The Myth of Cultured Meat: A Review - cost benefits to the comunity
Introduction: Context of Animal Farming Today
Global population is expected to surpass 9 billion by 2050.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) forecasts a 70% increase in food demand by 2050.
Meat consumption is increasing globally, especially in developing countries like China, India, and Russia.
Populations seek more luxury products like meat as they become middle-class.
Addressing Global Food and Nutrition Security
Livestock systems are crucial for global food and nutrition security.
Animal farming should produce high-quality meat , milk, and eggs in an environmentally sound, socially responsible, and economically viable manner.
Factory farming prioritizes efficiency (quantity of milk or meat produced) over environmental and social impacts.
More efficient protein production methods are being developed to address environmental and animal welfare concerns.
Cultured meat is presented as a sustainable alternative for consumers who want to be responsible without changing their diet.
The Production of Cultured Meat
Objective: Recreate the complex structure of livestock muscles with a few cells.
A biopsy is taken from a live animal, and stem cells are extracted.
Stem cells can proliferate and differentiate into muscle and fat cells.
Cells are cultured in a medium containing nutrients, hormones, and growth factors.
Foetal bovine serum (FBS) is the best medium but is rate-limiting and unacceptable for vegetarians/vegans.
More than one trillion cells can be grown.
Cells merge to form myotubes (no longer than 0.3 mm).
Myotubes are placed in a ring, growing into small muscle tissue.
Fibers are attached to a scaffold that provides nutrients and stretches them to increase size and protein content.
Fewer animals are needed due to cell proliferation, but FBS use could lead to many dead calves.
Cells are kept in a monitored environment replicating the temperature inside a cow's body.
Pros and Cons of the Culture Process
Initial Problem: Serum used in culture is not slaughter-free and is expensive.
Laboratory start-ups aim to find a cheaper, plant-derived medium as efficient as FBS.
This problem has been solved at least in research prototypes.
Once solved on an industrial scale, in vitro meat could be competitive in terms of production costs and animal ethics.
Antibiotics and fungicides are commonly used to avoid contamination.
Start-ups claim this problem has also been solved.
Cell culture needs hormones and growth factors to sustain cell proliferation and differentiation.
Research questions: How can these compounds be produced on an industrial scale? How can we ensure they have no negative effects on human health?
Hormone growth promoters are prohibited in conventional meat production in the EU.
Still far from real muscle, which contains organized fibers, blood vessels, nerves, connective tissue, and fat cells.
Strategies vary: some reproduce unorganized muscle fibers, while others try to reproduce thin slices of muscle.
Producing a thick piece of meat like a steak is still a dream due to the need to perfuse oxygen inside the meat.
Difficult to offer consumers a wide range of meats reflecting the diversity of animal muscles or cuts.
Sensory quality differs across species, breeds, genders, farming conditions, and muscles.
Many complex processes need to be controlled to make in vitro meat more attractive to consumers.
Health and Safety
Advocates claim in vitro meat is safer than conventional meat because it is produced in a controlled environment.
Cultured muscle cells do not have the same opportunity to encounter intestinal pathogens like E. coli, Salmonella, or Campylobacter.
Scientists or manufacturers cannot control everything, and mistakes may have dramatic consequences.
Cultured meat is not produced from animals raised in confined spaces, eliminating the risk of outbreaks and the need for vaccinations.
Cells live in high numbers in incubators, and we don't know all the consequences of meat culture for public health.
Some argue that cell culture is never perfectly controlled, and unexpected biological mechanisms may occur.
Dysregulation of cell lines may occur, as in cancer cells, although deregulated cell lines can be eliminated for production or consumption.
This may have unknown potential effects on muscle structure and human health.
Antibiotic resistance is a major problem facing livestock.
Cultured meat is kept in a controlled environment, and monitoring can easily stop any sign of infection.
However, this argument is less convincing if antibiotics are added to prevent contamination.
The nutritional content of cultured meat can be controlled by adjusting fat composites.
Saturated fats can be replaced by omega-3, but the risk of higher rancidity has to be controlled.
Strategies have been developed to increase omega-3 in conventional meat.
No strategy has been developed to endow cultured meat with micronutrients specific to animal products (vitamin B12 and iron).
Positive effects of micronutrients can be enhanced if introduced in an appropriate matrix.
It is not certain that cultured cells could potentiate the positive effects of micronutrients on human health.
Uptake of micronutrients (such as iron) by cultured cells has to be well understood.
The culture medium composition may reduce the health benefits of micronutrients.
Adding chemicals to the medium makes cultured meat more “chemical” food.
Comparison of Environmental Impact With Conventional Farming
Cultured meat is presented as environmentally friendly because it produces less GHG, consumes less water, and uses less land.
Comparison is incomplete and sometimes biased.
