The MIT Technology Review is a magazine and online publication focusing on exploring and analyzing emerging technologies and their impact on society. Each year, MIT highlights some of the worst technologies — those that failed in epic ways — and among that list is cultivated chicken.
As reported in AGDAILY, MIT takes a swing at the California-based company UPSIDE Foods, saying that the company was “a bird in borrowed feathers… and is using lots of labor, plastic, and energy to make hardly any meat.” While chicken sells for $4.99 per pound in stores, cultivated chicken can only be bought from UPSIDE at the Michelin-starred restaurant in San Francisco for $45.
The article pointed to scale, consumer acceptance, and cost as some of the challenges the cultivated meat industry faces.
In related news, this week, an Arizona state House committee passed a bill that would make it illegal to label a product that is not derived from livestock or poultry as “meat.” The bill must now go to the full Arizona House of Representatives for consideration.
