Bibliometric analysis of scientific articles related to ‘cultured meat’
Résumé
‘Cultured meat’ aims to produce large quantities of ‘meat’ from muscle cell culture to feed humanity while slaughtering
fewer animals. It is a hot topic, but which is much less present in academic research. Indeed, a first study found a total of
327 scientific publications only on this topic though the first cultured meat was approved in 2020 for commercialisation
in Singapore. The purpose of this work was therefore to analyse the recent evolution of the scientific literature as of
February 13, 2023. Thus, 826 scientific publications are present on the Web of Science (108 in 2020, 180 in 2021
and 242 in 2022) including 159 reviews. Although the number of scientific papers on this topic has increased over
the last three years, the total number of scientific articles remains modest and mainly on technological aspects. While
a bibliometric search was carried out with more than 20 keywords, it appears that ‘cultured meat’ is present in the
title in about 30% of the articles from 2020. More than a third of scientific articles concern the ‘Food Science and
Technology’ section. The top three journals publishing articles on this subject are Foods (39 articles), Frontiers in
Sustainable Food Systems (two recent publishers) and Fleischwirtschaft (a technical international magazine for the
meat industry) (24 articles each). Authors originate mainly from the USA (197 articles), UK (93 articles), China (73
articles), Germany (59 articles) and The Netherlands (55 articles). The two authors who published the most are Prof.
Mark Post from The Netherlands (16 articles), who trusts the technology, and JF Hocquette (15 articles) from France
who has a more critical view. More generally, the network of authors is very fragmented with more than 15 groups of
authors who do not publish together, which may reflect various approaches on this topic. In conclusion, the scientific
literature on cultured meat is limited but originates mainly from countries with an Anglo-Saxon or Germanic culture,
and from China, which tend to support this innovation.