Bell CEO says cultivated meat unlikely to reach market for at least five years

Cultivated meat is unlikely to reach the market for at least another five years, according to Marco Tschanz, CEO of Swiss food producer Bell Food Group. Speaking in an interview with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Tschanz said regulatory hurdles and technical challenges meant lab-grown meat would take longer than some industry advocates have suggested.

Tschanz said the authorization process for cultivated meat remained complex and highly regulated, particularly in Europe. He noted that EU testing procedures alone can take two to three years, followed by political decision-making. “So it will take at least another five years,” he said.

Bell Food Group has had a stake in Dutch cultivated meat company Mosa Meat since 2018. Tschanz said the investment was intended to keep the company close to research and development, even if large-scale commercialization remained some distance away. “If a technology emerges to produce the raw material meat without slaughtering and cutting up an animal, then we have to be part of it,” he said, adding that Bell had “backed the right horse.”

While Bell continued to monitor developments in cultivated meat, Tschanz said the company’s core business remained conventional meat production. He noted that per capita meat consumption in Switzerland had been stable for many years, while population growth and market share gains continued to support overall sales volumes.

According to Tschanz, consumption of chicken meat in particular had increased significantly in recent years. He also said global demand for meat was rising and could no longer be met solely through traditional production methods.

At the same time, Tschanz suggested that momentum in the meat substitute category had slowed. He said sales of Bell’s meat substitute products were growing by only 0% to 1% per year, following a surge during the coronavirus pandemic. That earlier growth phase had since ended, he said, and meat substitutes had “remained a niche product until now.”

Tschanz attributed the limited adoption of meat substitutes to several factors, including taste and formulation. He said flavor remained inferior to conventional meat and described many substitute products as “highly processed products with many additives.” While price had previously been a barrier, he said costs had largely equalized with conventional meat products.

Looking ahead, Tschanz said cultivated meat was more likely to appear first in foodservice rather than retail. He suggested that restaurants would be better positioned to introduce lab-grown meat, where products could be clearly labeled and positioned, before any broader supermarket rollout.

Even then, he said cultivated meat was unlikely to replace conventional products. Instead, he described it as a potential complement within a broader protein landscape, particularly as pressure on global meat supply increased.

Bell Food Group’s comments reflected a more cautious outlook on the near-term commercialization of cultivated meat, even as the company maintained strategic exposure to the sector through its investment in Mosa Meat. While interest in alternative protein technologies remained high, Tschanz’s remarks underscored the gap between ongoing research progress and large-scale market readiness.