My colleague Linch asked me “to include a random sample of 9 predictions that resolved negatively.” I numbered the incorrect market/supermarket predictions and then randomised the list of numbers, and used an online random number generator to select nine numbers.
March 2019 “JUST, the San Francisco-based company racing to be the first to bring cell-based meat to market, announced in a CBS San Francisco interview last month that they would debut their first product — a cultured chicken nugget — in Asia sometime this year”
February 2018 “Tetrick claims his startup has finally made the process cost-effective enough to take to market: At the end of this year, he says, Just will officially introduce an as yet undisclosed lab-grown meat, the first time the stuff will hit shelves.”
March 2018 “Memphis Meats is trying to bring its products to high-end restaurant menus by next year, and, by 2021, bring production costs down to equal grocery store meat products at $3 to $4 per pound.”
December 2018 “The steak product is expected to be ready to sell within two years.”—Aleph Farms
January 2018 “It [Supermeat] reckons it is still up to three years away from putting SuperMeat products on supermarket shelves.”
ACE reported that in February 2017 Mark Post predicted “For small-scale, somewhat expensive products, most companies will have cultured meat products on the market in 3–4 years (i.e., 2020–2021). It will probably take another 3–4 years (i.e., 2023–2025) for the price to come down to the level where it’s acceptable for the broader public.”
June 2006 Scientist Paul Kosnik: “We believe the goal of a processed meat product is attainable in the next five years if funding is available and the R&D is pursued aggressively.”
January 2016 (no hyperlink was given in the MotherJones article but they credit GFI as the source and you can see it copy-pasted into at least two mediaarticles on Google Search) ”Memphis Meats is already growing real meat in small quantities using cells from cows, pigs, and chickens. The company’s first products—hot dogs, sausages, burgers, and meatballs—will be developed using recipes perfected over a half century by award-winning chefs. The founders expect to have products to market within five years.”
August 2009 Jason Matheny of New Harvest said “We think that a technology to produce cultured ground meats—burgers, sausages, nuggets, and so forth—could be commercialized within ten years,”
EDIT: Woops, got my COVID dates mixed up; I was thinking March 2020.
March 2019 “JUST, the San Francisco-based company racing to be the first to bring cell-based meat to market, announced in a CBS San Francisco interview last month that they would debut their first product — a cultured chicken nugget — in Asia sometime this year”
I think it’s reasonably likely this was delayed by COVID-19, given they made this prediction when it wasn’t clear how bad things would be, they debuted in a restaurant in Singapore at the end of 2020, and restaurants where they were looking to debut might have been closed (or they preferred an in-person debut, rather than take-out).
I wouldn’t be surprised if COVID caused some other delays, not just for JUST, but basically all of these companies, as long as their deadlines were in 2020 or later. Some lab and manufacturing work might not have been allowed or was impeded for extended periods due to lockdowns. I’m not sure how much delay we should allow for these lockdowns, though.
I don’t think it’s reasonably likely this particular prediction was delayed by COVID-19, given they made this prediction in early 2019 about a product being on offer *in 2019*. I don’t think there is much to suggest any impediments to a product roll-out in 2019 from the pandemic since it only started having major impacts/reactions in 2020.
For other predictions in this dataset made by companies, research institutes, and reported in the media it seems likely the pandemic threw up an unexpected obstacle and delay. However, that would presumably also be true for whatever other tools or sources we might alternatively rely on for cultured meat timelines and so I don’t think it changes the overall conclusion on how much stock to put into the types of predictions/predictors represented in this dataset.
Woops, ya, I got my dates mixed up for COVID and JUST.
However, that would presumably also be true for whatever other tools or sources we might alternatively rely on for cultured meat timelines and so I don’t think it changes the overall conclusion on how much stock to put into the types of predictions/predictors represented in this dataset.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. My point is that COVID might have made some of these predictions false, when they would have otherwise ended up true without COVID, so these groups just got very unlucky, and we shouldn’t count these particular inaccurate predictions against them.
