Imagine this: You wake up. It’s a Sunday, middle of December, the Sun is shining and it’s snowy outside. You need to eat something. Something tasty. Something that you can savor with each bite. Something that satisfies each and every taste bud on your tongue. So, you open the fridge, and suddenly, it hits you: it’s time to bring out the classic. Scrambled eggs with bacon. The king of America’s tabletops each morning. The all-time favourite. What a fantastic start to start to the day!
Now, consider where the bacon you just took out from the fridge came from.
It used to be a cute little piglet not that long ago – it had been born, fed, raised, and killed mercilessly to end up on a supermarket shelf with a price tag.
Quite a dark story, huh?
Now, what if you could enjoy all the taste of meat, without the need to kill a living being?
That’s the premise of cultured meat.
source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pigtures/comments/8h7j4l/cute_piglet/
Cultured meat is defined by the Good Food Institute as “genuine animal meat (…) that is produced by cultivating animal cells directly.” What is more, the claim is that “this production method eliminates the need to raise and farm animals for food”.[1]
We can find first mentions of the concept as early as 1931, when Winston Churchill stated that “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium”.[2]
The idea of artificial production of meat was elaborated on in 2005 by in P. D. Edelman’s PubMed publication.[3] He noted that people are becoming more and more aware of the unfair use of animals in farming, and that there are growing concerns over nutrition-related diseases associated to animal products.
Edelman suggested that in-vitro synthesis of muscle fibers could solve most of such issues, and potentially drive down the cost of meat production.
The idea of ‘humane meat’ is backed by many, with the most common arguments for it being:
- antibiotic-free production;[4]
- lower usage of water and land, lower greenhouse emissions;[5]
- no need to kill animals in the process.
The enthusiasm behind the technology is quite clear – since the first lab-grown burger has been premiered by Mark Post back in 2013,[6] the industry has grown to getting over 1.2 billion dollars in investments in 2020.[7]
What is more, tech giants are pushing for a widespread introduction of such a technology, with Bill Gates stating that “Rich nations should shift entirely to synthetic beef”.[8]
Labiotech stated that “the commercialization of cultured meat in Europe and the US seems inevitable.”
Just over 2 years ago, Singapore became the first country to legalize commercial sales of cultured meat – an industry leader called Eat Just has been selling synthetic chicken nuggets in the country ever since.
While the idea might sound like the perfect solution to all of humanity’s meat-related problems, we’ve seen some beef (pun absolutely intended) between the industry’s pioneers and certain market analysts.
For one, Paul Wood (served as executive director of global discovery for Pfizer Animal Health) is quite skeptical of the concept. He says that at this moment, it doesn’t seem feasible to use such costly biotechnology to drive down the costs of meat.[9]
The current situation in the industry doesn’t seem too advanced either – we’re only growing one type of tissue (e.g., muscle fibers) in a single Petri dish – thus, we cannot exactly replicate the exact animal cuts used for steaks or fillets. As a result, the main consumption of lab meat lies in blended products – nuggets and burgers.
As of today, the cost of lab meat production is very high (up to 15 000 $ per kg of foie gras)[10], though we’ve seen a major reduction in prices over the past decade – Mosa Meat has reported an 88x decline in production costs.[11]
Nevertheless, the future of lab-grown meat seems bright, with proposals of merging plant foods with cultivated muscle fibers and fat cells to create a hybrid product being put forward. As per CE Delft’s Techno-Economic Analysis, there is a prospect of a 4000-fold cost reduction in 9 years.[12]
As per the taste of such meat – the presentation in 2013 was a success – with culinary critic Hanni Rützler rating the consistency as “perfect”.
source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/the-artificial-meat-factory-the-science-of-your-synthetic-supper/
So, the next time you are frying your bacon on a cold December morning – think about the future. Would you consider trying lab-grown meat? Do you think that humans can develop technology good enough to replace slaughterhouses with laboratories? Let me know your thoughts in a comment.
Until next time,
Jan
[1] https://gfi.org/science/the-science-of-cultivated-meat/
[2] https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/churchill-bulletin/bulletin-115-jan-2018/no-bull/
[3] P.D. Edelman, D.C. McFarland, V.A. Mironov, and J.G. Matheny.Commentary: In Vitro-Cultured Meat Production.Tissue Engineering.May 2005.659-662.http://doi.org/10.1089/ten.2005.11.659
[4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-0112-z
[5] https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Cultivated-Meat-LCA-Report-2019-0709.pdf
[6] https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/5/4589744/cultured-beef-burger-public-tasting-mark-post-sergey-brin
[7] https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/lab-grown-meat-startups-venture-investment/
[8] https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/14/1018296/bill-gates-climate-change-beef-trees-microsoft/
[9] https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
[10] https://www.vmt.nl/41488/belgisch-bedrijf-bouwt-2-labos-voor-kweekvlees
[11] https://vegconomist.com/company-news/mosa-meats-announces-it-has-reduced-production-costs-by-88-times/
[12] https://cedelft.eu/publications/tea-of-cultivated-meat/