Artificially produced meat is starting to grow in momentum, and one day in the future, eating meat will not be associated with killing an animal and eating its meat. So what is this clean meat and why does it matter?
I remember watching a TV series called The Crossing, in which a group of about 50 people emerged from the ocean and sought asylum in a certain town in the US. When asked, they said they were coming from the future, escaping a war that would eliminate humanity. The show is about debating their story and understanding what happened with them. In one of the scenes, the refugees were offered a dish of meat stew, and they discussed among themselves in disgust, appalled at how people of today are actually eating meat from real animals not lab made meat, and how savage and barbaric this was. I then remembered that a couple of years ago, in the World Government Summit, particularly, in the Museum of Future, there was a section explaining the concept of artificially growing food in the future. So what is the future of eating meat and why are we heading there?
What is cultured meat?
Cultured meat is created by painlessly taking muscle cells from a living animal (cow, chicken, camel, you name it), and then through scientific procedures in labs, growing that cell to multiply exponentially to create muscle tissue, which is the component that we eat in the meat[1]. Some of the scientific methods claim that they can produce 80,000 burger patties from one sample of muscle cell[2]. Cultured meat is also known by many other names such as clean meat, artificial meat, and cell-based meat.
Making it mainstream
The concept of cultured meat has been tinkered with since the last century, and experimental trials started in the early 2000s[3]. It was not until 2013 that many investments were made in the industry to explore what it would take to make the development of clean meat economical enough to be mass-produced and consumable for an everyday meal[4]. The cost of the first clean meat burger made in 2013 was about $300,000, and the goal is to make it cost as little as $10 by 2020[5]. Today, there are many companies that are developing cultured meat to be consumed by end-users such as Memphis Meat, Just, Mosa Meat, and many more.
The clean in clean meat
The cleanliness concept of clean meat stems from excluding all potential impurities and diseases from the meat. When a piece of meat is made directly from an animal, it often can includes bones, blood vessels, fat, among other elements, all of which are not existent in clean meat. Moreover, they don’t include all the antibiotics pumped into farm animals, and eliminating chances of salmonella and any kinds of bacteria that are a natural part of living animals[6].
Environmental benefit
The current world population according to Worldometers is 7.7 billion people. And while the world’s population growth percentage is starting to slow down, even at a rate of 1.08%, it still means 82 million added people to the population yearly[7]. Imagine how many more animals will need to be raised in farms to feed this many new incomers yearly? That is without going down the road of mentioning the conditions those animals are raised in, and the brutal slaughter methods carried out in many facilities.
Another major factor to consider is the change in eating lifestyles. Whereas before, people used to have one meal a day that included meat with the other meals based on plants and grains, nowadays, you see meat becoming a part of more meals than ever, whether cold cuts are now in breakfast meals, meat and chicken shawarma or burger on dinner, or a pizza with a cold cut on it. Combining this eating lifestyle change with the huge world population growth, you have to consider – how many more animals will have to be raised and slaughtered for the mere purpose of feeding humans?
Is it only a challenge of growing the cattle numbers? Nope. Growing cattle requires large lands, more water usage, more produce grown to feed the cattle, so more meat demand means more of all that. According to one of the research made on the matter: “the production of 1,000 kg of cultured meat would require 7–45% less energy, 99% less land, and 82–96% less water.”[8] In addition to that, cattle farming is claimed to contribute to climate change: “A cow does on overage release between 70 and 120 kg of Methane per year. Methane is a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide (CO2). But the negative effect on the climate of Methane is 23 times higher than the effect of CO2. Therefore the release of about 100 kg Methane per year for each cow is equivalent to about 2’300 kg CO2 per year.”[9] And needless to say, global warming and climate change are already taking effect in more ways than we wish, and if we keep carrying on without change in our ways, the earth might not be inhabitable in few decades.
Will you eat clean meat?
With all the statistics and information above, it shows that growing more and more cattle to feed the growing population and their changing eating lifestyles will cause extraordinary harm to our environment, with higher land degradation, water wastage, CO2 emissions, and in many cases, more brutal inhumane practices and conditions towards the animals. Some might be repelled and thrown back by the idea of eating meat that was not made directly from a slaughtered animal. But aren’t all changes like that? First, the complete rejection of the idea of doing things any different, then clinging to the romanticized view of the past, then the slow accepting of the change, then finding the convenience in the change, and finally, not imagining your life in any other way without that change. Think handwritten letters all the way to WhatsApp messages, think handwritten books all the way to eBooks, think cooking on fire all the way to electric cookers and microwaves. So, if the clean meat tastes the same, is kinder to the environment and the livings on it, and it costed the same, wouldn’t you consider?
References:
[1] https://culturedbeef.org/what-cultured-meat
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lab-grown-meat/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat
[5] https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/the-artificial-meat-factory-the-science-of-your-synthetic-supper/
[7] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
[8] https://www.aocs.org/stay-informed/inform-magazine/featured-articles/clean-meat-february-2018
[9] https://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause-of-global-warming-meat-methane-CO2
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