It also looks like about half or more of the predictions had dates ending in 2020 or later based on the two graphs in the post, so this could affect many of them.
My colleague Linch asked me “to include a random sample of 9 predictions that resolved negatively.” I numbered the incorrect market/supermarket predictions and then randomised the list of numbers, and used an online random number generator to select nine numbers.
March 2019 “JUST, the San Francisco-based company racing to be the first to bring cell-based meat to market, announced in a CBS San Francisco interview last month that they would debut their first product — a cultured chicken nugget — in Asia sometime this year”
February 2018 “Tetrick claims his startup has finally made the process cost-effective enough to take to market: At the end of this year, he says, Just will officially introduce an as yet undisclosed lab-grown meat, the first time the stuff will hit shelves.”
March 2018 “Memphis Meats is trying to bring its products to high-end restaurant menus by next year, and, by 2021, bring production costs down to equal grocery store meat products at $3 to $4 per pound.”
December 2018 “The steak product is expected to be ready to sell within two years.”—Aleph Farms
January 2018 “It [Supermeat] reckons it is still up to three years away from putting SuperMeat products on supermarket shelves.”
ACE reported that in February 2017 Mark Post predicted “For small-scale, somewhat expensive products, most companies will have cultured meat products on the market in 3–4 years (i.e., 2020–2021). It will probably take another 3–4 years (i.e., 2023–2025) for the price to come down to the level where it’s acceptable for the broader public.”
June 2006 Scientist Paul Kosnik: “We believe the goal of a processed meat product is attainable in the next five years if funding is available and the R&D is pursued aggressively.”
January 2016 (no hyperlink was given in the MotherJones article but they credit GFI as the source and you can see it copy-pasted into at least two media articles on Google Search) ”Memphis Meats is already growing real meat in small quantities using cells from cows, pigs, and chickens. The company’s first products—hot dogs, sausages, burgers, and meatballs—will be developed using recipes perfected over a half century by award-winning chefs. The founders expect to have products to market within five years.”
August 2009 Jason Matheny of New Harvest said “We think that a technology to produce cultured ground meats—burgers, sausages, nuggets, and so forth—could be commercialized within ten years,”
EDIT: Woops, got my COVID dates mixed up; I was thinking March 2020.
I think it’s reasonably likely this was delayed by COVID-19, given they made this prediction when it wasn’t clear how bad things would be, they debuted in a restaurant in Singapore at the end of 2020, and restaurants where they were looking to debut might have been closed (or they preferred an in-person debut, rather than take-out).I wouldn’t be surprised if COVID caused some
otherdelays, not just for JUST, but basically all of these companies, as long as their deadlines were in 2020 or later. Some lab and manufacturing work might not have been allowed or was impeded for extended periods due to lockdowns. I’m not sure how much delay we should allow for these lockdowns, though.I don’t think it’s reasonably likely this particular prediction was delayed by COVID-19, given they made this prediction in early 2019 about a product being on offer *in 2019*. I don’t think there is much to suggest any impediments to a product roll-out in 2019 from the pandemic since it only started having major impacts/reactions in 2020.
For other predictions in this dataset made by companies, research institutes, and reported in the media it seems likely the pandemic threw up an unexpected obstacle and delay. However, that would presumably also be true for whatever other tools or sources we might alternatively rely on for cultured meat timelines and so I don’t think it changes the overall conclusion on how much stock to put into the types of predictions/predictors represented in this dataset.
Woops, ya, I got my dates mixed up for COVID and JUST.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. My point is that COVID might have made some of these predictions false, when they would have otherwise ended up true without COVID, so these groups just got very unlucky, and we shouldn’t count these particular inaccurate predictions against them.
It also looks like about half or more of the predictions had dates ending in 2020 or later based on the two graphs in the post, so this could affect many of them.