Cultured meat: From scientific challenge to consumer acceptance as sustainable food source

Voinea, Lelia; Popescu, Dorin Vicenţiu; Negrea, Teodor Mihai; Dina, Răzvan Article Cultured meat: From scientific challenge to consumer acceptance as sustainable food source Amfiteatru Economic Provided in Cooperation with: The Bucharest University of Economic Studies Suggested Citation: Voinea, Lelia; Popescu, Dorin Vicenţiu; Negrea, Teodor Mihai; Dina, Răzvan (2024) : Cultured meat: From scientific challenge to consumer acceptance as sustainable food source, Amfiteatru Economic, ISSN 2247-9104, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Vol. 26, Iss. 65, pp. 346-362, https://doi.org/10.24818/EA/2024/65/346 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/281825 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ AE Cultured Meat – From Scientific Challenge to Consumer Acceptance as Sustainable Food Source 346 Amfiteatru Economic CULTURED MEAT – FROM SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGE TO CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE AS SUSTAINABLE FOOD SOURCE Lelia Voinea1, Dorin Vicențiu Popescu2, Teodor Mihai Negrea3 and Răzvan Dina4 * 1)2)3)4) Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania Please cite this article as: Voinea, L., Popescu, D.V., Negrea, T.M. and Dina, R., 2024. Cultured Meat – From Scientific Challenge to Consumer Acceptance as Sustainable Food Source. Amfiteatru Economic, 26(65), pp. 346-362. https://doi.org/10.24818/EA/2024/65/346 Article History Received: 25 September 2023 Revised: 24 November 2023 Accepted: 20 December 2023 Abstract Cultured meat obtained in vitro from animal cells represents one of the recent concerns of specialists, who thus try to solve part of the issues related to animal welfare and sustainable meat production. Beyond the technical difficulties that must be overcome, the acceptance of cultured meat by consumers is not an easy goal to achieve, as it depends on factors acting both at the global and local levels. Since this paper focuses on Romanian consumers, the authors emphasize the importance of developing a general information framework that would allow first their understanding and further their acceptance of cultured meat. For this purpose, a systematic literature review, based on 34 articles, was carried out in order to observe good practices at international level, which led, in the past, to the acceptance of other significant innovations in the food field. Thus, five directions of action were identified: communication, knowledge, trust, perception, and attitudes. Based on these, a model of cultured meat acceptance by Romanian was developed. This initiative is unique in Romania so far and its results can be of interest for Romanian consumers and also for many categories of specialists, from scholars and researchers to practitioners interested in launching new products on the market or policymakers in the field of nutrition, public health, and agriculture. Further research is needed on the relationships between food security and safety, traditional meat production, and cultured meat as an alternative to real meat, before the marketplace launch of this new product. Keywords: cultured meat, Romanian consumers, model of consumer acceptance of cultured meat, sustainable food consumption JEL Classification: D12, D18, M31, O33, I12 * Corresponding author, Răzvan Dina – e-mail: [email protected] This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2024 The Author(s). Amfiteatru Economic recommends AE Vol. 26 • No. 65 • February 2024 347 Introduction Meat overconsumption, especially the red one, specific to nowadays’ Western diet has had a negative impact both on environment and consumers’ health (Allievi, Vinnari and Luukkanen, 2015; De Graaf, 2019). Indeed, it is widely accepted that food of animal origin has a greater impact on the environment than food of plant origin, since it emits higher amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs), requires more soil and nitrogen, and affects terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity. From an environmental perspective, meat is considered the most harmful form of food consumption of all foods of animal origin (Austgulen et al., 2018). In addition, meat, alongside other energy-rich foods, is an important factor in the wide spread of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as type 2 diabetes, coronary diseases, obesity, cancer (Pieniak et al., 2016; Bobe, Procopie and Bucur, 2019). An overconsumption of meat particularly affects the hormonal, the immunity, and the digestive systems, mainly because the meat produced on a large scale, in industrial conditions, has, in most of the cases, hormones and antibiotics. In this context, the transition toward a low-meat diet appears to be the right choice from a human health, animal welfare and environmental protection point of view. On the basis of this increased call to reduce meat consumption, a new trend of industrial meat substitutes has emerged, where cultured