The Future of Food: Will the World Be Eating Steaks Grown in a Petri Dish?

Last month, in Norway, the first international In Vitro Meat Symposium was held. The consensus among scientists seems to be that by the end of the decade we will be buying in vitro beef, pork and chicken that was artificially grown from stem cells in laboratories. They say it’s more humane to eat an animal that never had a head, sort of like eating a meaty vegetable. 

How it works is you take some myoblasts (stem cells) that are pre-programmed to grow into muscle. Then you place them in a nutrient-rich fluid called the “growth medium”. Next they are poured on to a spongy scaffold where the cells can attach. They are then “shocked” into growing using electrical impulses. The resulting sheet of meat can then theoretically be ground up and consumed like any other piece of boneless, processed meat.

Now, just when the idea is starting to pick up steam, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has jumped on board with its support. The organization, which has long advocated animal rights and vegetarianism, recently offered a $1 million prize to “the first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012”.

The stipulation is that the meat must be chicken, with the same taste and texture as meat taken from a living bird. Why chicken? Because PETA says that the worldwide abuse of chickens is the most pressing issue that needs to be addressed. Commercially raised chickens often live out their shorts lives crammed with other birds into small cages. Billions of them are slaughtered each year, which is 100 times more than pigs and 200 times more than cattle.

But not everyone at PETA is on board with the “lab meat” agenda. Some members of the organization are angry that PETA would support eating meat—even brainless meat. Ingrid Newkirk, its co-founder and president, admits it has caused “near civil war” in the PETA offices. Some purist animal rights activists consider it a “moral” surrender.

On the other side of the debate are those who believe that humans as a whole are unlikely to kick the meat habit altogether, so they may as well come up with a more humane and healthy alternative. Artificially produced meat will be kinder to the animal kingdom, the environment, and the human body, they argue. The “petri dish” meat would not be pumped full of steroids and antibiotics and fed on questionable foodstuffs, they point out, so theoretically it should be healthier. The science of it would even allow for variations such as “saturated fat-free”, or replace “bad fats” with healthy fats such as omega-3, which could conceivably lead to fewer health problems and heart attacks.

If you think this kind of technology is far off, think again. Researchers have already started producing meat in laboratories. But there is a major roadblock from doing so commercially at this point: Cost. At the present moment it would cost nearly $1 million to purchase a 250g piece of beef. But many scientists are confident that with the proper research and funding there’s no reason why they can’t eventually find a way to produce meat relatively cheaply. The other major roadblock is the “ick” factor. Many people shudder at the idea of eating “headless” meat. However, not everyone feels that way. Vegetarian Carol Midgley, a writer for Times Online claims that the idea that petri dish meat is somehow any grosser than “real” meat is absurd.

“How can it possibly be more disgusting than, say, eating chickens that have ulcered backsides from sitting for weeks in their own excrement, bodies five times their natural size, with leg abscesses the size of 50p pieces, and end their lives strung upside down with their heads hacked off? Personally I would have nothing against eating in vitro meat in principle, because it was never a conscious animal,” Midgley writes. “If it supported an industry that would eradicate the need to keep animals in factory conditions, then I'd not only eat it, I'd buy shares in it.”

Not only that, but natural animal meat has its own increasing yuck factor in terms of spreading diseases. Food-borne diseases, which mostly come from meat, are responsible for more than 76 million episodes of illness, 325,000 admissions to hospital and 5,000 deaths each year in America alone.

While lab meat will likely be considered a “frankenfood”, espectially at first, it would potentially be much safer than traditional meat. But either way, some scientists argue that the world will have no choice but to eventually get used to the idea, because current meat production is simply not sustainable. Each year people around the world eat 240 billion kilos of meat. In the US, about one million chickens are eaten every single hour. Livestock production accounts for about 18 per cent of the global warming effect, which is more than the whole transport sector combined. Lab meat would be near zero-emission, and would not use up valuable land, water and grain resources to produce. The amount of grain used to feed farmed animals is a large contributing factor of the global food crisis. Apparently cutting back on traditional meat isn’t just humane to animals, it’s more humane to humans.

For example, there’s been a lot of complaining about biofuels contributing to world food shortages, but farmed animals are by far and away a bigger culprit to the problem. About 760 million tons of grain are used to feed farmed animals, which is over seven times the amount used to produce biofuels. In fact, it can easily take up to 16lb (7.3kg) of grain to produce just 1lb of meat. Earth's population is predicted to grow to nine billion people around 2050. PETA campaigner Bruce Friedrich puts it this way: “We will have to stop eating animals in the way that we do for simple self-preservation.”

Personally, I am not a vegetarian, and there are few things I love as much as bacon. However, if a scientist can at some point hand me a healthy, cruelty-free version of it, I’d like to think I’d be willing to try it for the sake of pigs, future kids and the environment. Who knows, maybe it will turn out like the popular Dr Seuss book Green Eggs and Ham—sounds gross, tastes fine. We’ll see.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

Comments

[RJ]

I love spam, so I'm guessing I'll like eating this freakishly reproduced artificial stem-cell meat too. Bring it on.

[Carney Vore]

So since we no longer need animals for meat are we just going to start killing them for sport?

[JMasG]

Probably not, but maybe we'll start raising them humanely...

