farms and farm animals. Recognised benefits are: reduced environmental stress, animal welfare and food security (Steenhuis, 2016). Although most people have mixed feelings towards in vitro meat, many of them would be willing to try it (at least once) because their curiosity overrules their concerns.
Social Marketing
At the end of the workshop, after we had talked about the existing opinions about in vitro meat in society, I gave the group the assignment to brainstorm about the future of in vitro meat and we took the consumer perspective to another level by trying to come up with ideas for a social marketing* campaign. Below I will discuss the results regarding four sides (p’s) of social marketing: target group, product, price and promotion.
*Social marketing: form of marketing that happens prior to commercial marketing. The goal of social marketing is to increase awareness and promote the acceptability of a product (Menegaki, 2012).
Target group
First, we started thinking about what would be an appropriate target group for in vitro meat. A majority thought that vegetarians wouldn’t be very eager to eat in vitro meat because they are already used to not eating meat and have apparently found other alternatives. I found that experts and organisations like de vegetariërsbond didn’t think that vegetarians would make a good target group for in vitro meat either. Vegetarians might even oppose to the concept of in vitro meat because they see it as a moral cowardice. Instead of doing the real thing (becoming vegetarian/vegan) and thus doing genuine moral work, in vitro meat provides people with a ‘quick technological fix’ for a problem that in itself is not purely technological. ‘Normal’ meat-eaters are generally seen as the best target group for in vitro meat. Of course, this is not a homogeneous groups and some subgroups would sooner accept in vitro meat then others. We concluded that it is important to approach all these different groups in a way that is appropriate for them.
One girl wanted to give in vitro meat the identity of a super food.
Product
Next we thought about the product itself:what should the product be like in order to make people buy it? Should it resemble meat as well as possible? Should it become an entirely different product? What kind of identity do we want to give it? Do we want to make it a large scale (production takes place in far-away factories) or rather small scale technology? It is important to realise that the technology of in vitro meat is still largely open as it hasn’t been fully developed yet. Things aren’t that fixed yet and this is nicely illustrated by the ‘Pig in your backyard’ concept introduced in a paper by Cor van der Weele. Although you would instinctively think of large scale production facilities, it might very well be possible to employ in vitro meat production at a community scale: together with the people in your neighbourhood, you look after a couple of farm animals living on a field nearby. By looking after these animals together and by playing with them, people will develop a meaningful relationship with these animals. Once in a while, you take a few cells from these animals through a painless biopsy and use these as a basis to produce in vitro meat. You could then eat meat from these animals with these animals still being alive and the people having a meaningful relationship with them. This is the concept of the ‘Pig in your backyard’. It would be wise to take into account the values and preferences of the public whilst further developing in vitro meat. Only with such value-sensitive design will we be able to design a product that people actually want, making in vitro meat a success. Regarding the product there are multiple options, but maybe it would be best to just make it resemble meat as much as possible (taste, texture) and also present it as meat. If you took a different approach, ‘in vitro meat would fall into the same pitfalls as other meat substitutes’ as one of the participants mentioned.
Price
Regarding the price, we concluded that adopting in vitro meat should become affordable and even price-competitive with ‘real’ meat as soon as possible. Moreover should in vitro meat be sustainable with culture and local traditions. The transition to in vitro meat should be gradual and well-guided to make sure jobs are preserved or even created (social sustainability).
Promotion
Finally we brainstormed about the promotion of in vitro meat. It is a widely shared belief – also amongst experts – that is is essential that the claims of in vitro meat (sustainability, health, safety) are verified by independent third parties and that this is communicated to the public in a clear way. Then, you have to decide which aspect (e.g. environmental benefits, health, safety or animal welfare) of in vitro meat you want to focus on during a social marketing campaign. In the workshop we concluded that this really depends on your target group. Even within the workshop group, different aspects were perceived as the most important (for two thirds, this was the environment and for the others it was animal welfare). These differences exist between sub-cultures and even geographical regions. For instance in northern European countries, animal welfare is seen as much more important than in southern Europe. That these differences exist and that you should thus tailor a social marketing campaign to a target group, also agrees with literature. It was great to see that the people during the workshop also came up with concrete ideas for commercials about in vitro meat. A couple of people wanted to use heroes (famous actors, cooks) for the promotion of in vitro meat and others thought that making short clips/documentaries that explain the technology behind in vitro meat would be a good idea.
One man came up with the idea about a commercial in which a chicken and a cow in the in vitro meat age would be fighting over the right to be used for dinner (the joke is of course that in the IVM age, getting eaten doesn’t mean they would have to die).
Conclusion
Let me now answer the question with which I started this article: Would people actually start eating in vitro meat? After having looked into the topic for some time, my own conclusion is that once the major technological challenges are overcome and in vitro meat can be produced on a large scale at relatively low costs, in vitro meat could certainly become a popular alternative for regular meat, hereby partly solving the problems related to regular meat consumption. I think it would be best to produce a product that is really like regular meat in most aspects (texture, colour, taste etc.) with the only difference being that it is more sustainable and that it doesn’t directly come from a living animal. This will make it easier for meat eaters – who are by far the largest and most interesting target group – to make the transition. It is important that the public is convinced of the sustainability (also social) and safety of this new product by independent third parties. Lastly, it should at the end become price-competitive with regular meat. Only once these conditions are met, meat eaters will make the transition from regular meat to in vitro meat, making in vitro meat a success.
In the coming week, I will post another article about the business perspective of in vitro meat, featuring the story of the recently founded Dutch company MosaMeat.
Meat of the Future? 
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