The New Meat

“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”. This prediction of growing meat in a lab was made in 1931, surprisingly not by any scientist, but by Winston Churchill, who was not so famous at that time. Lab-grown meat, which goes under various appellations like “cultured meat” or “cultivated meat” is currently one of the hottest emerging technologies. Cultivated meat is grown in a controlled environment out of a small sample of animal cells and the results have shown that it is possible to reproduce the taste, texture, smell, appearance and nutrition of conventional meat. Many start-ups are betting big on lab-grown meat and one estimate values the market for this novelty at $ 25 billion by 2030.

The starting material for cultivating meat is stem cells from the animal. These cells are grown in large bioreactors in a cell culture medium that is rich in oxygen, amino acids, glucose, salts, vitamins and other growth supplements. As the stem cells grow, they get differentiated into skeletal muscle, fat and connective tissues that together constitute the meat. Depending upon the meat that is being grown, the process can take up to 8 weeks.

Though the production process itself is fairly standardised there are some technical challenges related to scale-up, which is important from the perspective of lowering the cost. Even supplying 1% of the global demand for meat would require building a fermentation capacity that is 10 to 15 times more than the installed capacity of the entire biotechnology industry. The numbers are staggering. Researchers need to figure out how to improve the rate of cellular metabolism and reduce the amount of nutrients, so that more cells can be grown in the same volume. Another challenge is to lower the cost of the culture medium, which accounts for more than half the cost of the cultivated meat.

Lab-grown meat offers several advantages on the sustainability and health fronts. It would require significantly lesser land and water. A recent lifecycle analysis says that the reduction in land usage will be as much as 95%, while the water reduction can be up to 78%, when compared to conventional animal husbandry practices. Also livestock contribute nearly 15% to the global emission of greenhouse gases. Cultivated meat is expected to mitigate agriculture related deforestation and biodiversity loss. Since the meat is cultivated under sterile conditions, it is expected to significantly lower incidences of foodborne illnesses. Not having to eat slaughtered animals will please the more ethically inclined segment of the population.

The biggest challenges facing lab-grown meat are government regulations and consumer acceptance. At present, only Singapore allows commercial sale of cultivated meat. But more and more countries are opening up for tasting sessions in niche restaurants.