Lab-Grown Meat

You put 100 dollars in a machine, and the machine gives you 11 dollars back. Do you think that's fair? This is how efficient each animal is. For every 9 calories you put into a chicken, you get 1 out because the chicken has to think, move, and breathe. The majority energy is lost, making our traditional animal agriculture system extremely inefficient. This is a 11% efficient technology. This simply won't work because people all over the world love meat, and the demand is only going up as the world's population increases and the number of people in developing nations also start indulging in the act of eating meat. By 2050, there are projected to be 10 billion people, so the driving question is how will we feed them in a sustainable way? It turns out there just isn't enough land to feed 10 billion people because of how resource intensive the traditional way of producing meat is done. Luckily, we live in the 21st century where people have leveraged science and tools to help us combat these big problems and one solution being explored for a new food system, is making meat without animals, or cultured meat. This article will explore the methodology of lab-grown meat, as well as its feasibility for an alternative production method of meat. Additionally, it explores next steps are to bring lab-grown meat to restaurants near you and the companies who are pioneers in the field.

Benefits of Cultivated Meat

If you aren't already convinced that we need another, more efficient agricultural system, cultivated meat not only makes the system more efficient, but does so in a way which positively impacts our health, animals health, and the environment. It also uses less resources such as land and water. Right now, we are using the cow as the environment to produce meat in. The cow itself requires food and water, a lot of it. To produce one pound of beef, a cow requires the equivalent amount of water as 135 showers. If we take the cow out of the equation, as is done in cultured meat, we use 96% less water and 99 % less land. These are finite resources, and we have to preserve both land and water. It is also important to note the agricultural industry accounts for 1/4 of all greenhouse gas emissions, which are accelerating the rate of climate change rapidly. Climate change is not a problem, rather it is an outcome of us releasing all these greenhouse gases into the air. Methane is one of the most abundant greenhouse gases, and it comes from cows burping. If we don't use cows as the medium to make meat, we will decrease our greenhouse gas emissions by 96%. Furthermore, resources such as land, water and energy are limited. Producing one kilogram of steak the traditional way can use up to 15,00 liters of water. Cultured meat uses 96% less greenhouse gas emissions not only because we are not using cows who emit methane, but because we are replacing our system of producing food with a more environmentally sustainable alternative. Many environmentalists also believe there's also a big philosophical issue with the current meat production method, animal welfare in places raising meat. There have been investigations to find pigs being raised in windowless sheds as well as chickens given many antibiotics, and very little exercise to maximize the amount of meat produced. All these antibiotics also contribute to the fact that bacteria are becoming antibiotic resistant and passing on their dominant traits to future generations through natural selection. Additionally, food-borne diseases will stop such as e-coli and salmonella because there are no animals used in the process of cultured meat. All these indicators point to a new system, and if we can fix the system now, we won't need to use all our resources and scramble for a solution, when it's too late. Luckily, cultured meat, or lab-grown meat solves all these problems. There are researchers looking into harnessing the use of insects as protein as well as algae in place of protein. Another feasible approach to tackle this problem is plant-based meat, which, as the name suggests, is grown using plants, which replicate the taste of meat. Oftentimes, the protein source is soy protein or wheat protein, but other alternatives such as mushrooms and algae are being researched to act as a plant source. However, cultured meat is the most promising one because of the vast amount of benefits it brings to the table. At its core, cellular agriculture presents an alternative way to get the same product without all of the problems associated with raising livestock, but how does it actually work?