Livestock, mainly ruminants, are responsible for a significant proportion of world GHG emissions, mainly due to methane.
Reducing methane emissions is presented as one of the most important potential benefits of in vitro meat.
Cattle farming is associated with the emission of three GHG [methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2), and nitrous oxide (N_2O)].
Emissions from cultured meat are mainly CO_2 due to fossil energy use to warm cultured cells.
In carbon equivalent, there is no consensus about GHG emissions of lab-grown meat compared to conventional meat.
Lynch et al. (24) concluded that global warming will be less with cultured meat than with cattle initially, but not in the long term because CH4 does not accumulate as long in the atmosphere as CO2.
Cattle systems have a greater peak warming initially, but their warming effect will decline and stabilize.
Warming due to CO_2 from in vitro meat will persist and increase.
The potential advantage of cultured meat over cattle regarding GHG emissions is not obvious.
Some scientists (27) demonstrated that conventional beef production systems in the USA produce less GHG emissions and require the fewest animals, water, and land with a relatively low carbon footprint.
Conventional systems require less maintenance energy due to the shortest time interval from birth to slaughter.
The respective impacts of cattle and cultured meat will depend on the availability of systems for energy generation and of production systems.
Regarding Water Consumption
It is claimed that 15,000 L of fresh water are necessary to produce 1 kg of beef.
In reality, 95% of this water is used for the growth of crops and forages to feed animals.
Much of this water is not saved if farm animals are removed from pastures and land.
The production of 1 kg of beef requires 550–700 L of water.
Issue: The quality of water from cultured meat factories may not be so good due to the chemical industry's activities for the production of growth factors and hormones.
Waste and spillage of chemical products could occur.
Regarding Land
Cultured meat will need less land than conventional meat production.
Livestock plays a key role in maintaining soil carbon content and soil fertility, as manure from livestock is a source of organic matter, nitrogen, and phosphorus.
The production of feed for farm animals requires 2.5 billion ha of land, with 1.3 billion ha corresponding to non-arable grasslands, useable for livestock only.
Land use is a distorted and unfair comparison between cultured meat and conventional meat.
Authors do not take into account the diversity of environmental services and impacts of livestock farming systems.
Comparison of Welfare Issues With Conventional Farming
Animal welfare is a major focus of concern in modern society.
Some animal defenders accept the concept of cultured meat and have labeled it “victimless meat”.
The number of slaughtered animals can be reduced significantly.
Issues of animal welfare concern mainly cattle feedlots and pig and poultry industrial production units.
Industrial units compete strongly with smallholder farms.
If livestock are removed and replaced with cultured meat, a number of livestock services will be lost.
Livestock farming systems perform numerous functions: supplying proteins, providing income for rural populations, and providing socio-cultural services.
Market and Legislation
A recent review (34) detailed (i) the market for cultured meat and (ii) identified key consumer, political, and regulatory issues.
Market
The first in vitro hamburger was made in 2013 by Professor Mark Post from Maastricht University, costing more than $300,000.
High cost was due to the use of products and compounds traditionally used in medical science.
Professor Post founded Mosa Meat and suggests that in 2021, the same hamburger will be worth around US$9, still expensive compared to the regular hamburger at $1.
Mosa Meat has announced the development of serum-free medium.
No cultured meat has yet reached stores and the project needs more research to lower its price.
Livestock farmers are worried about the progress of in vitro meat research.
The potentially effortless and low-cost production of in vitro meat is supposed to make it more economical than regular meat.
Keeping contamination out of cultured meat is going to be a challenge when manufacturing is scaled up.
Cultured meat is presented as a good alternative for consumers who want to be more responsible but do not wish to change their diet.
A potential consumer of cultured meat is described as a young, highly educated meat consumer, who is familiar with in vitro meat and willing to reduce their slaughtered meat consumption.
Cultured meat sales may increase in the near future due to the rise in demand for protein analogs.
Some researchers consider this new meat as a vegetarian product.
Informa Agribusiness Intelligence estimates that by 2021, UK sales of meat analogs will grow by 25% and milk alternatives by 43%.
Cultured meat start-ups, as well as farmhouse cheesemakers and charcuterie producers, will have a wide range of opportunities to create their own product version.
Acceptance of cultured meat will vary substantially across cultures and between genders, and depending on the amount of provided information.
Consumers will not accept any compromises in terms of food safety, taste, or other attributes.
Plant-based meat alternatives have been developing and have improved a lot in terms of sensory traits.
With high sensory/organoleptic quality, these meat substitutes should not be considered as an intermediate step leading to the acceptance of artificial meat.
Sales of meat analogs made from plant-based proteins and mycoproteins may increase more than cultured meat in the near future.
$16 billion was invested in start-ups and companies offering vegetable meat substitutes ($673 million in 2018), which is much more than investments in start-ups working on cultured meat (about 100 to 200 million since 2015).
