#cell-based meat

Despite finding alternatives to unsustainable factory farm methods, people are reluctant to switch.

The Fatwa Committee of the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (MUIS) has announced that the consumption of cultivated meat is permissible as halal under certain conditions. The decision opens up a market of over two billion halal consumers worldwide, representing about 25% of the world’s population.

The fatwa comes at the heels of the approval of cultivated chicken meat sales by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), which led to the MUIS reviewing the permissibility of cultivated meat for Muslim consumption.

Meat grown in labs has long been the hip pet child of investors. But insiders now admit how 'their plastic waste mountain grew faster than their meat'.

Is it 'cell-based meat', 'cultured meat', 'animal-free meat' or 'lab meat'? In Singapore, the first country in the world to allow the sale of artificial meat, scientists have already investigated which term convinces consumers best. Cultured meat is number one, 'cell-based meat' actually makes them drop out.

Yet that is the most precise description: lab meat is created by multiplying animal cells in heated tanks on a mixture of sugar, yeasts, growth hormones or other patented ingredients.

Ever since a Dutch researcher proposed the first artificial hamburger in 2013[1], investors have been captivated by laboratory meat. Theoretically, it could put an end to animal suffering on a large scale. At least $2.8 billion is said to be involved in the sector, mostly venture capital that hungry start-ups are competing for. Because lab meat remains extremely expensive, making it more of a promise of the future than a tangible product.

Yet after the hype, disillusionment grows. Especially now that some employees of the American Upside Foods[2] have come clean to technology magazine Wired. Upside Foods is one of the rare companies that doesn't mimic the structure of processed meat, but that of a fresh chicken fillet – which is more complex. According to employees, the company misled the public about the process. The large steel 'bioreactors' that Upside Foods[3] liked to show to journalists did not work well enough. “We often had to throw away the meat because the tanks became contaminated,” says a former employee who managed the process between November 2021 and the summer of 2022. “Then we had to burn the proceeds.”

Single-use plastic

And so Upside Foods had to switch gears: it started manually creating tiny layers of meat in small disposable plastic bottles. This is a problem in a sector that is faced with the task of scaling up production and making it cheaper. “We had lab technicians apply procine gelatine to the inside of bottles. They’d later fill the bottles with a small amount of chicken cells and add growth media—a rich broth of hormones, sugars, and other nutrients” says a source. After a week of simmering in the heat, layers of approximately 2 grams were removed from the bottles with a spatula and stuck together to form a fillet.

“You can imagine how much plastic waste we generated,” a concerned former employee told Wired. According to the news site, Upside’s current production method likely produces plastic waste more than 10 times faster than it makes meat. The final product cost “thousands of dollars in labour,” according to employees. For the time being, those fillets were only available in a very exclusive restaurant in California.

Upside Foods has more or less confirmed the findings. “We are in a development phase,” it sounds. “Not every research avenue, cultivator, or idea we explore will materialise exactly as we expected.”

Peace of Meat

The Government of Flanders can confirm this. In 2019, it provided approximately 702,000 euros in subsidies for the start-up of venture entrepreneur Dirk Standaert. His company, Peace of Meat, pledged to make cultured meat on an industrial scale. “The same juicy meat you love; a whole different story for the planet and the animals,” was the slogan[4]. At the end of 2020, Standaert sold Peace of Meat to an Israeli sector colleague for 15 million.

The ambition then was to become the European market leader. Problem: lab meat was and is not yet approved for human consumption anywhere in the European Union. Only the Netherlands has allowed the first experimental test rounds for a few days now. Moreover, the Israeli investor discovered that the volumes promised by Peace of Meat would not be achieved for years. The Israelis pulled the plug. In April, the Antwerp court declared Peace of Meat bankrupt[5], stating that the company's main activity was 'advertising and market research'. Last month it turned out that there is no buyer for the lab materials. None of those involved wished to respond to questions.

The Israeli investor is now trying to breed 'laboratory fish' with new backers from the Middle East. That would be a little easier, because 'artificial fish' grows at lower temperatures. [6] It also contains less of the difficult-to-reproduce fatty tissue.

Wishful thinking

“With rising interest rates and a war in Ukraine, the investment climate is no longer the same as five years ago,” Meatable, a Dutch producer of lab meat, told De Standaard.[7] Meatable just raised 30 million euros, half of which came from the Dutch government. Yet they also feel that promises alone are no longer enough. 'When we started in 2018, no one had anything concrete yet. Now you have to be able to show an effective product.” Meatable claims that it can grow pig cells into sausages in eight days, and is now moving to Singapore. “First we want to make it happen in that market, then in the US, and then hopefully in Europe. We need to build up experience before we can submit our file to the European food safety watchdog EFSA.”

Scientists now warn that lab meat cannot replace all 'real' meat. “Every scientific, truly independent study indicates that we cannot scale this up at a reasonable price,” Ricardo San Martin (Alt:Meat Lab, University of California[8]) told the BBC this summer. 'There is a lot of wishful thinking in the sector. If there is not more openness soon, I see the financial flows drying up.'