The 3 Step Process

The first step in producing cultured meat is taking a cell biopsy from the animal at hand. To achieve this, there are two approaches, myosatellite stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Stem cells are unique because they have the ability to produce more of itself via self-replication or to produce cells that become different cell types via differentiation. Right now, these stem cells have a limited number of replications, but once we find a line (in some animal) we will no longer have to worry about finding stem cells. Any cell that is able to grow and divide and is able to get to the desired cell at the end. These stem cells are a blueprint, they have the potential, or ability to specialize in a certain type of cell, but are currently not one. For creating meat, we will be focusing on myosatellite stem cells because as of now, we can't control what type of cells embryonic stem cells become but a myosatellite stem cell is a muscle stem cell. To make beef, a needle is used to take a biopsy or sample cells from the cow. This way, you obtained the cow's cells and the cow is still alive. As we said, the cells we want from the cow are known as myosatellite stem cells, which are adult stem cells with the potential to become muscle tissue, which will be used to make the meat. Stem cells can not only produce more of itself through self-replication, but also morph into different types of cells. For example, a muscle cell could become a skin cell. To avoid any harm to the animal we take myosatellite stem cells from reserves of specialized tissues depending on the cell we want, in our case muscle tissue. Because we are taking from the reserves of the animal, the animal isn't affected much and won't have any problems such as genetic disorders or growth hindrance.

Next, the cell is grown in a cell culture media which contains nutrients such as lipids, carbs, and FBS. FBS is short for Fetal Bovine Serum, essentially baby cow blood. It is essential we perform this step of giving all the nutrients in the cell culture media now because most cells cannot replicate as they get older. The cell culture media tries to replicate the environment inside the animal, in this case the cow. The cell culture media has growth factors, mixed with lipids, carbs, and any other nutrients the cell needs to grow. It also contains Fetal Bovine Serum, or FBS. This helps prepare the cell to divide because of mitosis. The main advantage of this step is that the cells will grow and proliferate. Now that the cells have divided, we have what are called myoblasts, essentially when a bunch of myosatellite cells fuse together. Right now, this process takes place in a petri dish, in which the cell is nourished by the cell culture media, containing FBS, and the whole growth serum itself. When we scale this, and produce several cells, it wouldn't be feasible to use petri dishes. In this case, we would use bioreactors, essentially large tanks. Bioreactors will help the cells due to their growth factors and surface. We take the chemicals from the cow's body and the hormones into a bioreactor. Cells are exposed to several different growth factors in a bioreactor. The bioreactor provides a non-adhesive (not tending to stick) surface, so the cells can actually multiply and don't get stuck. We already have a functioning growth serum, and so to put these into bioreactors we would then have our local meat brewery with several large tanks side by side each helping produce cultured meat.

Bioreactors

Bioreactors in which cell proliferation would take place.

Then, take the cell and put it into scaffolds, which mimic ECMs (ExtraCellular Matrix) in our bodies. ECMs stand for ExtraCellular Matrix which are a bunch of fibers, enzymes, proteins, which support the cells. The cells from around the scaffold start to form in the shape of steak, or pork, or whatever meat we are trying to grow. This allows the cell to form around the scaffold and now we have made structured meat. This structure is what differentiates the meats from each other and establishes the different textures for each type of meat. The makes a piece of unstructured meat, into steak.

Process

Picture depicts how cultured meat is made.

Companies in the Space

JUST has come up with a way to produce eggs harnessing the technology of cellular agriculture. JUST has sold over 100 million eggs and saved 3.6 billion dollars and 5,904 acres of land, just from these eggs alone.

JUST

Aleph Farms is a company based in Israel who grow cell cultured steak. They are doing this to create a more sustainable system, and are one of the most successful startups in the cultivated meat industry.

ALEPH

MOSA MEAT

Founded in 2006, Mosa Meat is a company that is making beef in a "kinder way", without sacrificing any taste for the burgers you love.

Challenges To Overcome

There are a couple problems with cultivated meat. Firstly the FBS used in the cell culture media is unethical and extremely expensive. It can cost up to 5,000 dollars. Scientists are working to bring this cost down. Also, since this field is relatively new, there are not enough startups and engineers in the field to scale the production of lab grown meat. Slowly, though we are making progress, as cultivated meat was just recently approved in Singapore as of December 2020. This is a great indicator of what is to come next in the field of Cultured Meat.

Conclusion