[Carney Vore]

I don't eat anything with an opposable thumb.

[Dave]

JMasG: If we don't need them for food, why would we raise them at all? My daughter has a horse... but she lives on a farm. Not much room in the burgeoning metro's for pet cattle... I'd assume we'd just leave them to their own devices... to live their days out in an eternal struggle for survival. Better that then to be raised for human consumption you suggest? I would suggest most cattle would not survive on their own in the wild and probably live a comparatively good life on a farm. But really, the need to equate human like emotions to animals to pander to some sense of morality is all rather ridiculous. All of these poor chickens Peta whines about are nothing but meat machines. The animals have not the slightest notion that they are suffering. They have been bred for centuries to be what they are and are as mindless as the grain they are fed. You might ask: how do I know? Have I talked to a chicken? Do I know how a chicken feels? Would I like to be couped up like a chicken? And I would answer that no, I haven't talked to a chicken, but neither have you, though I suspect some PETA members think they do. I would answer that, in the big scheme of things, because it is so rare, all life has value... but by no means could I possibly think a chickens life was of more or equal value to that of a human being. And I would carry that further by justifying it thusly: because life is so very rare is exactly why human life is more important than chicken life, for though chickens may come with us if we ever are to expand life into the cosmos, chickens will never carry life to the stars of their own accord.... in my humble opinion.

Regards

[Chicken of the Sea]

I have always looked forward to the inevitable Dolphin uprising. Now I am even more eager so that Dave can experience the life of a meat machine on a farm! Hail Lord Dolphin!

[ciara christine]

There is a movie with the same blog title that I suggest EVERYONE pick up the next time they are at an independent movie rental store (you will not find this at Blockbuster or Netflix.)
You can google it and buy it if really interested.
It's shocking; the Government has been patenting (and altering) seeds for years!
FOOD is the largest extinction on this plant in 19th century.

I am glad this was posted.

[knoxvilledaniel]

Some people are so opposed to food sources treated with hormones or irradiated to preserve it, & they view other steps to cultivate & / or preserve it as unnatural, but in the larger scale & scope of things, perhaps one could view anything other than hunting - gathering as " unnatural ". I respect PETA's stances & views on animal cruelty, but I think that they can be carried TOO FAR.

As for myself, I wouldn't eat anything that could look me in the eye or make me feel guilty.....

[knoxvilledaniel]

& I'm going to form a chapter for an organization called Man for Ethical Animal Treatment..... ;}

[tony]

Carney Vore it seems that you are justifying your meat consumption while not really talking about the article at all. It's better for human survival to not eat meat. Even if you don't give a shit about other life forms that aren't human and you try to say that they don't have any emotions or feelings similar to you it is better for the HUMAN race to not eat meat. I'm just confused at your defensive reaction to the article where you try to minimize the suffering of another sentient being. Explain please.

[tony]

sorry that comment was for Dave.

[tony]

sorry that comment was for Dave.

[tony]

Carney Vore it seems that you are justifying your meat consumption while not really talking about the article at all. It's better for human survival to not eat meat. Even if you don't give a shit about other life forms that aren't human and you try to say that they don't have any emotions or feelings similar to you it is better for the HUMAN race to not eat meat. I'm just confused at your defensive reaction to the article where you try to minimize the suffering of another sentient being. Explain please.

[Dave]

Read my post a little more carefully please Tony, and then repost your question. It's a little confused in it's own right. I said all life is rare and valuable. Perhaps you meant --trivialize-- the suffering of another sentient being? First of all, sentience presumes self awareness and it's the animal firsters like PETA who promote the false notion that all meat while alive possesses sentience. Very few animals possess self awareness, and none to the extreme Man does. Nonetheless suffering can occur without sentience and there is nothing trivial about it. But tell me: do we stop eating fish also? Here we find ourselves at this stage in human history where there is now a food shortage that is only going to get worse and you want us to stop eating meat because of some perceived ethical dilemma?

It may come to pass that one day in the future we will be able to produce food without killing ANYTHING, and I for one will have no problem with that. But at the moment all the whining from the PETA crowd is not helping.

Regards
Dave

[dominique]

My father is veteranarian for cows, i myself have four cows they are breed for beef. I'm all for progress and learning about new things but i think we should let nature grow our foo, not laboritories.

[Captain_Sakonna]

As someone who has raised chickens, I can say from experience that they are not mere "meat machines." They have individual personalities, and, given time, they can even learn to do tricks and communicate with humans in simple ways. Would I value a chicken's life over a human's life? Of course not, but I don't see what that has to do with anything. We are quite capable of raising chickens for food without forcing them to live lives of misery. It just means the meat would cost more, which means we would have to a) spend less money on things we don't need so we can buy the meat, b) give more to charity so that poor people can afford the meat too. Both of those are things we could do if we weren't so selfish.

As for PETA's whining, nothing that is bad will be changed if someone doesn't whine about it. I am no PETA fan myself, as they are too radical for my liking, but as far as this issue is concerned I support them. I also eagerly look forward to the day when I can have a complete, healthy, and tasty diet without taking any lives.

Also, Dave, I think you're confused about the meaning of the term "sentient." It means "possessing sensation." If a creature can suffer, then it is by definition sentient, since pain is a sensation. Sentience doesn't necessarily imply a sophisticated awareness of self.