Table 3. Various aspects of conventional meat and in-vitro meat.

Broad aspect	Conventional meat	In-vitro meat
Animal welfare	Obtained by slaughter of animal	Slaughter-free method of production by cell agriculture
	Animal undergoes pain or stress during rearing, transport and in lairage	A small amount of tissue biopsies or explants needed for obtaining stem cells
	With proper stunning, pain may be reduced to a great extent	Harvesting fetal embryonic stem cells considered painless method
	Need large number of animals to fulfil meat demand	Require few animals for supplying stem cells for meat production
	Availability of meat from wild/ exotic/ rare species is not ethically and legally allowed	Make possible of production of meat of wild/ rare or exotic animals as rhino sausage, tiger nuggets
Food security and safety	Production process warrants strict quality checks	Whole process is carried out under strict hygiene and sanitary conditions
	Higher manual contact and large variations in animal production practices affect the quality	A novel process and does not depends upon animal handling and managemental practices except for harvesting stem cells
	The feed and other inputs change quality of meat to a small extent	Nutritional quality of cultured meat largely affected by incorporation of various ingredients in growth media
	Compositional modifications are difficult	Compositional modifications are very easy
	Higher risk of antibiotic residues and microbial contamination, depending upon the managemental and feeding practices	Very low risk of antibiotic residues or microbial contaminations
Sustainability	Higher water and carbon foot-print	Low water and carbon foot-print
	Causes environmental pollution and unable to sustain high production of meat in future	Environmental friendly, sustainable, green technology
	Resource intensive, need high amount of water, land and energy inputs	Resource extensive, theoretically one cell line can feed whole world
	Large land requirement for animal farming and agriculture for production of fodder and grains	Less land requirement and may use horizontal space
	Waste disposal of agriculture farming, animal rearing, slaughtering and meat processing poses a huge challenge	Waste disposal is far less as compared to conventional meat production, media waste treatment and disposal at an industrial scale may require attention
	Cause higher emission of GHGs leading to ozone depletion and global warming	No significant emission of GHGs by application of innovative technologies
Process characteristics	Production of meat takes more time due to rearing animals to slaughter age	Fast process and production at artificial environment
	Energy is diverted towards principal product meat along with a range of by-products	Full energy is diverted towards production of principal product
	Animal reared mostly at rural areas and transported to slaughter house/ processing facilities	The whole production process most likely to be set up mostly at urban areas
	Not suitable for long-term space explorations and settlement	Suitable for long-term space explorations and settlement
	The production site is mostly away from consumption areas	The in-vitro production site can be placed near to demand areas
	Lowering production will preserve biodiversity	Higher production will decrease conventional meat production and preserve biodiversity
	Stress prior to slaughter leads to deterioration of meat quality such as PSE, DFD	These pre-slaughter stress factor do not apply in in-vitro meat
Religious aspects	Slaughtering of animals should be done with proper following of religious rules	Cell harvesting as per religious laws and culture media should have religiously acceptable ingredients
	Have animal welfare and ethical issues for vegan and vegetarians	Accepted by vegetarians and vegans who avoid meat eating due to animal welfare and ethical concerns, culture media are free from animal origin ingredients

GHG, greenhouse gas; PSE, pale soft exudative; DFD, dark firm and dry.