Environmental life cycle assessment of recombinant growth factor production for cultivated meat applications

Abstract Growth factors are critical components of current serum-supplemented and serum-free media formulations for cultivated meat production. However, growth factors have been excluded, estimated using proxies, or modeled using proprietary data in existing environmental assessments of cultivated meat products. Cell culture media has been identified as a hotspot in such studies, therefore it is important to accurately quantify the environmental impacts of growth factor supplementation. To address this gap, this study applied life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to comparatively assess the environmental impacts of recombinant growth factor production for cultivated meat applications. Life cycle inventories were developed for four recombinant growth factors (IGF-1, FGF, TGF-ß, and PDGF) produced using a novel bench- scale process. The functional unit of the product output was selected as 1 mg of produced growth factor. The results indicate that recombinant growth factors can have significant environmental impacts within cultivated meat systems, despite being used in very small quantities. For example, the global warming potential of production of 1 mg of IGF-1, FGF, TGF-ß, and PDGF was estimated to be 0.1, 0.04, 0.2 and 0.2 kg CO 2 eq, respectively. Future research should explore the sustainability of producing these growth factors at scale to meet the needs of the expanding cultivated meat industry or identifying alternatives to these growth factors that have a lower impact on the environment. Nomenclature