Cultivated meat: key opportunities and recommendations for India
A first-of-its-kind report on cultivated meat for Indian policymakers
GFI India, in partnership with Invest India – the government of India’s investment promotion and facilitation agency has co-authored a first-of-its-kind report on the technical and market landscape of cultivated meat with key policy recommendations for India.
Overview
A recent study demonstrates that animal-derived protein, such as meat and dairy, uses 83 percent of farmland and is responsible for 60 percent of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. As global temperatures rise, it is estimated that India will be one of the worst affected countries due to climate change. Crop yields in the country can fall by as much as 30 percent by 2050, while almost 40 percent of Indians may be living in water scarcity by the mid-21st century.
This data points to why we must develop a resilient and sustainable protein strategy for India.
Novel foods like cultivated meat have the opportunity to utilize fewer inputs, have shorter supply chains, reduce the risks of zoonotic diseases, and decrease overall carbon emissions while serving the growing demand for protein.
Over the last decade, USD 2.8 billion has been invested in cultivated meat, with investments on average tripling every year. With the right interventions, cultivated meat could provide billions of dollars worth of the world’s meat supply by 2030, with implications across global food systems and for multiple other cross-cutting sectors.
(Read about the global state of the cultivated meat industry at link)
Key insights from the report
- Cultivated protein can supplement the existing protein supply chain while coexisting with traditional livestock farming and still boosting foreign exchange through exports.
- Countries across the world are recognizing the need to include alternative protein within their national economic and agricultural strategies.
- India can be the next leader in cultivated proteins through public investments, ramping up R&D, scaling up manufacturing, training a future-ready talent pool, and building strong regulatory and policy pathways.
- Cultivated meat as a clean-tech solution could help India become an alternative protein powerhouse.
Explore the R&D Infrastructure available at universities across the country here!
Read more about the world’s first industry-based life cycle assessment and techno-economic assessment for cultivated meat here.