Some scientists consider that cultured meat is already obsolete since progress in plant-based meat alternatives is already well advanced (44).
The meat industry of the future will be more complex, with a greater number of meat products or meat substitutes on the market.
All protein sources inherently contain both drawbacks and advantages that will affect their ability to be commercialized and accepted by consumers.
For new products to be successful, they must be commercially viable alternatives to conventional meat production.
The success of cultured meat as an alternative, substitute, or complement to conventional meat will play an important role, because consumers are likely to refer to products with similar positioning in the market.
If the palatability issues are solved and if meat substitutes are competitive in terms of price, consumers will be more open to changing their purchasing habits.
The most technologically challenging alternatives to meat also require moderate to high degrees of social-institutional change.
Van der Weele et al. (38) demonstrates that cultured meat and plant-based meat alternatives both require a moderate degree of social-institutional change from the current Western dietary patterns.
Legislation
A small but important body of literature exists on the regulation of cultured meat.
In vitro meat stands at the frontier between meat and non-meat.
In April 2018, France had already banned the use of meat- and dairy-related words to designate vegetarian and vegan products.
The use of the word “meat” for in vitro meat has not been decided yet.
Livestock farmers in the US are backing a new law in Missouri, which states that for a product to be called “meat,” it has to come from a real animal.
Meat scientists differentiate between “muscle” and “meat,” with the latter being the result of a natural biological process of muscle aging after slaughter.
Should “cultured meat” be called meat? If not, should in vitro meat still be regulated in the same way as regular meat?
The response on regulation will take time, and the definition of “meat” will vary between countries.
The Cattle Council of Australia CEO, Margo Andrae, is warning “cultured meat companies” to avoid repeating a battle over terms as happened with “milk” and “dairy”; her view is that it should “be called what it is, which is lab-grown protein”.
The various start-ups have clearly different strategies based on marketing choices, with some of them calling the product “animal protein” and others “artificial meat.”
Public Perception
Consumer Perception
How consumers perceive and accept or reject cultured meat is largely a matter of controversy.
Advocates of cultured meat are concerned that the name could put off consumers, with possible connotations of a product that is “fake.”
The lack of consumer acceptance could be a major barrier to the introduction of cultured meat.
It seems difficult to evaluate consumer acceptance for an earlier-stage product.
Different names influence consumer attitude.
“In vitro meat,” “clean meat,” “cultured meat,” “lab-grown meat,” “synthetic meat” suggest that this innovation is slaughter-free, more responsible toward our environment, and a credible alternative to the current intensive farming systems.
Consumers tend to strongly reject the name “in vitro meat.”
The term “cultured” is less disliked than the terms “artificial” and “lab-grown”.
Participants have a low level of acceptance of cultured meat because it is perceived as unnatural.
Giving information about the production of cultured meat and its benefits has the paradoxical effect of increasing the acceptance of traditional meat.
A higher acceptance may be favored by less technical descriptions of cultured meat.
The “high-tech” process is associated with something scientific and unnatural, and therefore negatively affects the product’s image.
Consumers seem to dislike unnatural food.
Consumers' initial reactions when learning about cultured meat were underpinned by feelings of disgust and considerations of unnaturalness.
Consumers envisaged few direct personal benefits from cultured meat, but they acknowledged possible global societal benefits.
Perceived personal risks from eating cultured meat were underpinned by considerations of unnaturalness and uncertainty, and therefore inducing some kind of fear of the unknown.
Consumers may accept scientific progress and cultured meat, but will require a trusted process of control and regulations to ensure complete safety of the product.
Willingness to try or to eat cultured meat was quite high: 64.6% of the participants being willing to try it, and 49.1% willing to buy it regularly and eat it instead of conventional meat (48.5%).
The authors interpreted those results in favor of cultured meat
The majority of more educated consumers from different countries will not buy cultured meat regularly although one-third of the respondents answered “I do not know.”
Consumers’ vision of cultured meat is likely to change over time through receiving more information.
Ethics
Ethical issues are more and more important in food choices.
The potential advantages of cultured meat regarding ethics and environmental issues are acknowledged, many consumers have concerns about food safety mainly due to the unnaturalness perception of cultured meat.
In vitro meat, like any new technology, raises inevitable ethical issues.
One of the main purposes of this innovation, according to cultured meat advocates, is to stop the cruel practices endured by animals that are sometimes confined in tight spaces and slaughtered in inhumane conditions.
Cultured cells and in vitro meat are supposed to be free from any type of pain although biopsies on animals to collect cells may raise some issues concerning animal welfare.
Cultured meat aims to use considerably fewer animals than conventional livestock farming.
From an animal welfare perspective this could be attractive to some vegetarians, vegans and those conscientious omnivores interested in reducing their meat intake for ethical reasons.
