What Is C how It's Made, Environmental Impact and More

The concept that the beef on our plates now comes from enormous stainless steel bioreactors rather than farm animals wasn't so long ago considered science fiction. Since the concept was first introduced as "vat meat," which conjured up unattractive images of high-tech Spam, it has undergone a number of rebrandings.

The next product was "lab meat," which was developed by scientists in tiny beakers in the lab. Then, as investment from well-known figures skyrocketed and producers positioned these goods as having been brewed, just like beer, the more enticing-sounding "cultured meat" emerged. The phrase "cultured meat" has now changed to "cultivated meat," which is how CEOs in the sector prefer to refer to it.

Whatever you want to call it, the future of food is looking more and more like slaughter-free meat as the future of global food security is in doubt and farmed meat is a major contributor to climate change.

 

How is lab-grown meat made?

2011 meat produced in a lab at the University of Maastricht. The scientists at Reuters produced the first cultured burger two years later.

Cultivated meat is produced in a variety of containers, including test tubes and stainless steel bioreactors, as opposed to being a component of a living, breathing, eating, and drinking animal. The method was adapted from regenerative medicine research; in fact, Prof. Mark Post of Maastricht University, who in 2013 cultivated the first hamburger, had previously been researching on mending human heart tissue.

Cells are acquired from an animal by harmless biopsy, then placed in a warm, sterile vessel with a solution called a growth medium, containing nutrients including salts, proteins and carbohydrates. Every 24 hours or so, the cells will have doubled.

How different is cultivated meat from the real thing?

Cuts of meat with bone, skin, or fat marbled through them like a tender ribeye steak are not grown using cellular farming. Fat cells and muscle cells need different environments and nutrition, thus they must be created independently. The pure meat or fat is a shapeless paste of cells when it is extracted. Because of this, chicken nuggets and hamburgers were the first goods made from domesticated meat to be served.

The flavours, however, are of actual flesh. There is less chance of disease and chemical contamination because they are made in a sterile atmosphere. Contrast this with conventional agriculture, where, according to Josh Tetrick, CEO of GOOD Meat based in San Francisco, "you have a live animal murdered on the floor. When examining the Salmonella, E. From the standpoint of cultured meat, E. coli, faecal contamination associated with animal agriculture, appears considerably better than it does from the perspective of conventional meat.

Is lab-grown meat as nutritious as regular meat?

A representative for San Francisco-based UPSIDE Foods, a pioneer in the cultured meat industry, claims that while the nutritious profile would be identical, it will also be possible to improve or even customise it.

We are looking into ways to make our goods' nutrient profiles better. Whether that's more vitamins or good fats, or less cholesterol and saturated fat," they stated. Imagine, for example, if we could create a steak with salmon's fatty acid profile. What if customers could alter the nutritional composition of products to suit their dietary requirements? ”

We'll have to wait to learn more about the nutritional content because there are so few commercially available products made from grown meat that call for food labelling.

When can people buy it?

Use the Foodpanda app to get GOOD Meat for delivery to your home in Singapore.

Singaporeans already have this ability. Since December 2020, Tetrick's company, GOOD Meat, has been making and selling its chicken in Singapore for special events, both at the renowned Mr. Loo's hawker stall and in a stylish hotel restaurant.

Both shredded and breaded chicken have been warmly received. Tetrick claims that the business has requested approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) but that no deadline has been specified.

Other producers say that Western countries are still ironing out the details of how regulatory approval will work, but say they’ll be ready to scale up as soon as approval is given in the coming years.

Is it better for the environment?

In actuality, we won't know until mass production starts. There are numerous ifs and buts when modelling the potential effects of a rapidly developing biotech industry. According to a 2019 study from the University of Oxford, the energy required to produce farmed meat may produce more greenhouse gases than conventional farming.

The portion of the study that assumed use of electricity generated by a large proportion of fossil fuels highlighted the importance of renewable energy for the production of cultivated meat, according to Pelle Sinke, researcher at Netherlands-based sustainability consultancy CE Delft. She was not involved in the research.

According to consumption levels, anticipated energy use for produced meat, and the system used to raise beef cattle it was compared to, "cultivated meat had a bigger global warming effect in certain scenarios, and a smaller effect in some scenarios," he says.

However, Sinke notes that the analysis does not account for the decreased land use of cultivated beef. According to him, "there is the potential to use that area for the production of plant-based proteins, for nature, and for additional renewable energy production, which in turn effects the CO2 emissions of produced meat."

Compared to conventional farming, the environmental impact of grown meat might vary depending on the situation Alamy

While cultured meat is not the panacea to all the world's ills, according to his own team's investigation into the environmental impact, "it clearly has a lot of potential because it immediately offers a more sustainable option to conventional meats. Less area is required to grow these foods because it is a more effective method of turning crops into meat.

"But it does consume more energy. For a lower carbon footprint than conventional meats, it is necessary that renewable energy sources are employed in its production, especially in the supply chain - particularly for the manufacture of nutrients and other components needed for the culture medium.”

All of the businesses — Mosa Meat, GOOD Meat, and UPSIDE Foods — that were contacted for this piece recognise the value of incorporating sustainable energy into production.

What challenges need to be overcome?

A vegan growth medium

GOOD Meat’s chicken is available to buy in Singapore, but regulatory approval is still being sought in the US GOOD Meat

Up until recently, fetal bovine serum—taken from the blood of a cow fetus—had to make up roughly 20% of the growth medium in order to stimulate cell division. The serum is not only outrageously pricey, but it is also obviously not vegetarian.

However, all the big players now assert that they have created a substitute. Early in 2022, Post and his team released a research report regarding their substitute for fetal bovine serum. To manufacture the required proteins, genetically modified yeast is used in the procedure. Precision fermentation is a technology that is comparable to the process used to create medical insulin (yeast is responsible for so much more than just beer and bread!). According to Post, a brand-new, rapidly growing industry is generating enormous vats of useful

Tetrick acknowledges that scaling up the alternatives still presents difficulties and that his chicken in Singapore is grown using fetal bovine serum. He explains, "[It's] not because we want to, but because it was in our application when we first submitted it, and we hadn't solved it when we submitted. We need regulatory approval before we can produce without it.