‘MEAT 2.0’
Since we already have our cake and eat it, (you know you can get seriously delicious vegan cake, right?) might we soon be able to have our meat and eat it? Could the definition of ‘vegan’ eventually include meat-eaters? Whaaat?! (Those who eat only clean meat, that is).
‘Clean meat’, ‘cell-based’, ‘lab-grown meat’ and ‘cultured meat’, are just some of the names given to the new meat products that various start-ups across the globe are racing to bring to the general public. The many developers in this race are very keen to point out that their products are not merely another plant-based meat substitute, – because they are not made from plants! Their products are absolutely meat as we know it, – just not from slaughtered animals!
Where did the idea come from and what is driving the development of ‘clean meat’?
Populations across the world have been on a constant increase for decades. Predictions now stand at Earth being home to 10 -11 billion people by the end of the century. The world population by 2030 is already projected to exceed 9 billion people. That’s only TEN years away!
Despite the popularity and rise of veganism in recent years and the enormous number of vegan companies that exist today, the majority of which were not around 10-15 years ago, sadly meat consumption throughout the world has also been on the increase. It is very clear that people are not going to stop eating meat.
The biggest reason for this huge increase in meat consumption is that as developing nations become wealthier and more people have access to more resources, they tend to purchase more meat, as it is typically seen as a luxury food. We do not of course condemn the idea of poorer nations becoming wealthier, but the growing demand in meat production is a HUGE and critical problem! Unfortunately, though the numbers of vegans, plant-based diets, flexitarians and reductarians continues to rise, it is not currently anywhere near enough to offset the growing demand for meat in developing countries.
We do not have the correct distribution of resources to feed all the people on Earth right now. At this rate there is no question that we will not have the resources to feed 10 billion! This is really quite frightening and should be a wake-up call to us all. Animal agriculture is responsible for around 18% of all greenhouse gases and is the largest contributing factor to climate change. Scientists today are very worried and the predictions they made a for a future 50 years away are now looking like they will be here in just over 10 years. We are, without a doubt, facing a HUMONGOUS crisis, and many things need to change, like yesterday! It is this dire and very urgent problem that is the primary concern of developers of clean meat.
So what exactly is lab grown or so called ‘clean meat’ and how is it made?
The process used to make clean meat is a form of cellular agriculture. The techniques used are based upon those already used for growing new tissue in the field of regenerative medicine; in vitro cultivation of animal cells.
First a biopsy is taken from a living animal. This is a very small sample but it contains millions of cells, all of which have the capacity to regenerate and grow into millions more cells. The sample of cells is then placed into a bio-reactor, where they are given a mixture of nutrients, sugars, salts and proteins, all the nutrients that cells receive naturally when they are in a living body. The cells cannot differentiate so they will continue to divide and multiply, forming muscle tissue, just as they do in a body. The developing tissue is grown around a ‘scaffold’ which encourages them to grow into long fibrous strips, like muscle cells in the body do. The scaffold should be edible, and the whole process is a little more complicated than this simplified version, as in order to truly be meat, cultured meat also needs connective tissues and fat.
From a vegan perspective, the current process of creating the meat is not vegan, as an animal is still being used for the initial cells and so at least currently, some small herds of ‘donor’ animals would need to be kept in order to ensure the supply of cells available for the biopsies. However, the biggest problem of all from a vegan perspective is the use of foetal bovine serum (FBS). FBS is drawn from the blood of a foetal calf when the mother cow is slaughtered. It is used because it contains the required nutrients to nurture growing cells, including a rich supply of proteins. The method of collection is to slaughter the pregnant cow and immediately puncture the heart of her unborn calf (whilst it is still alive) before the baby itself dies. There is some degree of ‘ethics’ within the field, such as ensuring the foetus does not receive oxygen during the process lest it become ‘aware’, but this is of little consolation even to most meat-eaters and of course does nothing to mitigate the terror, suffering and painful, often slow and conscious deaths that millions of cows are subjected to each year. This of course is one of the cruellest processes imaginable. Need we go on?
The use of FBS is not new, and not caused by the desire to create clean meat, as it has been used in cellular agriculture for decades and is actually considered a by-product of the dairy industry. However, we do not need to reiterate that this is as far from vegan as possible! Produced in this way, no so-called ‘clean meat’ could ever be seen as vegan. Currently, it’s not even the slaughter-free meat product they wish to market it as! Added to that is the fact that the lab-grown meat developers are currently using more FBS than other industries!
So what then are the benefits of this technology? Will ‘clean-meat’ ever be slaughter-free?
Developers realised early on into the process that the use of FBS would not be sustainable in the long term. Since their aim is to effectively replace the meat industry, or at least take a significant percentage of the market share, it makes neither economical or marketing sense for their product to continue to require billions of animals to be slaughtered on a regular basis.