meat or lab-grown meat, which represents the focus of our research, is a part of. Cultured meat (also called lab-grown meat, cultivated meat, artificial meat or in vitro meat) is an innovative product of cellular agriculture, obtained from stem cells, which, after being taken from animals through a small biopsy of muscle tissue, are placed in a special nutrientrich medium in a bio-reactor independent from the animal to promote growth (Post, 2012; Ben-Arye and Levenberg, 2019). Although it is not yet available to consumers, cultured meat is described in recent literature as having positive effects in several directions, such as: environmental sustainability (because it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture while using significantly less water and less land), animal welfare (because it is produced without the need for animals to be raised and slaughtered), food safety (because it would be less susceptible to antibiotic resistance and to zoonotic diseases spread), and world hunger issue (because it would prevent meat becoming a luxury food for most consumers) (Post, 2012; Sinke et al., 2023). Thus, cultured meat appears to have the potential to address the main challenges that meat industry is currently facing, providing potentially healthier, ethical, sustainable, and more efficient alternative to conventionally produced meat. But cultured meat also comes with drawbacks; the most frequently reported in the scientific literature refer to the safety concerns generated by the use of a potentially contaminated animal serum in the culture medium (Alexander et al., 2017), the higher energy use in cultured meat production because some biological functions are replaced by technological processes (Munteanu et al., 2021) and the potential perception of in vitro technology as unnatural and interfering too much with nature (Laestadius, 2015; Stephens et al., 2018). Moreover, Chriki and Hocquette (2020) noticed the vague status of cultured meat from a religious point of view, its compliance with certain dietary laws (e.g., Kosher for Jewish consumers or Halal for Islamic consumers) being still debatable. Because the success of new foods and food technologies depend to a considerable extent on whether consumers accept those innovations (Fischer and Reinders, 2022; Socaciu et al., 2022) and given the tendency of people to be reluctant to adopt food innovations, perceiving them as too industrial, unnatural or “fake” (EIT Food Trust Report, 2021), consumer AE Cultured Meat – From Scientific Challenge to Consumer Acceptance as Sustainable Food Source 348 Amfiteatru Economic acceptance of cultured meat is an issue that requires further attention. Due to its novelty, consumer acceptance is extremely important for cultured meat, because, as Laestadius (2015) pointed out, without it there might be a product but not a market. Although there is abundant information in scientific literature regarding the advanced technological aspects of cultured meat, significantly little research has been done with regard to its acceptance by consumers. However, here are to be mentioned the studies of Laestadius (2015), Verbeke et al. (2015), Stephens et al. (2018), Bryant and Barnett (2020) and Siegrist and Hartmann (2020) that investigated consumers’ reactions towards cultured meat in the early stage of product development. Although consumers seemed open to try cultured meat, the common insights provided by these studies showed feelings of disgust and considerations of unnaturalness exhibited by consumers and highlighted consumer acceptance as important issues related to the commercial success of cultured meat. In Romania, alongside consumers’ natural tendency of reluctance towards food novelty, another important obstacle in the acceptance of cultured meat could be the privileged status of natural meat in local food culture, emphasised by the high share of meat-based products and dishes in the traditional pattern of food consumption (Voinea et al., 2020). Because, to the authors’ knowledge, there is no research addressing the issue of consumer acceptance of cultured meat in Romania until now, the aim of present paper is to fill this gap by designing a general framework for consumer acceptance which will contribute to a correct understanding of cultured meat before its commercial release. Therefore, to identify examples of good practices successfully used in the past in similar situations, a review of the specialised literature was carried out. This allowed us to select five directions of action as a basis for designing the model of cultured meat acceptance. This approach, unique in Romania so far, can be useful to consumers, specialists, and other decision-makers in the field of nutrition, public health, or agriculture. Although paper’s rhetoric is focused on cultured meat, our study should not be regarded as a pleading for agriculture transition to cultured meat production as the primary solution for the sustainable diet of the future and for cultured meat as the best alternative for conventional meat. The paper intends to bring to the foreground the need to inform and educate consumers so that when the product will be available on the market, they can make an informed purchase decision. The study begins with an introductory section providing some background elements and presenting the general framework of contemporary food that has led to the development of cultured meat. Items of previous research in the area are also reviewed in this section. Furthermore, the methodological approach is presented, emphasising the steps followed in conducting the study. Within the next section, the results are presented and their significance is discussed. Finally, there is a section comprising the conclusions of the study, and its implications. 