Opinion certainty 2/5 debate potential 4/5

Datar: Cultivated meat may fail while lab-grown milk and eggs succeed

Isha Datar · Cultivated meat’s “trough of disillusionment” · Feb 27, 2025 · at 39:31

Isha Datar, executive director of New Harvest, reflects on whether full-cut cultivated meat will ever succeed versus precision-fermented proteins and food ingredients.

0:00 / 0:28exact quote · 28.7s
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“Cellular agriculture as a concept is so much bigger than meat, and it's very possible that things like milk proteins or egg proteins or just ingredients in our food Are actually going to make a bigger difference for the climate and for nutrition and food and a climate change future and food security than meat. Like meat actually might never happen, you know, and meat is just kind of this like holy grail thought experiment that we love talking about, but it may be some totally different other thing.”

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Isha Datar Feb 27, 2025 ▶ 7:55 Cultivated meat’s “trough of disillusionment”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Datar: Cultivated meat is in the 'trough of disillusionment' but will happen
“We're in this kind of trough of disillusionment, as they call it in the hype cycle terminology, where people are like, what do you mean this thing will never happen, it's been way too long, when actually, it will happen, it's just, now we've kind of set oursel…”
Isha Datar Feb 27, 2025 ▶ 8:28 Cultivated meat’s “trough of disillusionment”
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Isha Datar Feb 27, 2025 ▶ 13:46 Cultivated meat’s “trough of disillusionment”
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Isha Datar Feb 27, 2025 ▶ 33:16 Cultivated meat’s “trough of disillusionment”
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Isha Datar Feb 27, 2025 ▶ 15:50 Cultivated meat’s “trough of disillusionment”
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Isha Datar Feb 27, 2025 ▶ 16:50 Cultivated meat’s “trough of disillusionment”
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