For many of us, eating a meal containing meat is a normal part of daily life. But if we dig deeper, some sobering issues emerge.
Every year, 66 billion terrestrial animals are slaughtered for food. Predictions are that , with increasing demand for meat from China and other Asian countries as their standards of living increase.
The impact of grazing animals on the environment is devastating. They produce , and livestock farming is a .
What’s more, through industrial scale animal farming.
Some experts have even said for most people, and a vegetarian diet is healthier than a meat-based one. So the rationale for developing meat alternatives – “fake meat” – is strong.
Fake meat can be made from plant-based materials that mimic the taste of meat. But for those who want something closer to the real thing, meat cells can be grown in a laboratory – this is called “in vitro agriculture”. Here’s how it works.
Growing meat, but not in an animal
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.
The was produced by Professor Mark Post at Maastricht University in The Netherlands. It was cooked and eaten publicly at a London restaurant in 2013. It took three months to grow the meat and cost €250,000.
Professor Mark Post’s TEDx Talk on “test tube meat”, 2013.
Since then, the race has been on to produce commercially available synthetic meat. Many companies have taken out and some have even received funding from people like Bill Gates and Richard Branson.
Thanks to advances in tissue engineering, we can take all sorts of cells ranging from skin and blood to muscle and the brain from different animals, and grow them under controlled laboratory conditions.
The type of meat people want to eat is from muscle. This means synthetic meat production involves producing large quantities of muscle cells in a laboratory.
- selecting precursor (or “starter” cells) from the animal – in this case, muscle precursor cells – and providing them with the correct environment for growth
- growing them in bulk in an environment that mimics an animal body
- the precursor cells then have to be switched on (or “induced”) to turn into skeletal muscle by chemical or mechanical signals.
The growing and conversion of cells into skeletal muscle are the major challenges the industry currently faces. The appearance of this meat would likely resemble burger-type meat, like a patty, rather than carcass meat, which is very structured.
For example, when you cut into a steak, you might see the meat organised into long strands or fibres. But with cultured meat, the organisation of the cells may be more haphazard.
It’s entirely feasible for some types of cells to grow fast and reproduce themselves once every 24 hours in a laboratory setting – this is much faster than in an animal. The challenge is to achieve this on a large scale in bio-reactors (a vessel to contain the laboratory-grown cells), and then to get all the cells converted from precursor cells to muscle cells.
If eating the products of tissue cells seems unsavoury, consider that people already consume products of cell culture technologies. Over 50 per cent of biological molecules for vaccines and for treating diseases (such as antibodies for cancer treatment)
So we are already on track to consume “fake”, or artificially synthesised, molecules.
What takes more resources – growing cows or growing cells?
It takes around 18 months for a cow to grow fully, after a pregnancy of 10 months.
So in total, it takes two years and four months of growth in a space roughly , in a barn. When a cow is killed, it produces a 300kg carcass and of butchered meat.
On the other hand, eight trillion cells in a laboratory to make one kilogram of muscle meat.
A container of (the size of an average rainwater tank, or somewhere around five cubic metres) would be needed to grow this number of cells. This would account for cells grown in layers, and covered by a liquid to provide nutrients.
If cells in a laboratory divide every 24 hours, then it would take just over 26 days to grow one kilogram of meat.
This growth rate is feasible for some types of cells, such as skin and gut, but has not yet been reported for muscle cells in a laboratory.
Therefore, lab-grown meat could take fewer natural resources (like vegetation and water) to grow the equivalent amount of animal meat. The commercial availability of “fake meat” could profoundly decrease the enormous environmental impact of grazing animals and reduce animal cruelty.
As are concerned about animal welfare, and Australians are , fake meat has the potential to make a real impact to the meat industry.
Leigh Ackland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