1. Methodology As the main purpose of our study is to develop a model of consumer acceptance of cultured meat, we conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature to uncover different best Amfiteatru Economic recommends AE Vol. 26 • No. 65 • February 2024 349 practices used to achieve consumer acceptance for several previous food innovations. Based on the identified predictors, we will further build a model for consumer acceptance of cultured meat, the newest food innovation that consumers are to deal with in the near future. The review followed the steps outlined in literature (Khan et al., 2003; Dziopa and Ahern, 2011; Xiao and Watson, 2019): formulating the question, identifying relevant publications, assessing study quality, summarising the evidence, and interpreting the findings. In the attempt to answer to the question “What were the predictors of consumer acceptance of previous significant food innovations?”, we firstly established the following food innovations as areas of interest for our approach: genetic modification of food, food irradiation, entomophagy and food nanotechnology. Numerous articles, empirical studies or review papers, were identified in international databases, using key-words such as: “acceptance of new foods”, “acceptance of new food technologies”, “acceptance of biotechnology”, “acceptance of genetically modified foods”, “acceptance of food irradiation”, “acceptance of irradiated foods”, “acceptance of edible insects”, “acceptance of nanotechnology foods”. A number of 34 articles from all those identified were selected as the most suitable for the purpose of our research, based on the following criteria: focus on consumer acceptance, presentation of empirical data or findings of the literature review, publication in a peer-reviewed journal, publication in English language. Then, the selected articles were grouped into five categories, as follows: genetic modification, food irradiation, entomophagy, the use of nanotechnology, and new foods and food technologies in general (Table no. 1). A summary of the evidence was done for each category from which a key-word predictor of consumer acceptance was extracted. Table no. 1. Results of the literature review No. Food innovation Study Summary of evidence Key-factors of consumer acceptance 1 New foods and food technologies in general Frewer, Howard and Sheperd (1995); Siegrist (2007); Costa-Font, Gil and Traill (2008); Shepherd (2008) The way consumers will evaluate a new food product depends on effective communication of both tangible benefits and hazards. Communication Siegrist, Gutscher and Earle (2005); Macready et al. (2020); Wu et al. (2021); The EIT Food Trust Report (2021) Consumers tend to rely on the information provided by experts (scientists, authorities, and industry); high levels of trust reduce the perceived risks. Trust Alhakami and Slovic (1994); Rembischevski and Caldas (2020); Rabbanee, Afroz and Naser (2021) Food technologies that are judged high in risk tend to be judged low in benefit, and vice versa. The perception of benefits and risks Siegrist (2007); Frewer et al. (2014); Román, Sánchez-Siles and Siegrist (2017); Bearth and Siegrist (2019) Positive attitudes towards a new food or technology are associated with favouring behaviour, while negative attitudes are associated with avoidance behaviour. Attitudes AE Cultured Meat – From Scientific Challenge to Consumer Acceptance as Sustainable Food Source 350 Amfiteatru Economic No. Food innovation Study Summary of evidence Key-factors of consumer acceptance 2 Genetically modified foods Hoban (1997); Byrne et al. (2002); House et al. (2002) Lusk and Sullivan (2002); Costa-Font, Gil and Traill (2008); Wunderlich and Gatto (2015) A positive correlation between knowledge of biotechnology and consumer acceptance of genetically modified foods. Knowledge Frewer, Howard and Sheperd (1995) The acceptance of genetically modified foods is largely determined by both perceived risks and benefits. The perception of benefits and risks Tenbült et al. (2005) Frewer et al. (2014) The more a product was seen as natural by consumers, the less acceptable was its genetic engineered version. Attitudes Lusk and Sullivan (2002); Costa-Font and Gil (2009) The acceptance of the genetically modified foods starts from the trust in