Guest guest Posted May 12, 2008 Report Share Posted May 12, 2008 From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008: Editorial feature-- Culturing meat Now among the most talked-about scientific conferences of 2008, the three-day In Vitro Meat Symposium was little noticed by anyone but the handful of participants when convened on April 9 in the Oslo suburb of Aas. Home of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, best known for associations with the Nobel Prize, Aas almost every week hosts obscure and esoteric scientific conferences. Few rate even a press release. The timing of the In Vitro Meat Symposium, however, could not have been better. In Aas, the assembled scientists and a few investors compared notes on products most often described as " test tube, " " synthetic, " or " cultured " meat. Around the world, mass media reported near-simultaneous civil unrest in multiple nations resulting from a global grain shortage. The most obvious and politically inflammatory cause of the grain shortage was the diversion of up to 20% of the U.S. corn crop to making ethanol fuel. But the ethanol industry quickly pointed out that the U.S. had in fact raised and exported more grain in 2007 than in 2006. The real problem, ethanol advocates claimed, was that more grain is now going to livestock. Soaring meat consumption in China and India means less grain available elsewhere to bake into bread and pasta. This is exactly what a June 1997 ANIMAL PEOPLE cover feature projected would occur at about this time, but without particular originality, since others had seen the same crunch coming for 30 years. Seeking ways to have meat and Hummers too, media pundits became aware through Alexis Madrigal of Wired.com that the Aas geeks might have an answer. Madrigal specializes in covering obscure and esoteric scientific conferences to extract hints about coming trends in technological innovation. " Meat grown in giant tanks known as bioreactors would cost between $5,200-$5,500 a ton, " or 3,300 to 3,500 euros, Madrigal reported. Economic analysts speaking at the In Vitro Meat Symposium projected that this would be " cost-competitive with European beef prices, " Madrigal wrote. Assessed Madrigal, " Rapidly evolving technology and increasing concern about the environmental impact of meat production are signs that vat-grown meat is moving from scientific curiosity to consumer option. In vitro meat production is a specialized form of tissue engineering, " he explained, " a biomedical practice in which scientists try to grow animal tissues like bone, skin, kidneys, and hearts " for possible transplant. " Proponents say it will ultimately be a more efficient way to make animal meat, which would reduce the carbon footprint of meat productsŠResearchers can currently grow small amounts of meat in the lab, and have even been able to get heart cells to beat in Petri dishes. Growing muscle cells on an industrial scale is the next step. " Elaborated Johns Hopkins University researcher Jason Matheny, who is among the 11 cofounders of the nonprofit cultured meat development firm New Harvest, " To produce meat now, 75 to 95% of what we feed an animal is lost because of metabolism and inedible structures like skeleton or neurological tissue. With cultured meat, there is no body to support; you're only building the meat that eventually gets eaten. " Nature engineered skeletons and neurological tissues that facilitate locomotion because of the necessity of enabling animals to move toward food and away from danger. These abilities are so little needed in the factory farm environment where pigs and poultry are raised, in particular, that significant economic losses result each year from animals whose underdeveloped legs collapse, causing them to suffocate beneath their own bloated weight. Under pressure from animal advocates, some factory farm conglomerates are reluctantly moving toward housing that allows pigs and chickens more room to exercise--while fantasizing about using genetic engineering to breed animality out of animals altogether. As a genetic engineering proponent once told ANIMAL PEOPLE in an off-the-record briefing, " If the problem you people have with meat is strictly with slaughtering sentient beings, we should be able to get rid of sentience. An animal doesn't have to be sentient to be slaughtered--it just needs to grow and gain weight. From the food industry point of view, the less sentient we can make an animal be, the better. " Culturing meat approaches the same problem from the opposite direction. " There is nothing in the production of cultured meat that necessarily involves genetic modification, " explains the New Harvest web site. " The cells that can be used to produce cultured meat are muscle and stem cells from farm animals. It is possible, however, that genetically modifying a muscle cell would allow it to proliferate a greater number of times in culture, and may thus make cultured meat production more economical. " In theory, a single cell could be used to produce enough meat to feed the global population for a year, " New Harvest continues. " It is possible to take a muscle biopsy from a live farm animal and culture the isolated muscle cells. If stem cells are used, these would likely be from a farm animal embryo. After the cells are multiplied, they are attached to a sponge-like scaffold, " which substitutes for an animal's skeleton, " and are soaked with nutrients. They may also be mechanically stretched to increase their size and protein content. The resulting cells can then be harvested, seasoned, cooked, and consumed. " In biomedical research, " adds New Harvest, " most cell cultures have used media made from the blood of cow fetuses. But researchers have now developed media made from plants and mushrooms. " Within several years, " New Harvest says, " it may be possible to produce cultured meat in a processed form, like sausage, hamburger, or chicken nuggets, with modifications of existing technologies. Producing unprocessed meats, like steaks or pork chops, would involve technologies that do not yet exist, that may take a decade or longer to develop. " New Harvest contends that, " Cultured meat has the potential to be healthier, safer, less polluting, and