A Shift in the Culture: Context and Concerns of Lab-Grown Meat
Kenneth Do & Aryamann Singh Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
“Tastes like chicken”: it’s a phrase you’ve probably heard before, often used in a joking manner to describe unfamiliar foods that really bear little resemblance to chicken. A new meat product by the company Upside Foods, however, truly will look, feel, and taste like chicken — despite the fact that it will have been created entirely in a laboratory environment. The company’s chicken alternative is one of the most developed examples of lab-grown meat, which is produced from cells in a lab rather than animals on a farm, and it recently attracted attention as the first product of its kind to be cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [6].
Part of the allure of lab-grown meat, also referred to as cultured meat, is its avoidance of conventional agriculture practices. Each year, over 70 billion land animals are killed in industrial farms and slaughterhouses [3]. In fact, the United Nations projects that by 2050, the global population will reach around 9.7 billion people, which could increase the slaughtering of animals to meet rising demands [5]. Slaughtering practices subject animals to appalling conditions and use inhumane and abusive methods and can also adversely affect the resulting meat that we consume. After an unstressed animal is slaughtered, glycogen — a form of glucose used for energy storage — is converted into lactic acid by its muscle cells, making the meat more healthy, tasty, and tender [2]. Conversely, meat produced from stressed animals produces lower amounts of lactic acid. The glycogen that would have been converted into lactic acid is instead used by the animal to release adrenaline during the slaughter, affecting the overall meat quality and taste. The resulting stressed meat has higher pH, less flavor, and more rigidity than the meat produced from an unstressed animal. Lab-grown meat offers a solution to the ethical issues of slaughtering and the lower quality of the resulting meat.
Lab-grown meat is defined as meat produced from the growth of a sample of animal cells and involves no breeding or slaughtering of animals [4]. The production of such meat is limited to a laboratory environment, avoiding the traditional slaughterhouse conditions. The most extraordinary aspect of lab-grown meat is that it is produced entirely outside the animal’s body, and thus involves no pain or discomfort for an animal. To begin the meat-growing process, a scientist administers anesthesia to a selected animal and extracts a sample of muscle cells from its body, a method that involves little pain [7]. The extracted cells are then placed in bioreactors, devices that allow microorganisms to grow, where the cells will grow to eventually produce real muscle tissue. The final product is artificial meat that is then cut into the desired shape and transformed into widely recognized products such as steaks, patties, and nuggets.
With each emerging technology comes a host of safety and ethical concerns, and the cultivation of lab-grown meat is no different. While the FDA has cleared Upside Foods’s chicken product, it is still critical to understand concerns of the lab-grown meat as the industry expands. At the center of these concerns is the safety of cultured meat. A key technique involved in the production of lab-grown meat is genetic modification and engineering, a process that could potentially create cancerous cells. Patents by alternative meat companies such as JUST Inc. and Upside Foods describe the use of growth factors and modifications of tumor suppression proteins, techniques that could result in the cell proliferation that is characteristic of cancer [4]. And this is just the surface; groups like Upside Foods maintain secrecy regarding their engineering methods by claiming confidentiality, making transparency to the public difficult [4]. In spite of its revolutionary potential, it is essential for us to approach lab-grown meat cautiously and ensure that the products we consume are reliable.
The most pressing question of lab-grown meat, though, has yet to be discussed: how does it taste? According to TIME, it passes the test. When gastronomist Michal Ansky tasted both a lab-grown chicken product by the company SuperMeat and a control and was asked to distinguish between the two, she was astounded to hear that her guess of the actual chicken was wrong [1]. The lab-grown product indeed tasted like chicken.
References
[1] Baker, A. (2022, January 19). Cultivated meat passes the taste test. TIME. Retrieved January 15, 2023, from https://time.com/collection-post/6140206/cultivated-meat-passes-the-taste-test/
[2] Carrasco-García, A. A., Pardío-Sedas, V. T., León-Banda, G. G., Ahuja-Aguirre, C., Paredes-Ramos, P., Hernández-Cruz, B. C., & Murillo, V. V. (2020). Effect of stress during slaughter on carcass characteristics and meat quality in tropical beef cattle. Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences, 33(10), 1656-1665. https://doi.org/10.5713/ajas.19.0804
[3] Everything you need to know about animal slaughter. (2021, June 15). The Humane League. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://thehumaneleague.org/article/animal-slaughter
[4] Hanson, J., & Ranney, J. (2020, September 20). Is lab-grown meat healthy and safe to consume? Center for Food Safety. Retrieved January 15, 2023, from https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/6458/is-lab-grown-meat-healthy-and-safetoconsume#:~:text=Another%20major%20issue%20associated%20with, growing%20in%20vats%20of%20cells
[5] Population. (n.d.). United Nations. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://www.un.org/en/globalissues/population#:~:text=Our%20growing%20population&text=The%20world's%20population%20is%20expected,billion%20in%20the%20mid%2D2080s.
[6] Toeniskoetter, C. (2022, November 17). Lab-grown meat receives clearance from F.D.A. The New York Times. Retrieved January 15, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/climate/fda-lab-grown-cultivated-meat.html
[7] What is lab-grown meat, and how is cultured meat made? (2021, September 15). The Humane League. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://thehumaneleague.org/article/lab-grown-meat
