Affordable lab-produced meat: The motivation

A popular news item last week concerns the progress made so far on affordable lab-produced meat, and the prospect that this product will hit the market globally in a few years.

Let’s face it; the act of slaughtering cows, goats, rams, sheep, chicken, and so on, to provide meat for humans certainly hits some raw nerves, especially among the advocates for the abolition of cruelty to animals. Even though I love chicken and I eat cow meat, watching these animals being killed – putting knife into their neck and severing the head from the rest of the body – always evokes in me some sense of pity and gross unfairness, even though I wouldn’t consider myself an animal ethicist. I vividly remember an incident in the U.S. in which one of my children refused to eat the cooked meat of a goat in a home-style stew for rice because she had seen the goat alive earlier that day! She was about five years old at the time; now at 33 years of age, she doesn’t eat meat; though I am not able to determine whether the event she witnessed several decades ago has anything to do with her choice of becoming a vegetarian.

In his article in Sciencefocus.com, Tom Ireland has this to say: “The need to find credible alternatives to traditional meat is urgent. Livestock farming takes up a huge amount of land and water per calorie of food compared to crops, and in terms of greenhouse emissions, is as bad as burning fossil fuels, according to the United Nations. Rising incomes in developing countries means that more people are eating meat than ever before, reducing the amount of land available for much-needed crops, and contributing to climate change. Of course, being able to grow meat artificially can only have a positive impact on animal welfare, too.” Thus, the cruel, unethical treatment of animals that are raised for food and the considerable environmental costs of meat production are sure motivations for the advocates of alternative meats or ways to produce meat without killing a single animal. As Mahita Gajanan wrote in Time Magazine in March of last year, alternative meat business start-ups have witnessed massive investments, “out of widespread concern over the 10 billion animals killed for food in the U.S. each year and cattle’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.”

There are other urgent motivating factors for meat production alternatives according to Gajanan: “Beef production makes up 65% of livestock emissions, which total about 7.1 gigatonnes globally, according to United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Cultivating beef requires four times the land of dairy production, and uses seven times the resources needed to produce pork and poultry, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. The World Health Organization linked red meat with potentially causing cancer and urged caution in consuming it in a 2015 study.”

With the foregoing motivations in hand, businesses have sprung up to produce alternatives to meat or animal meat that does not require the killing of animals. There are two approaches, generally speaking: plant-based lab meats and lab meats derived from animal cells. The former is much more advanced to the point of maturity; thanks to the ingenuity of food scientists and food engineers. According to Gajanan, Beyond Meat, a company in the U.S. which has over 150 employees, has “infiltrated the market by placing its burger patties right in the meat aisles of about 25,000 grocery store locations in the U.S., from Walmart to Whole Foods.” Another company, Impossible Foods, which Gajanan says employed over 257 people in 2018, is marketing Impossible Burgers. This product is reportedly available at more than 600 restaurants in the U.S.

Unlike plant-based artificial meats – such as those marketed by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, animal-based meat comes from the cells of real animals whose meat is being lab-grown. This is reminiscent of in vitro fertilization. This kind of meat is referred to as cultured meat, in vitro meat, and synthetic meat.  It is made by growing muscle cells in a nutrient serum and providing an environment that enables the formation of muscle-like fibers. These kinds of meat are more expensive to produce and are the ones expected to hit the market in a few years.  They have the taste and texture of real meat because the cells come from real animals.

Fake meat and in vitro meat are evidently growing in popularity whether it is lab-grown, man-made – or even plant-based meats that bleed fake blood. Acceptability is obviously a factor that cannot be taken for granted. How good are these products in terms of taste and texture? Are there religious implications? What about the taxonomy – should these artificially-produced “meats” be called “meats?” What about the affordability of cultured meat? What is the regulatory landscape for these products? Should livestock producers be worried? What about the effects on the economy? These and other issues are receiving the attention of government entities. In next week’s article, I will delve into the technology of in vitro meat production in which no animals are slaughtered.