more humane than conventional meatŠmore efficient than conventional meat production in use of energy, land, and water; and it should produce less waste. " Cultured meat is unnatural, " New Harvest concedes, " in the same way that bread, cheese, yogurt, and wine are unnatural. All involve processing ingredients derived from natural sources. Arguably, the production of cultured meat is less unnatural than raising farm animals in intensive confinement, injecting them with synthetic hormones, and feeding them artificial diets made up of antibiotics and animal wastes. " Dutch investment The environmental argument has reportedly already proved persuasive to the Dutch government. The $5 million Dutch investment in cultured meat research and development may be little more than a token contribution toward the total cost of getting cultured meat into food processing plants and supermarkets, but stands in promising contrast to many previous Dutch schemes to get more economic output out of limited land by using new technology. Among the most notorious was draining the Zuider Zee estuary after World War II to create " polders, " salty fields brought into often marginal cultivation at enormous cost to wildlife habitat. Pumps keeping the below-sea-level polders drained are powered by a nuclear reactor which itself could be inundated if the North Sea rises slightly due to global warming. Crating veal calves and so-called " milk-fed spring lambs " were space-saving Dutch innovations in the early 1960s. Administering steroids to livestock to make them grow faster apparently started in The Netherlands at about the same time. But concern for farm animal welfare also emerged earlier in The Netherlands than almost anywhere else. In recent years, as eastern European nations with vastly larger potential for " factory farming " have entered the European Union and captured ever-growing livestock market share, Dutch producers have recognized that their unique market niche is a reputation--deserved or not--for raising animals in clean and reasonably natural conditions. The Dutch gamble in funding cultured meat experiments is that cultured meat can claim European market share which might otherwise go to factory pork and poultry producers in Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania, and will not cut into the Dutch upper-end cattle industry. The projected economics might almost work in Europe, but globally, noted New York Times writer Andrew C. Revkin, " The costs of cultured meat can't come close yet to competing with, say, unsubsidized chicken. " Yet the real growth opportunity for what New Harvest terms " cultured meat in a processed form " is in the developing world. Global meat consumption in 2007 was in the vicinity of 270 million metric tons, at a recent rate of increase of about 4.7 million tons per year, almost entirely in the developing world. Per capita consumption in the U.S. and western Europe is static or even declining. " One could envision some day a solar-powered facility in southern California or Singapore basically turning sunlight and desalinated seawater into growth medium, and then tons of cruelty-free, sustainable nuggets of chicken essence, " Revkin allowed. But Revkin wondered where further investment would come from. As In Vitro Meat Symposium participants acknowledged, " Costs for research, large-scale testing, and public relations will be significant. " Some " anticipated that governments and nonprofit groups would chip in. That seems idealistic, at best, " Revkin assessed, " in a world with deeply entrenched interests linking ranching, the agrochemical industry, and giant restaurant chains. " PETA challenged Revkin's skepticism by offering a prize of $1 million to anyone who can get cultured meat into commercial production by 2012--but while a prize may provide incentive, it is not actual investment. Nor can it be used as collateral. Neither does any developer appear to believe commercial production can be achieved in only three and a half years, at any level of investment. " In vitro meat is a godsend, " PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk told New York Times writer John Schwartz. Utrecht University cultured meat researcher Henk P. Haagsman told Schwartz that the PETA prize might " spark more interest to invest in the technology. " But Haagsman added, according to Schwartz, that " he would not like to see the field dominated by the animal welfare issue, since environmental and public health issues are such important drivers for this research. Another scientist at Utrecht, Bernard Roelen, said via e-mail that even with strong financing, it would be extremely difficult to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat before 2012, " Schwartz finished. The big obstacle to cultured meat is convincing major players in the food industry to back it--and that requires convincing them not only that it can be produced at competitive prices, but also that consumers want it. Grocers may be deterred by their experience of 20 years of often costly consumer resistance to milk produced with the aid of bovine somatotropin, called BST for short, and to foods containing genetically modified organisms, better known as GMOs and " Franken-foods. " The meat industry can be expected to promote opposition to a perceived rival, and to pursue legal action against even calling " cultured meat " by the name " meat, " much as the dairy industry has fought the use of the term " soy milk. " " Once cultured meat is made, " Madrigal of Wired.com concluded, " consumer acceptance is far from assured. What cultured meat will taste like is up in the air. Some scientists think it could be used to create novel foods that won't be quite meat, but won't quite be anything else. Most of the trends in food run counter to high-tech meat production, " Madrigal observed. " Heirloom tomatoes, organic produce, and the free-range-raised meat that pack the aisles of Whole Foods harken to lower-tech eras. " Commented New York Times " Dining " section columnist Mark Bittman, who is author of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food, " Does anyone remember Olestra? You can't invent food; or at least no one has done so successfully, " with the exception, Bittman