Meat-ing the moment: Could cultivated game meat shape Africa’s wildlife economy?

What is cultivated game meat?

Cultivated game meat is meat grown from animal cells in a laboratory, without raising or slaughtering animals. It is also known as “clean meat”, “in vitro meat”, and “cell-cultured” or “(cell-)cultivated meat”

Its promise, progress, and pressing questions

Cultivated meat has gained significant attention as a possible solution to the health, environmental, and ethical challenges of conventional meat systems. In 2020, Singapore became the first country to approve its sale. Since then, regulatory bodies in the United States and Australia have followed suit, clearing products such as cultivated salmon, chicken, pork fat, and, most recently, quail (Singapore Food Agency, 2020; FSANZ, 2025; AMPS Innovation, 2025).

These developments mark growing scientific and commercial confidence in cellular agriculture. However, serious concerns persist. For example, what are the long-term health effects of consuming lab-grown tissues (Good Food Institute, 2025; Cedeno et al., 2025), particularly concerning additives, culture media, and bioaccumulated risks? And can cultivated meat be produced cost-effectively at scale, or will it remain a luxury niche, inaccessible to the very populations it claims to serve? These concerns are especially acute in lower-income contexts like much of sub-Saharan Africa, where price parity, infrastructure, and regulatory clarity remain uncertain.

In their recent article, McNulty et al. (2025) suggest the sector is now entering a more grounded, data-driven phase. While publication rates are accelerating and production costs are falling, e.g., hybrid cultivated chicken products now cost around US$6.20/lb (Pasitka et al., 2024), wide-scale commercial viability remains elusive. Technical hurdles such as scaling up biomass, replicating taste and texture, and earning consumer trust still loom large. Energy demands from bioreactors, regulatory uncertainty, and high infrastructure costs further complicate its promise.

Wildlife-based cultivated meat (cultivated game meat): a niche worth exploring?

Dr Paul Bartels once asked whether cultivated game meat from species like springbok, kudu, or impala could help meet protein demand while reducing pressure on wild populations. Technically, yes,  biopsies from wild species can be used to grow muscle and fat tissues in vitro, offering a route to relevant meat production that does not require killing animals or managing them in captivity.

Yet such innovation is not without tension. What does “wild meat”/ “game meat”  mean when it is no longer harvested from the veld but grown in a lab? The metaphor raises a critical tension: If the product remains but the ecosystem that gave it meaning disappears, have we truly conserved anything? Cultivated meat risks severing the feedback loop between living landscapes, wildlife, livelihoods, and culture, a loop vital to the integrity of Africa’s wildlife economy. There is also the question of wildness: what is lost when meat is abstracted from the landscapes and ecologies that give it value? If wildlife becomes a genetic input rather than a living part of an ecosystem, do we inadvertently shift conservation goals away from habitat and toward biotechnology?

Landscape and livelihood considerations

Insights from integrated wildlife-livestock ranching models, such as Shangani Holistic Ranch in Zimbabwe, show how conservation, production, and livelihoods can coexist on shared landscapes through rotational grazing, wildlife corridors, and regenerative land management. These systems not only produce meat but also maintain ecological function and support rural economies. Could widespread adoption of lab-grown meat, even if game-based, unintentionally disincentivise such landscape-level conservation? Turning wild animals into sources of cells for biotech could reduce their perceived ecological role, undermining models that value live wildlife in situ.

Can Africa afford to lead, or even follow?

The vision of cultivated meat must also be interrogated through a socio-economic lens. Most African countries currently lack regulatory frameworks for cellular agriculture. Bioreactors, sterile labs, growth media, and cold-chain logistics are not widely available in rural contexts. Without equitable investment or local ownership, there’s a risk that cultivated meat remains a technology of the Global North, marketed to Africa but not made for it.

Culturally, food is about far more than calories. Game meat carries spiritual, traditional, and symbolic weight in many African societies. How will lab-grown springbok or kudu be received by local communities? Will it be sustainable? (Tavan et al.,2025) Will it be deemed authentic?

Innovation with integrity: a way forward

Dr Bartels never saw cultivated game meat as a silver bullet, rather, as one tool in a broader sustainability toolkit, grounded in local realities and ecological humility. As the continent shapes its biodiversity economy, the challenge is not simply to innovate, but to do so without losing what makes Africa’s relationship with wildlife unique.

As the continent navigates biodiversity loss, protein insecurity, and climate change, we must ask: Could cultivated game meat augment conservation? Or will it dilute it? Could it offer new options for ranchers? Or threaten the very landscapes they protect?

These are not easy questions. But they are worth asking.

In memory of Dr Paul Bartels

The late Dr Paul Bartels was a pioneer in wildlife biotechnology, a conservationist whose curiosity spanned disciplines and looked to the future. Among his many ideas, he began exploring the potential for cultivated game meat in Africa, not as a replacement for nature, but as a complement to it. As the continent confronts rising pressures on biodiversity, food security, and land use, his vision prompts us to ask: Could science help us decouple meat production from environmental degradation? And if so, how do we do it without severing our connection to the wild?

References

AMPS Innovation (2025). World's first regulatory clearance for cultivated seafood.

Cedeno, F. R.‑P., et al. (2025). From microbial proteins to cultivated meat: nutritional and environmental potential. Journal of Biological Engineering.

Good Food Institute (2025). The science of cultivated meat. The Good Food Institute.

Kirsch, M., Morales‐Dalmau, J., & Lavrentieva, A. (2023). Cultivated meat manufacturing: Technology, trends, and challenges. Engineering in Life Sciences, 23.https://doi.org/10.1002/elsc.202300227

McNulty, M. J., Stout, A. J., & Kaplan, D. L. (2025). Meating the moment: Challenges and opportunities for cellular agriculture to produce the foods of the future. EMBO Reports.

Pasitka, L., et al. (2024). Cost-effective continuous manufacturing of cultivated chicken using animal-free medium. Nature Food, 5, 693–702.

Sharma, S., Thind, S. S., & Kaur, A. (2015). In vitro meat production system: why and how? Journal of Food Science and Technology, 52(12), 7599–7607. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-015-1972-3 

Tavan, M., Smith, N. W., McNabb, W. C., & Wood, P. (2025). Reassessing the sustainability promise of cultured meat: a critical review with new data perspectives. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 65(30), 7201–7209. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2025.2461262