Environmental impacts of producing culture medium consisting of serum-free, food and complex ingredients for cultivated meat

Cultivated meat is produced by culturing cells and tissues, and has gained considerable attention as a new meat production with lower environmental impacts. Culture medium production accounts for most of the environmental impact of cultivated meat production. This study quantitatively evaluated and analyzed the environmental impact of producing a culture medium consisting of serum-free, food and complex ingredients for cultivated meat by performing a life cycle assessment (LCA) based on company’s actual production data. In addition, specific measures were proposed to reduce the environmental impact further. LCAs were performed at current and future production scales. This study also evaluated the impact of multiple electricity sources on the environmental impact of culture medium production. The results were compared with those of previous studies on culture medium production. The primary environmental hotspots are energy and animal-derived materials at both scales, with expendables being significant at the current scale, and amino acids and glucose becoming important in the future scale. Serum substitutes production accounted for majority of overall the environmental impact. Furthermore, scaling up the production is projected to reduce environmental impacts by over 70% in all impact categories. While changing to renewable electricity sources generally reduced impacts, an increased share of these energy significantly raised the land use impact. This study promotes the viable use of new culture-media to achieve lower-cost and lower-environmental-impact cultivated meat.