Research Progress on the Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Cultivated Meat and Its Culture Medium

Cultivated meat is a sustainable alternative to traditional meat, and the scientific evaluation of its environmental impacts is crucial for advancing the green development of the industry. This review first uses the bibliometric software CiteSpace to analyze the core literature on cultivated meat globally over the past 15 years. It outlines the research hotspots in this field, as well as the current research status regarding its environmental impacts. Additionally, it proposes suggestions for improving public acceptance of cultivated meat from the perspective of green consumption. Subsequently, following the four steps of life cycle assessment (LCA): goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory analysis, life cycle impact assessment, and life cycle interpretation, this review summarizes the findings and challenges of LCA research on cultivated meat and its culture medium, and proposes optimization recommendations. The results show that the environmental impacts of cultivated meat mainly focus on energy consumption and culture media. The environmental hotspots of culture media depend on their formulations; for DMEM/F12, the most widely used basal medium, the key environmental hotspots are the production of amino acids and glucose. Finally, based on the aforementioned environmental hotspots, this review identifies pathways to enhance the environmental sustainability of cultivated meat from three dimensions: sustainable production of culture medium formulation, resource utilization of waste culture media, and energy optimization in cultivated meat production. This provides a scientific basis for the accurate evaluation of environmental impacts and the optimization of production technologies for cultivated meat in future studies.