Cruelty-free meat, lab-grown burgers, cultured meat, test tube meatballs…

Every week there’s a new article heralding the arrival of cellular agriculture – taking a few cells from an animal, then growing them up in a lab, over and over again to make meat products that no longer require an animal.

The small handful of cellular agriculture research companies and start-ups must be very pleased with the (mostly) positive coverage. There’s Modern Meadow in Brooklyn creating cultured leather and lab-grown meat. Memphis Meats and Sergey Brin-funded Mosa Meats are also working on lab-grown meat. There’s Clara Foods in San Francisco making egg whites in the lab, and Muufri that is making animal-free milk. The last 2 companies were borne from industry body and non-profit New Harvest, that helps fund emerging cellular agriculture businesses. All of these companies are getting rave reviews from the likes of Fortune and Wired and even The Daily Mail.

But here’s the problem: The good press will not last.

As products start to come to market in the next couple of years, the popular press will start to play on people fears. They’ll be discussion of Frankenstein foods.

If we’re not careful, the companies listed above will be discussed alongside Monsanto, with all the ill-deserved attendant damning press and social media rage. The very people who should be the first buyers of these new animal-free products – those who care about animal welfare, the environment and sustainable food production – will turn against these products and decry them for not being ‘real’ food, and how they may be dangerous to eat.

This narrative happened for GMO foods.

It will happen with cellular agriculture. Unless we act now.

Cellular agriculture is fast becoming a water-cooler topic, with strong opinions being formed.

Taking any new product to market is expensive with a high failure rate. We need consumer opinion to be on the side of these science-based companies, to help them plant their seeds in fertile ground.

But here’s the good news…

We can identify a good approach to talking about cellular agriculture that drives acceptance of scientific principles and mass-market consumption of products.

To change the world’s eating habits, we need a strategic approach to find the right message to win the hearts and minds of global consumers …

Here’s the problem: None of the companies above are hiring Chief Marketing Officers. They are hiring researchers because they are perhaps 2-3 years away from commercialising their work. But now is exactly when we need to start planning product launches and influencing the discussion.

Cellular agriculture has such huge promise to feed the world without cruelty, and to positively impact the environmental impact of global food production. Let’s have the foresight to start shaping the conversation now, so that these new foods can go to market and be accepted on our dinner plates.

The time to start planning is now…