scientists and in public authorities, as they are considered the most reliable sources. Trust 3 Edible insects Lensvelt and Steenbekkers (2014) Woolf et al. (2020) Padulo et al. (2022) Knowledge about entomophagy is positively correlated with acceptance and willingness to consume edible insects. Knowledge Ruby, Rozin and Chan (2015) Beliefs about the benefits and risks of eating insects represent one of the best predictors of insect acceptance. The perception of benefits and risks 4 Food irradiation Bruhn (1998); Oliveira and Sabato (2004) Behrens et al. (2009) Knowledge is positively correlated with the acceptance of irradiated food. Knowledge Sapp and DowningMatibag (2009) Acceptance of irradiated foods is a function of trust in societal institutions that they can manage irradiation technology. Trust Bord and O'Connor (1990); Bearth and Siegrist (2019) When food irradiation is perceived as a risky technology, fewer benefits and more risks are associated with irradiated foods The perception of benefits and risks 5 Nanotechnology Besley (2010); GomezLlorente et al. (2022) The more knowledge, the less fear for nanotechnology foods; awareness is associated with more positive views about nanotechnology Knowledge Gupta, Frewer and Fischer (2017) Consumers tend to rely to a greater extent on the information provided by experts. Trust Siegrist (2007); Stampfli, Siegrist and Kastenholz (2010); Besley (2010) Willingness to buy nanotechnology foods is strongly influenced by perceived benefits and weakly influenced by perceived risks. The perception of benefits and risks Amfiteatru Economic recommends AE Vol. 26 • No. 65 • February 2024 351 The review of the scientific literature in the field of food innovations led to the identification of the following key-factors of consumer acceptance: communication, knowledge, trust, perception of benefits and risks and attitudes. 2. Results and discussions The model of consumer acceptance of cultured meat is designed to serve as an instrument for consumers in making informed decision and for the actors in food chain in approaching the cultured meat-related communication strategy. Based on the results of the undertaken systematic literature review we built up the cultured meat acceptance model based on the following drivers: communication, knowledge, trust, perception of benefits and risks, and attitudes. (Figure no. 1) Figure no.1. The cultured meat acceptance model Communication New technologies enable innovations in the food sector. Since, in general, the benefits associated with an innovation in the food offer are not tangible for consumers, they must be explicitly communicated to the large public. This has never been an easy task, but it is all the more difficult when it comes to a specific technology that tends to evoke negative associations in consumer’s mind (Siegrist, 2007, p. 240). According to Costa-Font, Gil and Traill (2008), the way consumer will evaluate a new food product depends on effective provision of information regarding firstly its tangible benefits from several sources – public and private, formal and informal, etc. – being conditioned at the same time by the credibility and trustworthiness of each relevant information source. But, alongside the benefits, the drawbacks and hazards have to be communicated to the public as well. Frewer, Howard and Shepherd (1995) pointed out that it is important the dialogue be Perception High benefits High risks Trust Attitude Acceptance Rejection Knowledge Communication Positive attitude Positive perception Negative perception Negative attitude AE Cultured Meat – From Scientific Challenge to Consumer Acceptance as Sustainable Food Source 352 Amfiteatru Economic established between communicators and the large public, in such way that the addressed issues reflect the real concerns of the public. Shepherd (2008) advocated the involvement of the public in the management of food risk issues, citing the Fischhoff ‘s (1995) schema of risk communication where consumers are seen as partners in this process. Based on previous communication experience regarding food innovations, we consider that an effective communication about cultured meat should focus primarily on the benefits, emphasising its potential of mimicking the sensory and nutritional characteristics of natural meat, as well as its positive impact on human health, animal welfare, economic efficiency, and environmental sustainability. Similarly, risk messages should address specific concerns related to food safety, lack of naturalness, and energy use in order to be more relevant to Romanian consumers. In this process, the main responsibility lies with the entrepreneurs in the food industry, who should mainly focus on providing correct and honest data on the benefits and risks of artificial meat consumption and not just on its exclusively commercial promotion. Knowledge Research has shown that consumer knowledge of new products or technologies correlates positively with acceptance and willingness to consume those products. For example, prior