Meat production is nasty business. It uses colossal amounts of water, is incredibly polluting and results in the destruction of swathes of wild habitats. And that’s before considering the ethical and animal welfare issues involved in making meat production a almost trillion dollar industry. With meat production looking to further increase in the next decade the question is how to meet demand without devastating the planet.
The first movement towards a meat free future involved alternatives such as quorn. Quorn has indeed become popular in the vegan and vegetarian communities but have done little to reduce overall meat consumption. Similarly, less environmentally damaging alternative meats, like crickets, have not caught on due to the “yuck factor”. But what if you could create something that tasted like meat, was sustainable, and didn’t involve an abattoir.
The Idea
The idea of producing meat without using an animal isn’t a new. As early as 1932 Churchill noted “the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing”. But it was not until the 21st century that it began to appear as becoming reality.
It all started when researchers were able to demonstrate that tissue from goldfish skeletal muscle could grow in the lab if placed under certain conditions. The first condition was to immersed in a highly nutritious liquid known as the growth medium. It nourishes the cells in the tissue and allows them to grow. The researches found that the most growth occurred when the medium contained mushroom extract and freely floating muscle cells.
The method they used became known as the self-organizing technique because of the lack of constraints to growth. This method allows muscle tissue to grow as it would naturally. Meat produced by this method has the potential of closely resembling naturally occurring animal meat. However, larger scale production of meat by this method has not been successful because tissues will need to be continually harvested from donor animals. Having a constant supply of meat producing cells without using animal donors would be much preferable.
Immortal Cells
Most cells in the body are specialised to perform a specific task. But they all come from an single celled embryo. In between the two are many cell divisions and specialisations. After each division you are left with a new specialised cell and another cell ready to divide again. These are the stem cells and can orignate either from the embryo or from an adult. Embryonic stem cells have the potential of multiplying infinitely and producing any type of cell. Adult stem cells on the other hand have already been somewhat specialised but can still be a very promising source of muscle cells. But with every division there is a chance of DNA mutations is a constant issue with stem cell use.
Other than stem cells there are also myosatellites cells. These are small cells that usually only divide when muscle damage has occurred. These show great potential as a muscle cell source but are rare, difficult to isolate and require an initial animal donor.
Now you have selected your cells but another issue arises. For a tissue to grow you need constant flow of nutrients and a constant removal of waste. The growth medium is half way there but needs to be replenished without removing any growing cells. So the logical solution is to attach the cells to something.
Scaffold-based technique
By attaching cells to a scaffold you can constantly replenish the growth medium without losing any of your precious meat. The cells also grow better this way because cells are usually attached to a surface. The scaffold itself can be made from an edible substance like cellulose but in reality does not need to be edible. An edible scaffold has the potential of enhancing the texture of the final product. If it’s not the muscle tissue can be removed by either a physical cut or by using a specialised enzyme.
The final product from scaffold-meat production is often lacking in texture and flavour. This is because animal meat is not just protein and most of the flavour comes from other molecules like fat. Scaffold produced meat lacks this and as a result is unstructured and best for producing ground meats. No surprise then that the first lab grown meat product was a burger.
The First Bite
In 2013 researchers from Maastricht Univesity held a conference in London to announce they had produced the first lab grown beef burger. The researchers used adult stem cells from a cow to produce the individual muscle fibres. The fibers were frozen and collected until enough were available to produce a whole burger. A group of food critics were assembled and had the honor of taking the bite. They noted that burger had a very similar texture to animal meat. But also that the lack of fat was noticeable and affected the flavour. What was also notable was the cost to produce that single burger. £215,000.
Since then the price of lab grown meat has dropped considerably. In 2019, Bloomberg published an article on Just Inc., a company which had previously produced a plant based egg substitute, beetroot hummus and now $50 lab grown chicken nuggets. Just Inc produced the nuggets using the scaffold based meat growth method. Like the burger, the nuggets had a notable lack of texture but were otherwise quite tasty. Whilst a $50 chicken nugget may still be expensive it is impressive that it has been achieved in just 6 years.
The Advantages
The potential benefits of lab grown meat are seemingly endless. It could entirely remove the need for pasture land and feed production. For every 100 g of beef protein produced 164 square meters of farm land are needed. Tofu only needs 2.2 square meters. Lab grown beef may not be able to beat that but is will likely be a huge improvement on cattle. Paired with reduced lad usage is a reduction in water use and pollution.
Cows also have the unfortunate trait of producing large quantities of methane. Methane is one of the greenhouse gases which have seen very large increases. A single cow produces on average between 70 and 120kg of methane per year. Given that there are close to 1.5 billion cows any reduction will be a huge step in reducing the carbon footprint of meat.
The Emerging Industry
Clearly spelling out the benefits for investors and supporting start-ups is the Good Food Institute (GFI), a non-for profit set up in 2016. The GFI acts to promote a number of companies that are working to produce lab grown meat including Just Inc. A quick browse of their website yields a 6 week course on clean meat, and series of lawsuits. including one against the USDA for failing to respond to a freedom of information act relating to an investigation into anti competition actions by the American Egg Board against an egg free mayonaise company. More recently the GFI successfully argued that a US federal law against naming veggie burgers was unlawful.
The excellently named Bistro In Vitro of Amsterdam has gone one step further in preparing for the synthetic meat future by setting up a virtual restaurant. Their menu includes dodo nuggets, with honey sauce no less, a knitted steak and celebrity cubes which offer the chance to ” Show you are a true fan by literally eating your favourite celebrity…dipped in a wiskey glaze”. The cubes will apparently be produced from stem cells, presumably donated, from the celebrities. Whilst, I’m not sure how I feel about a restaurant profiting from another person’s cells I like the imagination and hope they announce the most eaten celebrity of the year.
Reducing meat consumption has recently become targeted as as something that an every day person can do tackle the climate emergency. Coupled with ever greater animal welfare concerns it is easy to foresee a world in which meat eating is a thing of the past. Luckily, the revolutionary work being performed around the world means that meat is unlikely to disappear from our plates any time soon. Even if right now a single chicken nugget costs $50.
