AI-generated summary
Feeding the growing global population poses significant logistical and environmental challenges, especially regarding animal protein sources like beef and prawns, which have high ecological footprints. Laboratory or cellular agriculture meat offers a promising alternative by producing animal-based foods directly from cell cultures, eliminating the need for raising and slaughtering live animals. This technology uses two main methods: the cellular approach, which grows animal stem cells in bioreactors to create edible muscle tissue, and the acellular approach involving microorganisms. The key difference from conventional meat production is that only the necessary edible tissues are grown, avoiding inedible parts and enabling production in controlled environments without extensive land use.
Laboratory meat presents several sustainability advantages, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions such as methane, minimizing land use, and cutting down on animal feed requirements and transport emissions. This enables the restoration of natural habitats and more efficient resource use. However, the technology currently faces criticism due to its reliance on high-tech infrastructure, generating electronic and industrial waste, and requiring optimization to lower costs. Despite regulatory and social challenges, countries like Singapore have approved lab-grown meat as safe and are pioneering its commercialization. Production costs have drastically fallen, making lab meat increasingly competitive with traditional meat. With companies worldwide advancing this innovation, lab-grown meat is poised to become a sustainable and widely accepted food option in the near future.
Cellular agriculture can be one of the tools that allow the nutritional needs of the population to be met at a low economic and environmental cost.
Feeding the planet is a logistical and environmental challenge, especially when it comes to animal protein. Foods such as beef or prawns are the ones that generate the most impact during breeding.
Hence, ‘laboratory’ meat, which dispenses with live animals to be slaughtered, is seen as a way to minimise environmental impact. The food landscape of the future is evolving thanks to solutions like this. At what stage is innovation applied to food technology?
What is ‘laboratory’ meat or cellular agriculture?
Called ‘lab’ meat because of its high-tech origins in sterile environments, cellular agriculture produces a type of animal-based food from animal cell cultures. In other words, instead of raising animals in a conventional way, cellular agriculture produces tissues without the need to give rise to living beings (and without the need to slaughter them).
There are two modes of high-tech animal protein production:
– the cellular method, which extracts stem cells from animals and they are grown in bioreactors;
– The acellular method, in which microorganisms are grown instead of cells.
In the case of meat, the former is used, and it results in edible and safe muscle tissue. The fundamental difference between conventional meat and cellular agriculture is how the tissues are produced.
Traditionally, these are generated by raising animals that are then slaughtered, and before that they were hunted. With bioreactor meat, another name for ‘laboratory’ meat because of bioreactors where cells multiply naturally, feeding them, only the cells necessary to make up tissues are produced. The cell is the same, but it is produced in a different way.
With these tissues, which grow naturally in a bioreactor instead of inside a living being, different types of meat can be produced in a sustainable way. The process dispenses with elements such as slaughter, but also others such as the formation of inedible tissue (such as bone mass), and advantages such as production in any environment.
How can bioreactor meat be sustainable?
There are many advantages to producing only the edible part of the animals. Whether you look at CO₂ – methane in the case of cows, one of the gases with the highest global warming potential – or other pollutants in the environment, cell culture avoids enormous environmental impacts.
The most obvious impacts are land use, in green in the Our World in Data chart, and the emissions produced in the conversion of vegetable to animal protein. Laboratory meat does not need to occupy territory, being able to rewildland a large part of the territory. It is also highly efficient at converting nutrients into meat.
Another of its environmental advantages is that it largely avoids the production of animal feed (such as feed or fodder). Because instead of feeding whole animals, specific cells are fed. This significantly simplifies agricultural needs. And transport emissions can also be avoided, as this type of meat can be produced anywhere.
However, the model is not exempt from environmental criticism as well. Due to the high technological dependence of the process, the volume of e-waste and industrial waste derived from production currently questions the technology in its early stages. As happened with aeroponics in plant culture, cell culture will need a few years to optimize its development and reduce costs.
Can you consume ‘laboratory’ meat?
As with foods such as genetically modified foods, not all countries promote this type of innovation, and in some it is strictly prohibited.
Bioreactor meat, as it does not differ in any way from conventional meat in terms of quality factors (the cells are the same, although the tissues lack elements such as blood vessels), is rarely prohibited. But it is often discouraged and even suffers from poorly trained smear campaigns , as has also been seen in ‘meat’ products composed of vegetables.
The country that is promoting cellular agriculture the most is Singapore. This country approved in December 2020 the meat development modality for its inhabitants, considering it as safe as other types of meat. The 1880 restaurant was the first to obtain a license to sell its chicken nuggets , steamed chicken and chicken waffles at a cost to the user of about 20 euros.
The cost of producing this technology has decreased rapidly, from $300,000 per fillet in 2013 to €50 in 2019 and $1.7 in 2021. In some places it is already more affordable than conventional (imported) meat, in part because the price reflects the lack of environmental impact in fuels, occupation of territory or use of water.
‘Lab’ meat is a technology that is here to stay, just like others have done in the past. In Spain, a country with a lot of experience in meat production, there are already specialized companies such as BioTech Foods, Herura Foods, Zyrcular Foods, Noel Alimentaria or Novameat. It’s only a matter of time before this sustainable meat appears on the menu.
