What is Lab-Grown Meat and What Did the U.S. Recently Approve?

What’s in today’s article?

• Why in News?
• What is Cell-Cultivated Meat?
• Types of Cell-Cultivated Meat
• What is the Need to Create Cell-Cultivated Meat?
• Challenges Involved with Cell-Cultivated Meat 

 

Why in News?

• Two U.S. two companies, Good Meat and Upside Foods, have received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to make and sell their cell-cultivated chicken.
• The first country to approve the sale of alternative meat was Singapore in 2020.

 

What is Cell-Cultivated Meat?

• To make cell-cultivated meat, these two companies isolate the cells that make up this meat (the meat that we consume).
• They then put the isolated cells in a setting where they have all the resources they need to grow and make more copies of themselves.
• These resources are typically nutrients, fats, carbohydrates, amino acids, the right temperature, etc.
• The ‘setting’ in which this process transpires is often a bioreactor (also known as a ‘cultivator’).
• This cultivator is a sensor-fit device – like a container – that has been designed to support a particular biological environment.
  • Because of the techniques involved, producing meat in this way is also called cellular agriculture.
• Once these cells have become sufficiently large in number, they resemble a mass of minced meat.
• They are collected and then processed, with additives to improve their texture and/or appearance, and are destined for various recipes.

 

Types of Cell-Cultivated Meat

• After pork, chicken is the second most widely consumed meat in the world, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
• Good Meat and Upside have thus far focused on chicken, and plan to expand their offerings to include other meats in future.
• Researchers are also developing cell-cultivated versions of sea bass, tuna, shrimp, and pork.
• The consulting firm McKinsey has estimated that the global alternative meat market could reach $20-25 billion in sales by 2030.

 

What is the Need to Create Cell-Cultivated Meat?

• The proponents of cell-cultivated meat have advanced the following arguments in favour of developing lab-grown meat –
  • Emissions, Land Use, Prevention of Animal Slaughter, Food Security, and Customisation.
• The FAO has estimated that global livestock is responsible for 14.5% of all anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions.
  • Of this, the production of beef as a commodity accounted for 41%, whereas chicken meat and eggs accounted for 8%.
  • Similarly, the 2021 report estimated that lab-cultivated meat would use 63% less land in the case of chicken and 72% in the case of pork.
• Climate scientists have also asked people – especially in richer countries – to reduce their meat consumption, but carnivorous diets remain popular, in turn maintaining lab-grown meat as a promising alternative.
  • Its proponents have also advanced such meat as a way to meet the world’s nutritional security needs.
• Finally, some experts have said that lab-grown meat can be customised to be healthier than their animal counterpart, such as being designed to contain less fat, thus contributing to public health.

 

Challenges Involved with Cell-Cultivated Meat

• Consumer Acceptance –
  • Perfectly substituting animal meat with alternative meat requires the latter to match the former’s taste, texture, and appearance, and cost.
•  Cost –
  • The cost of cell-cultivated meat is expected to remain high in the near future.
• Resources – For the cellular cultivation process, researchers require –
  •  high quality cells to begin with;
  •  a suitable growth-medium in which the cells can be cultured,
  •  plus other resources required to maintain the quality of the final product.
•  Criticism –
  • A recent study found that if cell cultivation requires a “highly refined growth medium”, akin to that used in in the pharmaceutical industry, then the “environmental impact of near-term [cell-cultivated meat] production is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production.

 

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Q1) Does the meat industry contribute to global warming?

According to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization, about 14% of all emissions come from meat and dairy production.

 

Q2) What is plant-based meat made of?

It depends on the brand, but most plant-based meats are made from pea or soy protein, a type of fat, and some sort of binder, but they may also contain natural and artificial flavours to make the product taste more like meat.

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Source: Explained | What is lab-grown meat and what did the U.S. recently approve?