research on consumer acceptance of edible insects (Lensvelt and Steenbekkers, 2014; Ruby, Rozin and Chan, 2015; Woolf et al., 2021; Padulo et al., 2022) demonstrated that participants who attended an educational session that provided information about entomophagy, followed by a cooking and tasting session of edible insects, felt more knowledgeable about entomophagy, which positively correlated with acceptance and willingness to consume edible insects. Several surveys that have been carried out worldwide (Bruhn, 1998; Oliveira and Sabato, 2004; Behrens et al., 2009) to investigate consumers’ attitude to food irradiation found out that knowledge is positively correlated with acceptance of irradiated food. Generally, results suggest that when provided with science-based information, people hold more positive attitudes toward food irradiation and tend to favour irradiated food. The study of Gómez-Llorente et al. (2022) on consumer perception on the use of nanotechnology in the agri-food sector, showed that the more knowledge, the less fear for nanotechnology foods. This resonates with the findings of Besley (2010), who reported that awareness is associated with more positive views about nanotechnology. The findings of a large number of studies on consumer acceptance of biotechnology and genetically modified foods (Hoban, 1997; Byrne et al., 2002; Lusk and Sullivan, 2002; House et al., 2004; Costa-Font and Gil, 2009; Wunderlich and Gatto, 2015) highlighted a positive correlation between knowledge of biotechnology and consumer acceptance of genetically modified foods, since people with higher levels of scientific knowledge were usually more optimistic about biotechnology. The same positive correlation was revealed by Rolland, Markus and Post (2020) in their study on the effect of information content on the acceptance of cultured meat, as they observed that provision of information to participants, especially on personal benefits (with regard to product safety) and societal benefits (related to reducing environmental impact, avoiding Amfiteatru Economic recommends AE Vol. 26 • No. 65 • February 2024 353 harm to animals or reducing world hunger), importantly improves acceptance and willingness to taste. They concluded awareness of cultured meat was the best predictor of its acceptance. Similar findings can be found at Bryant and Barnett (2020) who argued that acceptance of cultured meat could be increased with positive information. Given the predominant eating behaviour in many areas of the world, including Romania, characterised by a high consumption of meat and meat-based products, we consider that a direction of increasing consumer acceptance of cultured meat could be a strong and wellargued emphasis on the potential of cultured meat to mimic the nutritional value of real meat from the actors in the food system. In addition, as it has been proven that consumers’ high level of scientific knowledge plays a decisive role in building a favourable attitude towards innovative food products, we believe that academia, nationally and internationally recognised research institutes, as well as experts in the field of food safety are the driving factors in the transition from a favourable attitude towards cultured meat to its acceptance and further consumption. Trust Consumer trust is an important factor influencing the perception of food innovation: the perceived risks as well as on perceived benefits. As long as acceptance of new foods and willingness to buy them is directly determined by the perceived risks and the perceived benefits, trust can be said to have an indirect impact on the acceptance of new foods or new food technologies (Siegrist, 2007, p. 242). Both risks and benefits, the latter being embodied in the characteristics of the new products, such as health, sustainability, or safety, since they cannot be verified by the average consumer, must therefore be communicated by a credible actor in the food chain (Macready et al., 2020; EIT Food Trust Report, 2021; Wu et al., 2021). Therefore, as Gupta, Frewer and Fischer (2017) pointed out, when consumer knowledge and experience on a new food product and technology are limited, consumers tend to rely to a greater extent on the information provided by experts. As for the trustworthiness of different information sources, Lusk and Sullivan (2002), in their study on consumer acceptance of genetically modified food, claim that consumers tend to trust more the information from government institutions, such as USDA (United States Department for Agriculture) or FDA (Food and Drug Administration), considering that these actors are much more likely to be credible in disseminating important information about biotechnology and genetically modified foods than mass media and agribusiness industry. We found similar findings in Costa-Font and Gil (2009), who showed the reasoning process that underpins the acceptance of the genetically modified foods departs from trust in scientists and in public authorities. 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