Disrupting the Meat Industry: Tissue Culture Beef

Disrupting the meat industry: Tissue Culture Beef

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-- Would you dare to try?

Executive Summary

Meat was first harvested for human consumption about 2.5 million years ago. Since then the Meat industry and the culture around eating meat has continued to evolve into the billion dollar meat industry we know today. Meat consumption in America alone grew 56% per capita during the 20th century and during that same period the US population grew by approximately 200 million. This means that the consumption of meat in the US grew by over 400% in less than a century. The increased grow as well as the harsh condition of the animals that produce the meat lead Dr. Mark Post to pursue the creation of Tissue Culture Beef. Tissue Culture Beef is a beef that Dr. Post created by taking a tissue sample from the Belgian Blue cattle muscle tissue, removing the fat, and placing the cells in fetal bovine serum to help the cells grow. In two to three weeks the cells grew to the size of a burger. Tissue Culture Beef is a very promising science that could create a more sustainable, and efficient alternative to the traditional meat industry, that was very inefficient and required less than desired life cycle for the animals farmed for their meat. Tissue Culture Beef could completely disrupt the current meat industry requiring 90% less land and 70% less energy to create the same about of meat. However there are many drawbacks to the tissue culture beef some of which include, the idea of genetically enhancing the food, the unnatural perception of the product, the facts that the current meat industry supports hundreds of thousands of American jobs alone. Although Tissue Culture Beef has many hurdles to get over before it may one day end up in the meat section of your local super market we feel the main problem regarding the cutting edge alternative needs to be addressed now. The biggest problem that Tissue Culture Beef currently faces is, how it gets millions of consumers to try a product that is so drastically different from anything they are used to. This is a problem that we feel Dr. Post and his team will have to address from many different angles and over an extended period of time however we have outlined a few alternatives for them to start tipping the minds of consumers and open them up to a great new opportunity that is Tissue Culture Beef.

The first alternative that we have presented for them is a marketing campaign targeted at the downfalls of the current meat industry and highlighting the benefits of Tissue Culture Beef. Another alternative we have presented focuses on both the psychological aspect of getting consumers to choose Tissue Culture beef but also the logistics of the problem being how we get the product to the customer. For this alternative we suggest that Dr. Post and his team pair up with a larger well known food company that can take of the logistics of distribution and also create the idea that the product is not this foreign thing grown in a lab but just another product line in the product family of the larger company that you already trust and enjoy.

Our recommendation is to focus on the marketing campaign at this point. We feel that a strong marketing campaign that targeted the harsh treatment of the animals and land used in the traditional meat industry as well as its inefficiency and lack of sustainability will drive people from their current connection with the industry. While presenting Tissue Culture Beef as a humane, sustainable, and efficient alternative will drive people towards our product.

Problem Statement

Tissue culture beef has the potential to be a behavior changing policy that would greatly benefit the animal welfare, the environment, and help to solve one of our biggest concerns which is solving global hunger. To begin to analyze the problem behind the tissue culture beef case, we must begin by describing the current public opinion on this matter and how development in the future of food production will continue to evolve based on our available resources and knowledge. When planning the solution to this problem we first must answer the question of how we get people to eat the tissue culture beef.   There is a significant marketing concern for this type of beef in the industry because many people are skeptical about consuming meat that has been grown in a lab.   The general public opinion on consuming this type of beef is that people have little trust for large food companies that are making these types of executive decisions on what type of products will be sold in the market. Another angle that could be used to leverage the consumption of tissue culture beef is that it would require 90% less land and 70% less energy to implement than the current method of cattle farming.  “Given the demand for meat in the world, we’re running out of places where retailers can get adequate supply,” Alvarez said. “Tissue culture beef solves that and addresses the issue of consistency, which is another big problem for retailers. It allows you to put out the same product every time, pretty much to perfection. Between those commercial advantages, and all the plusses from an environmental and space perspective, I think retailers will eventually come around to seeing tissue culture beef as an ally.”  If we can get consumer habit to change in the future and progress toward more sustainable beef production we will have the opportunity to invest our land and resources into the production of other crops and sustainable resources.

Situational Analysis

External Environment

The meat industry is global and meat has been a dietary staple for billions of people for over 2 million years. The competitors worldwide include JBS S.A., Cargill Beef, Tyson Foods, BRF, Danish Crown, Hormel Foods, Marfrig, Nippon Meat Packers, Vion, and WH Group Ltd. Most of these companies have operation and processing facilities in multiple countries.  In the event of disease outbreaks, animal health issues or even drugs given to cattle, this can actually have a severe impact on the global trade. This could prevent the imports and exports from one country to the other. In addition to the disease outbreaks and animal health issues, many regulators in the EU, U.S. and other countries are concerned with genetically modified organisms (GMO). If Dr. Post is to introduce tissue culture beef to any of these countries, his team has to demonstrate to the regulators to get an approval in order to launch his products.

Internal Environment

Dr. Mark Post leads a small team of his lab technician in developing tissue culture beef in hope this could potentially have an impact on the animal welfare, the environment, solving global food and hunger issues. In addition, this can reduce the amount of land use and less energy to produce than is needed to make the same amount of conventional beef. Post's main goal is to develop a competitively priced product that compete with traditional beef within seven years. It needs to be spot on in terms of quality and taste. Right now, many consumers may have concerns that this tissue culture beef is unnatural, artificial, not genuine meat, knock off version of genuine meat product, inferior product and cloning product (when people think of cloning, they tend to think of it negatively.)