Science fiction coming to life on a farm? How about this? We take tissue from live meat animals, suspend the cells in nutrients, put them in large bioreactors, and wait for them to grow into big chunks that can be processed into products like burgers and sausages.
Asked for his opinion on this method of producing meat, a veteran beef producer replied, “I wonder what they’ll come up with next.”
Opponents of this new technology (and there are many) describe it as corporate agriculture run wild and derisively refer to it as “lab meat,” “fake meat” or “alternative meat.”
Common terms include “cultured meat” and “cultured meat.”
Unsurprisingly, many meat producers are warning that this is a threat to traditional agriculture and their own way of life.
The threat posed by agriculture is so great that in May, Florida passed a bill making it illegal for any person in the state to manufacture, store, sell or offer for distribution cultured meat, and several other states have since followed suit.
Not surprisingly, lawsuits have already been filed against the ban.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Italy joined the fray in 2023, becoming the first country to ban cultured meat, enacting a law that means lab-grown meat cannot be produced or sold in Italy.
The BBC, which covered the issue, said that while most countries’ regulators say food safety is their top priority, Italy’s ban goes beyond that: “The ban seeks to protect Italy’s food traditions and farmers,” according to a statement from Italy’s agriculture minister.
Decentralization of meat production
Looking to the future, proponents (including meat producers themselves) say the new technology It decentralizes meat production by having farmers actually produce cultured meat on their own farms.
Some see this as a way to diversify meat, using fewer animals, and produce and sell it locally, not to mention the environmental benefits of this approach, and the humane aspect of not having to slaughter animals is something animal rights advocates will appreciate.
Antibiotics are typically used in meat animals and poultry to fight disease and speed growth, but lab meat researchers say there’s no need for antibiotics in lab meat products because the sterile process in the lab makes them unnecessary. Likewise, there’s no need to use growth-promoting hormones.
Proponents also say the method is an obvious food safety win, since it eliminates the need for the blood, organs and fertilizer commonly used in slaughterhouses.
Proponents of cultured meat describe the technology’s advantages over traditional livestock farming as being “clean, safe and humane.”
Some caution that cultured meat is not a panacea: It’s unlikely to be possible to produce it in sufficient quantities at a reasonable cost.
history
The first cell-cultured meat product, a hamburger, was developed in 2013 by Mark Post, a scientist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
Research and development continues, and in 2022 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted premarket review and approval to two companies, GOOD Meat and UPSIDE Foods, to sell cell-cultured chicken in the U.S. market.
“The world is experiencing a food revolution,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and Susan Maine, director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in a statement at the time.
What on earth is this?
This represents a future for the agricultural sector, but it will still be some time before it hits the market. Still, in late 2022, cultured meat maker UPSIDE Foods received the green light from the FDA for its chicken grown from animal cells, marking the first time cultured meat has been approved by regulators in the United States.
“There is currently no question that foods made with or containing cultured chicken cell material produced through UPSIDE’s manufacturing processes are as safe as comparable foods produced by other means,” the agency’s no-question letter to UPSIDE said.
So far, only Singapore, Israel and the US have received market approval, and despite progress in the industry, most consumers have yet to encounter cultured meat.
In July 2023, UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat sold their first cell-cultured chicken in restaurants in San Francisco and Washington, DC, respectively.
The important thing to remember in all of this is that cell-based meat, also known as cultured meat, is not plant-based “meatless meat” like products like Morning Star Farms Chicken Nuggets, Beyond Burgers and Awesome Burgers, which are made from a variety of vegetables.
How does this happen on the farm?
Cultured meat is typically made in large bioreactors centralized in one facility, but farms using this technology would mean the primary production of the cultured meat would take place on-site, Alexander Heuer, co-founder and co-CEO of German startup Meatsys, told Food Navigator in an interview.
The company’s plug-and-ply bioreactors are housed in 40-foot shipping containers and installed on each farm’s premises: the equipment is manufactured elsewhere, but final growth and differentiation takes place on-farm.
“This is what we call decentralization. Instead of one large production facility, production will be distributed to all the farms that choose to install our equipment, with the support of regional logistics hubs,” Heuer explained.
Heuer stressed that his company doesn’t want to eliminate animal agriculture, just give farmers more choices.
“Animal farming is part of a much larger ecosystem and is interconnected with many aspects that go far beyond regular meat production,” he told reporters. “Our farmers still keep animals, but they have fewer because our technology acts as a multiplier.”
Farmers’ voices
In the 1980s, Willem van Eelen began working on the technology to produce cultured meat, and now his daughter Ira runs RESPECTfarms.https://www.respectfarms.com) continues to work.
Teun de Jong, a fourth-generation Dutch farmer from RESPCTfarms, said changes in society and the market made him realize the need to consider producing cultured meat on his farm.
“A new opportunity has arisen on my farm,” he said in a video on his website. “I’m working with experts to prepare my farm for the future. It’s an opportunity that could be financially and technologically profitable.”
As Ira van Eelen explains in his video, a farm is the right place for this because everything we need is already there: the animals and their cells, a place to produce energy, and people who can handle them, are familiar with the processes that follow and know how to manage hygiene. The farmer is in charge of feeding the cells and can deal with the residues through recycling and waste management.
“So why don’t we do it in places like that?” she asks.
RESPECTfarms aims to fully optimise its first farm by 2029, with the hope of initiating a movement that will help scale up the process in 2030 and beyond.
“Our first long-term vision is to transform 1,000 farms by 2038 and then expand and sustain the network,” van Eelen says.
But what will it cost?
A report from the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) found that farms that produce cultured meat cost on average 30% more than large-scale factories doing the same thing, and while the study was done with UK farms in mind, it still suggests there are significant challenges ahead.
Still, advocates are optimistic that continued research in this “young industry” will find ways to keep costs down.
It’s already happening in the market: The first lab-grown burger cost $330,000 to produce in 2013, and prices have since fallen to just under $10 today.
According to the RESPECTfarms website, “The development of cultured meat technology can help provide a sustainable, locally produced beef, pork and chicken solution to the world and its ever-growing demand for meat.”
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