7 minute read
The Future of Meat
The Argument for a Clean Meat Revolution
The thought of tucking into an insect loaf instead of a turkey come Christmas 2030 has me concerned and now I’ve mentioned it perhaps it’s also concerning you! But if an increasing number of news articles are anything to go by, forcing down mealworms and crickets is the price we must pay for our current obsession with meat. Or is it? Not wishing to succumb to a lifetime of beckoning insectavorianism or even vegetarianism, I was motivated to investigate other avenues, and came across cultivated, ‘clean’ or lab grown meat.
As far back as 1931 Winston Churchill predicted we would eat cultivated meat; declaring “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.” Sadly, this didn’t happen by the 1980s as Mr. Churchill predicted, but we are slowly making headway and scientists have been working on lab grown meat since the 90’s.
Cultivating meat is a bit like creating a building, it requires the right environment, a solid framework, and the right bricks. The cells (bricks) from a healthy animal are introduced to a scaffold (framework) on a growth medium in a sterile lab (right environment) and induced to multiply.
To hazard stretching this metaphor to the limit, you also need to arrange utilities, but instead of electricity and water, cultivated meat requires the right nutrients. This might sound off-putting at first, but hotdogs and Lucky Charms aren’t exactly natural either and we eat them. Is this very different?
The negative impact of the meat industry is huge, and lab meat offers us the rare chance to eat our cake and have it too. Although many will be put off by the idea of lab meat, we must overcome potential aversions or resign ourselves to menus that include a lot more vegetables, and possibly, crickets.
Challenges to Change
Not everyone is as keen to embrace lab meat, and there are a few reasons why the public might find it difficult to stomach.
Lab grown meat isn’t just a new food, it’s new science. Understandably there will be concerns about the safety of the meat and its health benefits. Some will find the whole idea off-putting. Concerned with profits, any business reliant on animal products will likely do their best to exacerbate these worries. These businesses won’t be willing to kill off their cash cows without argument and will likely fight against meat producers that can dispense with cows entirely.
With enormous start-up capital required for lab meat research and production, it is critical that there are consumers. Even accounting for sceptics, a global population of 9 billion still offers a large market for lab meat pioneers. What of those that don’t eat meat, or who must follow certain food rules? The 1.5 billion vegetarians might be willing to try lab meat, but what of the 2 billion Muslims and 15.3 million Jewish people? Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisation, has decided that cultivated meat is haram, or forbidden. Other Muslim and Jewish organisations are still deliberating.
Whatever these organisations decide, there will still be people willing and excited to try cultivated meat. Informing and preparing the public will be challenging, but by focusing on the benefits of embracing lab meat, the only thing separating the excited from the reluctant, will be time.
The Case for Cultivation
As mentioned earlier, insects are often championed as a meat replacement, as they take up a fraction of the land and resources required for livestock. Longhorned grasshoppers are 34 – 45% protein and are already enjoyed by millions. So why not look to our winged and crunchy friends as a solution to our over-reliance on meat?
To those with a western palate, the thought of eating insects is distasteful, only to be attempted at the last extreme of hunger or because of a drunken bet. It will be a struggle to convince people otherwise. And from a global point of view, a meat rich diet is seen as an indicator of success. As nations become richer, the taste for meat continues to increase (see table: The Growing Demand for Meat) while the demand for insects decreases. Expecting developing nations to switch or stick to insects and curb their meat consumption, when appetites in the West have been so rampant, is unfair. It’s also unrealistic. Developed nations that have long contributed to the issue need to become leaders in the cultivated meat revolution. It doesn’t look like this will happen any time soon.
The growing demand for meat is already driving businesses to find inventive ways to rear more animals, faster, in closer quarters, to meet demand and maximise profits. In dystopian news, The Guardian recently reported that China has opened a 26-story skyscraper where they will mechanically raise and slaughter 1.2million pigs a year. Concerns around safety are already being raised, as even standard slaughterhouses can be petri-dishes for devastating illnesses. Moving away from mechanised farming and towards lab meat would make slaughterhouses obsolete and mitigate the risk of creating deadly diseases.
The USA, Ireland and others already consume more meat than they have capacity to rear, and the UK isn’t far behind, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. To meet this demand, we have increasingly turned to mechanised farming. Many of us omnivores turn a blind eye to leaked footage from abattoirs and slaughterhouses that show horrendous cruelty. We know that this isn’t rare, but habit and convenience make sure we keep buying products from these dismal places. Cultivated meat will provide the same product, made from the same building blocks, with the same texture and taste, with none of the bad (metaphorical) aftertaste.
The most important argument in favour of replacing livestock with the lab, is environmental. We all know about global warming and habitat destruction. Extinction rates are so high that we are considered by many scientific organisations to be in the middle of a sixth mass extinction. A study in 2021 found that a third of all global emissions are caused by our food systems, and according to the WWF, cattle ranching accounts for 80% of Amazon deforestation. Unicef has stated that 1 in 3 people globally don’t have access to safe drinking water, yet The Water Footprint Network has calculated that 15,000 litres of water are needed to produce 1kg of beef. It seems impossible that we will be able to continue as we have been.
Environmental, animal welfare, lack of space, and risk of disease are all pressures that suggest moving away from our meatcentric diets is no longer a choice. The choice we do have is what we eat instead. Many may choose to walk the vegetarian path, and others may decide veganism or insects are the answer. For myself, I’ll leave others to enjoy their mealworm pasta and deep-fried crickets, I’ll be enjoying a steak – hold the cow.
FANCY A TASTE?
Labs are currently able to create meat that has a mince link texture, but filets and joints are probably at least a decade away. Unexpected difficulties in development have meant that the industry has continually failed to keep with self-stated timelines for product availability. However, if you are in Singapore, and have a spare $50 USD, you can certainly try a chicken nugget from Eat Just (not to be confused with Just Eat!). In a world first, these nuggets were approved for sale by the Singapore Food Agency in December 2020. In November 2022, another cultivated meat company in California had a product approved as safe to eat by the US Food and Drug Administration. Change, however slow, is already happening.
