By 2050, the world will need 60 percent more food to sustain a population exceeding 9 billion. Additive manufacturing (AM) can play a transformative role in meeting this challenge by enabling scalable production of cell-cultured meat that replicates the taste, texture, and nutrition of conventional animal protein. Current bioprocessing methods adapted from medical tissue engineering are too slow and costly for mass food production. A manufacturing-centric approach is required to achieve price and performance parity with conventional meat while ensuring safety, consistency, and consumer acceptance. This presentation describes how innovations in high-speed bioprinting and architected scaffolds can unlock the next generation of sustainable protein manufacturing. Using AM, vascularized polymer scaffolds can be printed in seconds to guide the spatial organization of muscle, fat, and connective tissue to recreate the marbling and mouthfeel of whole-cut meats such as steak or salmon. The talk will highlight process design considerations including material selection, print fidelity, nutrient perfusion, and post-processing for flavor and texture maturation. Two related applications illustrate the diversity of the approach: (1) mono-cellular printing of low-fat aquatic proteins such as fish and shrimp, and (2) multi-cell co-printing of muscle and adipocytes for ruminant and poultry proteins like beef, pork, and chicken. Both demonstrate how AM enables precise control of composition and geometry beyond what is possible in traditional agriculture. Finally, the session will discuss pre-competitive manufacturing science challenges, such as scale-up, automation, quality assurance, and workforce training, that must be solved for cultured meat to become a mainstream food technology. By integrating additive manufacturing, tissue engineering, and food science, we can establish a convergent manufacturing paradigm that sustainably feeds the future while creating new economic and educational opportunities across the global protein value chain.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will be able to describe how additive manufacturing enables scalable production of cultured meat through engineered scaffold design, material selection, and process optimization for texture and structure control.
Participants will be able to explain the manufacturing challenges of scaling bioprinting for cultured meat, including automation, quality assurance, and integration of biological and engineering process controls.