An article in Wired last year (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/scaling-clean-meat-serum-just-finless-foods-mosa-meat) explains that Mark Post, the co-founder of Mosa Meat, just one of the many start-ups in the business of ‘slaughter-free meat’, estimates that it takes around 50 litres of FBS to make just one patty! It is also the high financial cost of a litre of FBS (up to £700 per litre) that has been responsible for the immense price-tag of the few burgers produced to date.
To this end, several companies have spent the last few years working on plant-based serums. This is still a very tricky process and they are not quite there yet.
If they manage to produce the right alternative to FBS, a serum that can be synthesised in the lab, and therefore dramatically reduce the cost, then the ‘clean-meat’ companies will be so much closer to competing on price with the meat industry. This is, incidentally, where they see the battle for the market being won, – on price comparison rather than ethics.
Also aside from ethics, the developers state that eventually cultured meat will be safer for human health, because it will not be subject to the antibiotics that are currently required to control bacteria in the billions of cows, pigs, sheep and chickens all over the world that are bred in filthy, overcrowded conditions. This is not to mention the range of intestinal pathogens regularly found in meat, including E.coli, Listeria, Campylobacter and Salmonella to name a few. Clean meat would simply not contain those bacteria.
Among reducing the prevalence of antibiotic resistance and less meat-borne diseases in general;
Other BENEFITS include;
- No faeces. (Small amounts of faecal deposits are regularly found in meat products for human consumption).
- The meat products could be designed to be even healthier, by specifically removing some of the more harmful aspects, such as the amount of saturated fat, from the product, and the addition of other vitamins or minerals.
- MUCH less land required – some estimates are in the range of 70 – 98% less land being required for the production of the same number of meat products.
- A huge reduction in water usage (estimates up to 95%) since the water is not continually required for the animals to drink.
- And estimates currently suggest between a 7 to 50% reduction in the energy required to produce the same amount of meat.
However, it is still to be determined just how much more eco-friendly clean meat production would be, if at all. As the figures depend on exactly what we compare cell-based meat production to, as there are many ways to raise ‘livestock’ and different methods impact the environment in different ways. Compared to traditional CAFODs, in which the majority of the world’s animals are raised, on the surface cultured meat from an environmental perspective seems like a no-brainer. Compared with other methods, when looking at the environment specifically and not the vegan perspective, it’s not always so clear-cut.
Some people believe large-scale production of clean meat could actually be worse for the environment. This is because whilst cows produce huge amounts of methane, the cultured meat labs are likely to produce huge amounts of carbon dioxide. C02 is more damaging to the environment than methane. These are the findings from a report published in February 2019, in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. The report is very problematic however and was acknowledged as such by its authors. One of the big problems of the study is that it took all available data, (of which there is very little because cultured meat developers are understandably guarded about their methods given their competition) and from this data looked at a time frame of a thousand years! It is ludicrous to think that we would still be producing in the same way 1000 years from now and also that energy will be produced in the same way as it is currently. Neither did the study acknowledge the C02 absorbing impact of the billions of trees that could be planted in the land previously used for CAFODs and slaughterhouses, which might not only offset the carbon footprint of the clean meat factories themselves, but also some of the destruction of the Amazon caused by cattle raising and soya crops among other reasons. The study does go to show that we cannot simply assume that all environmental concerns will be greatly improved if the world switched to cultured meat, but other than this, it doesn’t provide any reliable data either.
Further ethical considerations extend to the fear that if clean meat becomes the norm, since we already grow human tissues for regenerative medicines, what is to stop people eventually deciding to taste human flesh created in the same way? After all, one might argue that nobody would be being directly harmed in the process. The ethics here would in fact concern different issues, but they are still very worthy of discussion and preventative measures.
What are the further challenges to lab-grown meat production?
Naming it – Developers need their product to appeal to the masses if it is to be successful, and names like ‘cultured meat’ and ‘lab-grown’ are not very appealing. As language is so important to shaping the way we think, they need to get this right. However, the decision over what the products are called is ultimately not up to them but the authorities.
Regulation: This ties into regulation, with food safety bodies having concerns about the products will need to be labelled so that the public are aware of what they are buying and how it was made. (Shame this is not such a requirement for existing meat products!) No-one is sure yet how the products will be tested for safety, and the authorities are likely to be very strict about what the products are called, potentially alienating a large sector of those to whom they would have appealed.
Pushback: It should be no surprise that farmers’ and agricultural associations, seeing the threat to their industry, are already starting to push back and lobby governments. It is likely that we will see the same thing happen with cultured meat as we have seen already with soya milks and cheeses in Europe, where the EU has introduced laws prohibiting soya and cheese manufacturers from calling their products ‘milk’ (even when ‘soya’ is clearly indicated in the title), or words resembling the product it is intended to replace. Now with French farmers trying to push through ‘Amendment 49’ , (which has unfortunately received far too much backing and was voted on the quiet), farmers are trying to claim unique ownership of words such as hamburger, sausage etc, and lobbying the EU to ban plant-based companies from even being able to use words such as ‘alternative to’. This is gravely concerning.