allowed, of the orange juice substitute Tang. Bittman expressed skepticism of the environmental claims for cultured meat. " Fish farming, the latest attempt to increase the number of animals available for human consumption, certainly leaves a lot to be desired, " Bittman wrote. " Yet we're going to trust technology to develop test-tube meat? " Indeed, some of the environmental claims for cultured meat uncomfortably resembled claims made for ethanol, before the ecological, economic, and ethical consequences of using a food crop to make motor fuel became clear. Just as making ethanol requires substantial energy input, narrowing any net benefit from using ethanol instead of gasoline, cultured meat production would require extensive nutrient and energy inputs, and the nutrients would require pre-processing into a medium which could be absorbed easily by the meat cultures. Cultured meat producers would have to replace the digestive systems of animals with a high-volume system of synthetic digestion. This is essentially what the food manufacturing industry already does, through a combination of cooking and chemical processes. Agribusiness does not, for the most part, feed livestock on processed material--except for the use of recycled manure and slaughterhouse waste, which is economically efficient precisely because it uses waste. Cultured meat could be grown in the blood of slaughtered animals, and perhaps will be. Perhaps cultured meat could be grown in manure slurries, too, as mushrooms are. Yet each step toward economic efficiency using recycled materials may be a step away from consumer acceptance. Meanwhile, the more efficient cultured meat producers are in making use of the biological input materials, the more concentrated the remaining effluent will be, and the more difficult it will be to recycle or dispose of safely. The ecologically redeeming virtue of manure is that it can be used as fertilizer--but the more concentrated it becomes, the more difficult it is to use safely. Cultured meat effluent might be, in effect, hyper-concentrated manure. But perhaps engineering uses for cultured meat production waste can be done as part of the cultured meat development process. " There is already an alternative to meat out there, one that can not only improve individual health but decrease harm to animals and the environment, " reminded Bittman. " It's called vegetables. Unfortunately, there are no gold mines in test-tube broccoli. " Agreed Friends of Animals legal counsel Lee Hall, " The in vitro meat idea only reinforces the notion that flesh belongs in our diet, while ignoring the beauty and kindness of vegetarianism. " Editorialized The New York Times on April 23, 2008, " The meat substitute niche is currently occupied largely by soy, " the chief ingredient of meat analog products. Tofu, seitan, and tempeh appear to have an almost insurmountable economic advantage over cultured meat, and perhaps an enduring aesthetic edge as well, if cultured meat is marketed as a " meat substitute. " But since cultured meat will for all practical purposes be meat, albeit not from a slaughtered animal, the developers have in mind competing chiefly with actual meat. " We are disgusted by the conventional meat industry, which raises animals--especially chicken and pigs--in inhumane confinement systems that cause significant environmental damage, " The New York Times editorial continued. " There is every reason to change the way meat is produced, to make it more ethical, more humane. But the result of the technology that PETA hopes to reward could be the end of domesticated farm animalsŠIt will be a barren world if the herds and flocks disappear in favor of meat grown in a laboratory tank. " Writers of letters to The New York Times overwhelmingly rejected that argument. Longtime ANIMAL PEOPLE reader Scott Plous of Middletown, Connecticut, recommended that cultured meat should instead be called " clean meat. " Commented Animal Liberation author Peter Singer, to Schwartz of The New York Times, " If it is harder to move people on ethical grounds than it is to provide a sustainable humane substitute, I'm all for the substitute. " Said ANIMAL PEOPLE president and administrator Kim Bartlett, " I remember reading a science fiction book in the early 1970s that described a time in which lab-grown meat was available, but the main characters were willing to pay for a black market cut of real meat. I wasn't a vegetarian then, but wondered why anyone would want to eat meat from a real animal if they could get it without the suffering and dying. At that time, I still believed that humans need to eat meat. It took me another ten years or so to find out that vegetarianism was actually an option--I was in Texas, and had never met a vegetarian. Once I had stopped eating meat for a time, it became repulsive to me, but if lab-grown meat had been available, I would have given up the real stuff many years earlier. " I totally agree with opponents of the idea that people are better off eating tofu, tempeh, and seitan instead of meat. Eventually, human beings will adopt a sustainable plant-based diet, " Bartlett believes, as science fiction writers including the creators of Star Trek have long envisioned, " but I am not optimistic that such an enormous shift will occur in the next hundred years. In many parts of the world now, just as it was for me growing up in Texas in the 1950s and '60s, people believe they need meat, and it is going to be a very long time before they willingly adopt a vegetarian diet. Though vegetarianism may be imposed on them by food shortages and/or climate change, they will always try to get meat unless there is a shift in perspective. If lab-grown meat can be marketed so that die-hard meat-eaters will choose it instead of meat from slaughtered animals, then I am all for it. " -- Merritt Clifton Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE P.O. Box 960 Clinton, WA 98236 Telephone: 360-579-2505 Fax: 360-579-2575 E-mail: anmlpepl Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org [ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year; for free sample, send address.] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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