By: Elijah Pinkert
Within the USA, as well as the rest of the world, meat is becoming an increasingly controversial food source. Driven by the rise of climate activism, growing concerns over animal cruelty, and efficiency conerns, many are turning away from meat or other animal products. However, many also wish to eat meat due to its versatility, nutritional density, and flavor. This has caused many people to turn to plant based meat substitutes, which offer similar flavors to regular meat. However, many criticize these substitutes for being nutritionally poor, bad for the environment, or otherwise poor tasting. With developing understanding of muscles and cells, a new option has emerged that many are looking to: lab-grown meat. However, many do not understand what lab-grown meat is or any of its benefits over plant based or traditionally harvested meat.
Lab-grown meat has many varieties, but all revolve around the idea of growing muscle and fat cells outside of the animal’s body. Lab-grown meat begins with developing a starter culture. Though direct muscular tissue is used in some situations, it is often much more common to grow stem cells and subject them to conditions that cause them to develop into muscular cells. Stem cells can be harvested from a variety of locations, but are often skin or blood cells that are “reprogrammed” back into stem cells. Once a culture is established, it is fed a growth medium, which is a medium that feeds the cells and provides them with steroids and hormones they would otherwise naturally get in the body. The cells are then transferred onto a scaffold, which allows the cells to develop into the shape and texture of different cuts of meat.
Lab-grown meat has many advantages over plant based or regular meat. Many praise the technology for offering the “best of both worlds” of traditionally produced meat and plant based meat, with it not requiring any raised livestock, being cleaner and more efficient, and more versatile than traditional meat, while being more similar to traditional meat than plant based meat. Also, the technology used for lab-grown meat has a variety of other applications, from producing other animal products like milk or eggs to making replacement organs that are perfect matches to their host.
However, lab-grown meat also has its detractors. As the technology is still in its infancy, there are still issues that hold it back. Lab-grown meat is currently rather expensive to produce, more so than regular meat. Furthermore, the best current source of growth medium is bovine fetal serum, which defeats the entire point of lab-grown meat.
The technology is advancing, and we soon may be eating steaks grown not on a farm, but in a lab. Will humans ditch the old ways of eating meat, or will the future prove to offer better options?