Higher CO₂ emissions

Because the positive climate impact of cultured meat is not as clear as the companies claim. “Because the growth media for lab meat must be purified to an almost pharmaceutical level, you use more energy,” says researcher Derrick Risner (University of California) in a new paper. "In the short term, emissions appear lower than those of a livestock herd, but depending on the energy sources, cultured meat can cause more emissions in the long term, which also accumulate and linger longer," researchers calculated in the scientific journal Frontiers of Sustainable Food Systems in 2019[9]. Some estimate that cultured meat can emit four to 25 times more CO₂ than 'normal' beef. The companies reject those results. But since they protect their exact production process because it is a 'trade secret', there is a lot of uncertainty.

The United Nations food organisation also recently asked for 'more data and transparency' in order to assess possible dangers to the food chain. Unless the laboratory process takes place in perfectly sterile conditions, cultured meat quickly becomes contaminated with bacteria. The waste from the bioreactors should therefore not simply end up in the environment. This hygiene obviously comes at an additional cost.

Finally, more and more activists find lab meat problematic, because it strengthens the agro-industry's hold on our diet. Companies such as Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, Nestlé, Maple Leaf Foods invest in cultured meat and plant-based burgers, but are known for unsustainable agricultural practices and monoculture. “Cultured meat only perpetuates that system of industrial, ultra-processed food production,” says the NGO Food and Water Watch[10]. 'Getting people to eat more lentils and beans also pushes back meat production, but there are no big corporate profits to be made there.' Navdanya International, an NGO that advocates a more ecological and less profit-driven agriculture, therefore called lab meat a 'false solution'. "A livestock fulfils more functions than just producing meat," microbiologist Eric Muraille (ULB) also agrees on The Conversation[11]. 'It is really not that obvious to weigh the impact of real meat and cultured meat against each other on the long run.'[12]

Source

Giselle Nath: Hoe kweekvlees van hype naar klimaatprobleem ging, in: De Standaard, 26-09-2023, https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20230925_97237764

[1] First hamburger made from lab-grown meat to be served at press conference. Dr Mark Post aims to prove that growing meat in labs could reduce the impact of livestock production on the environment. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/05/first-hamburger-lab-grown-meat-press-conference

[2] Upside Foods (formerly known as Memphis Meats) is a food technology company headquartered in Berkeley, California, aiming to grow sustainable cultured meat. The company was founded in 2015 by Uma Valeti (CEO), Nicholas Genovese (CSO), and Will Clem. Valeti was a cardiologist and a professor at the University of Minnesota. The company plans to produce various meat products using biotechnology to induce stem cells to differentiate into muscle tissue, and to manufacture the meat products in bioreactors.

[3] Upside is unique amongst cultivated meat companies in claiming it is able to execute this second process at scale. However, a former employee told WIRED that since opening its factory in November 2023, Upside has failed to use its 500 litre bioreactor to produce sheets of tissue. https://www.wired.com/story/upside-foods-lab-grown-chicken/

[4] https://www.peace-of-meat.com/

[5] Four years ago, the Belgian cultured meat company Peace of Meat had the ambition to become the European market leader in 'meat-free' products. It now appears that the start-up has gone under after the Israeli parent company turned off the money tap. The curator hopes to find a buyer for the labs and staff through an online auction. https://vilt.be/nl/nieuws/kweekvleespionier-peace-of-meat-failliet

[6] Read also: https://www.tumblr.com/earaercircular/694670018445787136/creative-alternatives-to-plastic-from-fossil-raw?source=share

[7] We want to satisfy the world’s appetite for meat without harming people, animals or the planet. At Meatable, we love meat. We see it as an essential part of a balanced diet. What we don’t love is industrial farming. It's bad for the planet. https://meatable.com/

[8] The Alt: Meat Lab is a hub connecting students, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and industry leaders interested in creating the plant-based food of the future. First and foremost an academic resource, the Lab aims to research and educate. Led by Dr. Ricardo San Martin, the Lab works in conjunction with — but independent from — various partners on projects that put the Lab on the front lines of our changing culinary landscape. Although the Lab began its work replicating animal meat, the Lab is broadly interested in all types of animal products, including but not limited to eggs, dairy and seafood. The Alt:Meat Lab is housed at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering, and is comprised of the Lab and a project driven class offered to undergraduate and graduate students. https://altmeatlab.berkeley.edu/about/

[9] John Lynch, Raymond Pierrehumbert, Climate Impacts of Cultured Meat and Beef Cattle, in: Front. Sustain. Food Syst., 19 February 2019, Sec. Sustainable Food Processing, Volume 3 – 2019, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00005/full

[10] Cor van der Weele , Johannes Tramper, Cultured meat: every village its own factory? In:

Trends Biotechnol, . 2014 Jun;32(6):294-6. Rising global demand for meat will result in increased environmental pollution, energy consumption, and animal suffering. Cultured meat, produced in an animal-cell cultivation process, is a technically feasible alternative lacking these disadvantages, provided that an animal-component-free growth medium can be developed. Small-scale production looks particularly promising, not only technologically but also for societal acceptance. Economic feasibility, however, emerges as the real obstacle.

[11] https://theconversation.com/profiles/eric-muraille-489287