By Jessica Freitag and Joanne Tunna, Cellular Agriculture Australia
For cellular agriculture to deliver projected impact on human, animal and planetary health, products made with the technology must be widely available and have captured significant market share. Yet, from inception, the industry has faced pressure to communicate its impact to policymakers, investors, and consumers. Whilst companies are pre-commercial and have limited data to draw upon, this demand can be unrealistic.
Compounding the challenge, the policy and regulatory environment globally, including Australia, is picking up pace—think mandatory climate reporting and growing scrutiny over greenwashing, making robust impact data essential. Whilst the entire food industry is grappling with how to measure, report and communicate impact effectively, the cellular agriculture industry’s impact-centred origins amplify the stakes if it fails to communicate its impact effectively.
With this context in mind, Cellular Agriculture Australia’s (CAA’s) Joanne Tunna and Sam Perkins hosted a workshop at AltProteins 24 to shine a light on the industry’s need to align on impact metrics and claims. The workshop built on CAA’s Impact claims and metrics – Considerations for the cellular agriculture industry report, bringing together industry leaders to explore the practicalities of framing meaningful claims across four key themes: climate, nature, animal welfare, and public health. To guide the workshop, CAA drew on insights from three proximate industries—plant-based protein, sustainable fashion, and electric vehicles—which demonstrated several key lessons.
1. Consumer adoption is primarily driven by price, taste, and health, with impact claims acting as differentiators rather than key motivators.
2. Effective lobbying and communication of projected impact have resulted in substantial government support for industries seen as key contributors to achieving net zero goals.
3. Cautionary cases of alleged greenwashing emphasise the importance of substantiated impact claims in maintaining consumer trust.
The workshop activities revealed important considerations and common challenges in forming an effective approach to impact. It was clear that the workshop experience varied significantly depending on which theme a participant was assigned, a ‘one size fits all’ approach to various themes isn’t possible. The session demonstrated the difficulty in establishing clear causal links between operations and impact, especially regarding animal welfare claims. Participants found it challenging to draw a direct link between cultivated meat consumption and animal lives saved. Contrary to this, those who focused on public health were challenged by the extremely broad range of topics and nutrition indicators available. The group exploring climate benefitted from comparatively robust and well-socialised impact metrics.
Clearly, some impact areas carry greater complexity and ambiguity, requiring deeper expertise and resources. The cellular agriculture industry must be strategic in evaluating and prioritising the areas where impact claims are to be made.
For pre-commercial cellular agriculture startups, impact data likely doesn’t yet exist or is unlikely to be indicative of processes at scale. Despite this, a number of the impact claims suggested by participants, as well as those currently in the public domain, were characteristic of an industry at scale. For example, there exists a handful of preliminary pre-commercial life-cycle assessments (LCAs) which are often relied upon to make direct claims about future product performance. This underscores the need to do better as an industry at communicating efforts on the path to long-term impact without overinflating expectations. This is challenging to do well, given resource constraints and competing priorities.
With the horse having bolted and a plethora of claims already in the public domain, CAA stresses the need to critically consider the claims being put forth and to ensure that they can be robustly substantiated. Not doing so leaves companies (and the industry) exposed to considerable reputational risk.
Three key takeaways emerged from the workshop for participants:
1. Irrespective of their stage, companies must proactively integrate impact considerations into their strategies early to lay the foundation for when products are ready for market.
2. Any impact claims made should be substantiated through relevant, verifiable metrics. If data isn’t available, it is essential to use qualifying terms like “potentially” or “could” to convey aspirations without overstating impact.
3. This is an area ripe for collaboration and industry alignment.
Companies are faced with a difficult balancing act of responding to critical stakeholders—whose support, financial backing and purchasing power are critical to the industry’s success—with oftentimes limited and preliminary data.
CAA believes that industry alignment will result in the consistency required to build support, trust, and adoption of cellular agriculture products. We intend to double down on our efforts in this area in 2025 in collaboration with stakeholders.
CAA’s report on impact claims and metrics is here.