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Is cultivated meat better for the climate than beef? Not necessarily, according to a peer-reviewed 2025 life-cycle assessment from UC Davis. The study’s near-term production scenarios ranged from about 80% below to about 2,513% above its median retail-beef comparator. Those are modeled outcomes—not measurements of commercial factories—and they depend heavily on assumptions about growth-medium ingredients and processing.
What the UC Davis study found
Derrick Risner and colleagues assessed cultivated meat using a cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessment based on updated techno-economic data and scenarios for processing growth-medium ingredients. The paper appeared online on December 30, 2024, and in the January 17, 2025 issue of ACS Food Science & Technology.
Across the modeled scenarios, global-warming impacts ranged from about 80% below to about 2,513% above the study’s median retail-beef comparator. The range is important: it shows why a single footprint figure would not represent the study’s results.
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Every cultivated-meat scenario in the paper exceeded the study’s cited minimum retail-beef impact of 9.6 kg CO₂e per kg. That does not mean every scenario was worse than the median beef comparator: the minimum and the median are different benchmarks. Some scenarios fell below the median while remaining above the cited minimum.
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The authors’ conditional conclusion is that near-term cultivated meat “has the potential to be significantly higher than beef if a highly refined growth medium is utilized.” The qualification matters: the paper does not establish that all cultivated meat uses such a medium, or that all production systems have the same footprint.
Why growth medium and processing matter
Cultivated meat cells grow in a nutrient medium. Producing and processing the medium’s ingredients contributes to the modeled climate impact, so the assumed ingredient mix and degree of refinement can materially change the result. The UC Davis authors call for a sustainable growth medium optimized for high-density cell proliferation.
The assessment uses scenarios rather than a survey of manufacturers’ actual recipes. Its findings therefore identify a potential pressure point in production, not a measured footprint for every company or facility.
How this compares with a 2030 projection
A separate, peer-reviewed 2023 ex-ante assessment by CE Delft examined projected commercial-scale cultivated meat in 2030. Its conclusions vary with energy sourcing and the products used as benchmarks:
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| Assessment | Production basis | Reported climate comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Risner et al., ACS Food Science & Technology (2025) | Modeled near-term production; cradle-to-gate scenarios | About 80% below to about 2,513% above median retail beef; every scenario exceeded the study’s cited minimum retail-beef impact of 9.6 kg CO₂e per kg. |
| CE Delft (2023) | Ex-ante projection of commercial-scale production in 2030 | With renewable energy in production and key supply-chain stages, lower than ambitious beef and pork benchmarks and comparable to chicken. With global-average energy mixes, lower than beef but higher than pork and chicken. |
These are not factory-to-factory measurements or directly interchangeable estimates. The studies use different production assumptions, energy conditions, system boundaries, and comparison benchmarks. CE Delft also identifies reactor temperature control and culture-medium ingredients as climate hotspots, and notes that uncertainty remains because the technology is immature and future scale and process performance are not yet established.
What the result does—and does not—say
- It challenges a blanket claim. Cultivated meat is not automatically low-carbon; its climate impact depends on how it is produced.
- It does not settle the footprint of future production. The UC Davis paper models near-term scenarios, while CE Delft projects a 2030 commercial system. Neither is an observational accounting of mature commercial factories.
- Energy and inputs are central to the comparison. The CE Delft projection improves with renewable energy, while the UC Davis scenarios show how growth-medium processing can affect results.
- The beef benchmark matters. A result below median beef can still exceed a lower-impact beef comparator, as the UC Davis scenarios illustrate.
Why some coverage called the study “not peer reviewed”
A 2023 UC Davis news article discussed an earlier version of the work when it was still a preprint and not yet peer reviewed. The journal paper was subsequently published in 2025. The earlier description was accurate for the preprint at that time, but it does not describe the paper’s current publication status.
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