A recent study by CE Delft – the first ever to be based on data from cultivated meat companies – compared the projected water use of cellular agriculture to an ambitious benchmark of conventional products, and showed the water footprint of cultivated beef to be 78% lower than conventionally produced beef (258L/kg), and similar to the water footprint of conventional pork and poultry production. The footprint calculation includes water used to irrigate the crops which serve as sources of nutrients added to the growth media, the water used in the growth media as well as water needed for cleaning the production facility. Water usage is expected to vary depending on the process and type of product.