A new type of medium has been developed without the use of FBS from dead calves.
Some vegans have been avoiding animal food because of the meat taste. Others would consider eating it if it was produced in a cruelty-free and friendly environment.
Scientists recognize the potential ethical benefits of artificial meat, namely an increase in animal welfare, nutrition-related diseases, food-borne illnesses, resource use, and greenhouse gas emissions.
The environmental impact of artificial meat is difficult to evaluate because it is currently based on speculative analyses.
Animals still have to be used in the production of cultured meat, even in fewer numbers for muscle sampling only.
Animals must be reared so that their cells can be harvested to produce in vitro meat.
Lab-grown meat still involves animal exploitation.
Problems with Current Livestock Systems
Intensive livestock remains cruel for a lot of people, it is not the case for a significant proportion of livestock in the world, and particularly for many extensive systems in France or some African countries.
Alternative Farming Systems
Sustainable intensification and agroecology could converge for a better future by adopting transformative approaches in the search for ecologically benign, socially fair, and economically viable livestock farming systems.
Religion and Meat Consumption
In vitro meat, like any other new technology, raises numerous ethical, philosophical, and religious questions.
Because of its nebulous status, religious authorities are still debating whether in vitro meat is Kosher, Halal, or what to do if there is no animal available for ritual practices.
Jewish Dietary Laws (Kosher)
Rabbinical opinion is divided.
Some think that cultured meat can only be considered Kosher if the original cells were taken from a slaughtered Kosher animal.
Others assume that regardless of the source of the cells used to produce the cultured meat, they will certainly lose their original identity. Therefore, the outcome cannot be defined as forbidden for consumption
Islamic Laws (Halal)
The crucial question is whether the cultured meat is compliant with Islamic laws or not.
Since meat culturing is a recent invention, the traditional Islamic jurist that Muslims often refer to has never discussed its Halal status.
Contemporary Islamic jurists have taken on this mission.
The Halal status of cultured meat can be resolved through identifying the source of the cells and serum medium used in culturing the artificial meat.
In vitro meat is considered Halal only if the stem cell is extracted from a Halal slaughtered animal, and neither blood nor serum is used in the process.
Serum should be avoided unless one can prove that the meat will not be changed as a result of contact with the serum.
Conclusion
To meet the increasing demand for food by a growing population in 2050, the FAO has concluded that 70% more food will be needed to fulfill this demand.
Livestock systems will be a vital element in addressing global food and nutrition security in the world.
To avoid criticism of livestock farming concerning environmental and animal welfare issues, more efficient ways of protein production are being developed to sustain the growing global population.
One option is to culture muscle cells in an appropriate culture medium, the most efficient so far being a medium containing FBS.
The medium should provide nutrients, hormones, and growth factors, so that muscle cells will proliferate before being converted into muscle and hence produce a huge amount of meat from a limited number of cells.
Thanks to technical advances, FBS has been replaced, at least in research laboratories, but maybe not yet at the industrial level.
As hormone growth promoters are prohibited in conventional farming systems for conventional meat production in the European Union, this is still an issue.
This technique produces disorganized muscle fibers which are far removed from real muscle, and this is a huge limitation in seeking to reproduce the wide range of meats representing the diversity of animal species and breeds, as well as muscles or cuts.
Blood vessels and blood, nerve tissue, intramuscular fats, and connective tissue affect the taste of meat.
The nutritional quality of cultured meat can be theoretically controlled by adjusting the fat composites used in the medium of production.
Strategies exist for increasing the content of omega-3 fatty acids in meat with current livestock farming systems.
Controlling the micronutrient composition of cultured meat is still a research issue.
The impact of cultured meat consumption on human health will have to be carefully checked and documented.
There is no consensus on the potential advantages in terms of GHG emissions of lab-grown meat compared to conventional meat on a short-term or long-term basis.
Despite its current high price, the production costs of cultured meat will probably decrease in the near future.
This may help consumer acceptance, despite a strong rejection of names that refer to “in vitro” or “cultured” meat technology.
Cultured meat will be in competition with other meat substitutes already on the market and better accepted by consumers, such as plant-based products.
Ethically, cultured meat aims to use considerably fewer animals than conventional livestock, which makes the product attractive to vegetarians and vegans. However, a few animals will still need to be reared so that their cells can be harvested to produce in vitro meat.
Religious authorities are still debating whether in vitro meat is Kosher or Halal.
Research projects on cultured meat have had a limited scope as in vitro meat development is still in its infancy.
The product will evolve continuously in line with new discoveries and advances that optimize the production, quality and efficiency of cell division.
It remains to be seen whether this progress will be enough for artificial meat to be competitive in comparison to conventional meat and the increasing number of meat substitutes.