In Vitro Meat
Steak of the Future?
by Brentoni Gainer-Salim and Alexander D. Farris
In more and more laboratories around the world, the concept of creating meat from stem cells is being studied and tested. Many scientists envision in vitro meat to be a more cost-effective and less environmentally taxing replacement for meat currently manufactured in the factory farming system. In less than five years, it is likely that large food manufacturers will start creating industrial prototypes and shortly thereafter introduce this new meat substitute to the market. It will undoubtedly be a major accomplishment for food technology, but what will it look like? More importantly, what will it taste like? These questions remain only partially answered, but we will examine the most current revelations, theories, and opinions below.
Originally devised by NASA as a solution for the problem of storing food on long space voyages, new meat production technology has now been picked up and run with by environmental and animal rights organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) as a potential end to the killing of livestock for food. This is not a hypothetical creation, as food has already been created from animal cells. The primary obstacle now is fine-tuning the animal tissue to make it more suitable to the human palate, which is accustomed to an abundance of different tissues found in animals other than just muscle, such as fat and blood. Unless this obstacle is overcome, it is likely that only the most daring of the population will purchase these new foodstuffs. However, if the labs are able to concoct a product that resembles traditional meat in both taste and appearance, it could be marked in the history books as one of the greatest scientific advances of the twenty-first century.
Experts expect factory farm production to nearly double by 2050. Currently, the average American consumes 175 pounds of meat per year. Regardless of one’s moral position on using animals for human purposes, this dramatic increase should strike all as alarming due to its impacts on public and environmental welfare. Scientists believe raising livestock solely for human consumption accounts for 18 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions—as opposed to only 13 percent created by automobile exhaust. This translates into the real life scenario in which the hybrid automobile driver who eats meat leaves a greater environmental footprint than the vegan who drives a Hummer.
Meat production is also a large factor in overexploited natural resources, deforestation, wasted land, and air and water contamination. In fact, a 2006 United Nations report called the meat industry "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global."
According to latest reports released by the U.S. Farmers’ Union, 81 percent of beef in the United States is produced by only four corporations: Tyson, ConAgra, Cargill, and Farmland National Beef. While the average person only knows family farms that appear to be nothing but small, respectable family businesses, the truth is that the meat on your table seldom comes from your small local farmer down the road. Rather, your meat was a product on the production line of some large corporation looking to reap the largest profits, regardless of animals’ living conditions, the environmental consequences of their actions, or the adverse public health ramifications resultant of packing animals together as closely as possible. With an average $2.4 million per year lobbying budget aimed at easing Washington’s regulation of the industry, it is likely that the only thing that could curb the negative effects of the livestock farming industry would be pressures from economic rather than political currents. In this way, in vitro meat could be more than a peripheral contribution to technology, it could be one the greatest advancements of our generation.
The technology is progressing steadily through the final stages currently and is nearing the goal of economic plausibility. Meat substances have already been created artificially by dividing one cell into many more cells and growing them in laboratories. However, the current product, if put on the market today, would probably do more harm than good to the animal rights movement. Although the in vitro meat is genetically identical to the cell from whence it came, it currently would look entirely different from conventional meat. The current product is produced in sheets, hardly resembling a traditional steak or chicken breast. There would be no bone, which may initially seem strange to customers. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that in vitro meat will ever fully resemble the meat taken from a once living animal. For processed meat such as hamburgers or sausage, the process is much simpler, as shape is less important than flavor.
Flavor, however, cannot be exactly replicated for a number of reasons. Those who have eaten meat have probably realized that different pieces of steak taste different. This is easy enough to believe, as the cows all lived different lives, practiced different eating and exercising habits, and lived under different conditions. While this easily explains why traditional meat does not have one, universal flavor, it also explains why the task of crafting the flavor for in vitro meat is so difficult. Being generated from only one of many varying types of cells that make up a piece of meat, current cultured meat prototypes would prove insufficient even to the taste buds of the oblivious five-year-old Happy Meal connoisseur. Therefore, even though the technology exists, marketing issues that would arise if current in vitro meat prototypes were manufactured are delaying economic plausibility. The problem of making the meat seem realistic is much more complicated than replicating a cell several trillion times.
PETA announced in the spring of 2008 that it would offer a $1 million prize to the first company able to “produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.” Another advocacy organization called New Harvest was formed specifically for the purpose of making progress in the PR department for the new technology. The organization’s website states, “Because meat substitutes are produced under controlled conditions impossible to maintain in traditional animal farms, they can be safer, more nutritious, less polluting, and more humane than conventional meat.” It is the prospect of one animal tissue cell producing enough to feed the entire world for a year that drives some of these organizations, less concerned by animal rights but more so by the welfare of human beings and the environment.
Aside from grassroots organizations, some nations are contributing to the effort. The Dutch government has pledged around $4 million towards in vitro meat research in the past five years. Scientists in the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, the United States, and Germany are all actively researching ways to increase the new technology’s industrial viability. The first In Vitro Meat Symposium took place in Norway in April of 2008. According to the officials, “the two main goals of the symposium were to identify and discuss the key scientific challenges that need to be solved and to formalize an organizational structure capable of binding together the various efforts, as well as facilitating the funding of necessary activities.”
In 1931, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said, “Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” It is now the end of 2009, nearly eighty years hence, and we are still growing whole chickens, who are then slaughtered by the billion in the factory farms throughout the world. However, this “absurdity” could soon be obsolete. The ways in which our earth would benefit are numerous. In just a few years time, in vitro meat technology will be taken out of the laboratory and put onto the dinner table, where you will decide its success or failure.
Next: Animal Rights with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals President Ingrid Newkirk
Your Thoughts:
Most of what governments recommend for a daily diet is based on the cheapest ways to keep peoples bellies full. This is why flour and rice are the most common food "aid" item. The truth is that a good diet should include more meat and fruits than is currently recommended, and a lot less carbs. There is not enough supply for everyone to get this, however. The cost is also to high.