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I. Introduction
There are only a few product developments in the food industry at present in which both traditional food companies and also large tech companies are investing huge sums – and which are, at the same time, hailed by environmental and animal welfare organisations, such as PETA, as the “food of the future”. One of them is artificial meat: plant or cell-based artificial meat products that – unlike classical meat replacement products such as tofu, tempeh or seitan – have a taste, texture and appearance that can barely or no longer be distinguished from conventional meat.
The advantage of such meat products is quite obvious: while the global demand for food continues to increase, the manufacturing of conventional meat products requires about 75% of the area used worldwide for agriculture and causes about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions.1 In this respect, the production of plant-based artificial meat offers huge opportunities to save resources.2 Apart from the reduction of the intensive livestock farming of currently more than 60 billion animals per year and the related advantages for animal welfare, artificial meat products also offer health benefits, because germs, antibiotics and other contaminants can be avoided in the production process. Some (artificial) meat products are even free from cholesterol.
Against this background, the development of the global market for new artificial meat products is currently snowballing: Analysts such as Allied Market Research have been forecasting an annual growth rate of over 7% and global sales of around 7.5 billion USD by 2025.3 In May 2019, a study conducted by Barclays even found a global market size of 140 billion USD by 2029 to be likely, given recent trends. The leading producers and developers of artificial meat to date have largely been based in California (e.g. Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Memphis Meats), the Netherlands (Mosa Meat), Israel (e.g. SuperMeat, Future Meat) and Japan (e.g. Integriculture). Since April 2019, Nestlé has also offered its own artificial meat products in Germany, which are sold both in retail stores and at McDonald’s.4 Many of the start-ups are funded by investors such as Bill Gates, Li Ka-shing, Google, Merck, Tyson Foods and Cargill. The value of Beyond Meat, which went public at the beginning of...