In vitro meat

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“” Fifty years hence, 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.

—Winston Churchill

In vitro meat, cultured meat, or test tube meat is flesh for consumption that is grown in an artificial environment rather than harvested from a slaughtered animal. Although no product has been produced for public consumption, many research projects have successfully produced enough meat for it to be compared with equivalent meat products. Those who have tried it claim that it's close enough to replace a McDonald's patty when it comes to taste, but the texture and presentation still need work.

The concept of in vitro meat was one of the results of the Space Shuttle program; NASA scientists and astronauts wanted a way to be able to eat fresh meat in space. Bringing meat from Earth would be impractical because of refrigeration, space and cooking problems. In one of the better things they've ever done, PETA offered a million-dollar prize in 2008 for whoever could produce commercial quantities of in vitro meat.

How it's made

In vitro meat is made by taking the muscle cells from the desired flesh (for example, cow or chicken) which are then are attached to a biodegradable scaffolding and treated with chemicals, to produce the desired tissue: long, sturdy fibers of flesh. Recently, steps have been made to avoid the tissue scaffolding (since it would be expensive to produce); instead, the cells are grown to interact with each other chemically to produce convincing meats.

Benefits and problems

Supporters of in vitro (aka "lab-grown", "cultivated" or "cultured") meat as opposed to traditional meat claim there are several benefits:

• No animals must be killed or slaughtered to produce in vitro meat.
• Far less animals are required (only for biopsies of animal cells).
• "Cruelty free" (high animal welfare).
• The cultivated meat would not produce any of the waste parts (internal organs, bones) of traditional meat.
• In vitro meat is less harmful to human health by eliminating or avoiding bacterial meat-borne diseases.
• The process of making in vitro meat produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions and is more environmental friendly.

Concerning the latter since less animals must be raised for biopsies, much less animal feed is required and less fecal matter in the production of in vitro meat. Cow and pig livestock contribute to the problem of global warming primarily through methane emissions; since in vitro meat requires less livestock this reduces the metabolism that produces methane and the problem of global warming from these livestock is arguably reduced while in vitro meat is likely to require a lot less land and water. On the other hand, when compared to conventional chicken production, the difference in greenhouse gas emissions is not as remarkable and one study has argued "cultivated" meat’s environmental impact is likely to be “orders of magnitude” higher than retail beef when emissions from its biotechnology are taken into account.

Aside from currently being very expensive to produce, in vitro meat — much like genetically modified food — causes a lot of people to go "Ewww! that's gross!" (despite the gruesomeness of traditional harvesting methods) and "that's unnatural". Complicating matters is that the texture in some forms of meat requires connective tissue, fat, or blood vessels to be present, which would be far more complex to engineer than muscle alone.

In vitro pork or shellfish might be kosher for Jews; though no actual pigs or shellfish are involved in any but the vaguest way, the principle of "Mar’it Ayin" might be a complicating factor, as it is a prohibition against doing things that look as if they are something forbidden. Fake pork might look too much like real pork to be kosher.

The initial step to creating in vitro meat is to procure animal cells by a biopsy from a living animal but these have been questioned as harmful by some animal rights activists.

Fetal bovine serum

Critics of "lab-grown" meat point out it is not slaughter or cruelty free. The production of in vitro meat requires a growth agent to support cell growth which is usually foetal bovine serum [FVS] obtained from the fetus of slaughtered pregnant cows. As Moyano-Fernánde (2023) notes:

Cultivated meat requires fetal bovine serum for food growth in the laboratory, a culture based on calf stem cells. After a mother cow has been slaughtered and gutted, her uterus, which contains the fetus, is removed. Only fetuses older than three months are used, otherwise the heart is too small to perforate. Although there are already tests with other culture media that do not require animal embryonic cells, such as algae, the most widely adopted option which offers the best results remains the use of mammalian fetuses.

Culture war woo

In May 2024, despite cultured meat being nowhere near ready for the common marketplace, Ron DeSantis signed a protectionist bill (backed by state cattle ranchers) prohibiting lab-grown meat from being sold in the state of Florida. Aside from the protectionism, the bill was also clearly nakedly political, designed to appeal to reactionaries who embraced the culture war.

In signing the bill, DeSantis alluded to a World Economic Forum conspiracy theory, stating that "Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals." Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson added that "lab-grown meat is a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity, and is in direct opposition to authentic agriculture".

It is unclear whether DeSantis and Simpson's vision of "authentic agriculture" refers to the realities of the modern meat industry, composed of giant, massively consolidated conglomerates (in the US, just four firms controlled 85% of the US steer and heifer slaughter in 2022), where animals were often raised using artificial growth hormones and large amounts of antibiotics.

Supporters of in vitro meat

• Jonathan Anomaly
• Diana Fleischman

Sources

• Engineering & Technology (17509637); 2/20/2010, Vol. 5 Issue 3, p.30-32, Edwards, Chris