Chicken fingers minus the chicken-Cultured Meat Makers on your Kitchen Counter

Agribusiness is long overdue for some disruptive innovations.

Things on the "farm' have been fairly stable for decades.  i.e a farmer who lived one hundred years ago could probably recognize the modern farm today. Sure,  there have been incremental improvements along the way- new machinery, increased production efficiency, growing yields per capita, the rise of GPS and precision farming and the idea of urban farming , but "the farm is still the farm" and none have obsolesced or displaced the two key actors --the farmer nor his farm animals.

Well until now.

Livestock to Cellstock

Most smart technologies progress from the lab into the field. This disruptive smart technology is trying the reverse, literally heading back from the "field", into the lab and eventually into your home and kitchen countertop.

In a recent paper -Commentary: In Vitro-Cultured Meat Production-in the May issue of the journal Tissue Engineering, an interdisciplinary team of scientists have proposed two new techniques of tissue engineering that could one day lead to the affordable mass production of in vitro - or lab grown - meat for human consumption, all from a cell culture.

Problem:

Despite its popularity, meat — both in production and consumption — has a number of adverse effects on human health, environmental quality, and animal welfare. 

These include:

• Nutrition-related diseases associated with the over-consumption of animal fats, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, These diseases are now responsible for a third of global mortality. Over-consumption of meat may be responsible for a quarter of all ischemic heart disease, or 1.8 million deaths, annually. In the United States, alone, the annual medical costs related to over-consumption of meat are believed to be between $30 and 60 billion
• Meat-borne pathogens and contaminants, such as Salmonella, Campylobacter, pathogenic E. coli, Avian influenza, and Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).  In the United States, foodborne diseases — the most common causes of which are contaminated meats — are responsible for over 76 million episodes of illness, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths each year.
• Antibiotic-resistant bacteria due to the routine use of antibiotics in livestock;
• Inefficient use of resources in cycling grains and water through animals to produce protein; Obtaining nutrients from meat, rather than directly from plants, uses considerably more cropland, water, fertilizer, pesticides, and energy.  Given the inputs required to house, transport, and slaughter animals; transport and process feed grains; and transport and process meat, intensive meat production is only 25 percent as energy efficient as soybean production. Obtaining our food exclusively from plants would make it possible to feed substantially more people using available resources.
• Soil, air, and water pollution from farm animal wastes; Annually, 1.4 billion tons of farm animal wastes are produced in the United States. Together with animal feed production, meat production is responsible for the emissions of nitrogen and phosphorus, pesticide contamination of water, heavy metal contamination of soil, and acid rain from ammonia emissions. In addition, in the United States, a quarter of all the human-induced production of the greenhouse gas, methane, comes from farm animals and their waste products.
• Inhumane treatment of farm animals; 9 billion farm animals are killed each year in the United States to produce meat. The conditions in which these animals are raised and killed raise serious concerns about their welfare.
• Depletion of fishing stocks.  75 percent of existing fishing stocks are either fully- or over-exploited 

While per capita meat consumption in the United States and other developed countries has plateaued in recent years, meat consumption in developing countries continues to increase, consequently, these problems are now a global concern

• "China 's meat demand is doubling every ten years." 
• "Poultry consumption in India has doubled in the last five years."

Smart Solution:

"One technique is to grow cells in large flat sheets on special thin membranes.  The sheets of meat would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked on top of one another to increase thickness."

"The other method would be to grow the muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature.  The mature cells could then be harvested and turned into a processed meat, like fish sticks, nuggets or hamburgers."

State of the Art:

Meat substitutes can be made from plants such as soybeans, peas, or wheat; mycoproteins; or now from animal tissues grown in culture.  There are several plant- and mycoprotein-based meat substitutes already on the market.

The above story in Tissue Engineering provides a "proof-of-concept" for cultured meat - tissues grown fron culture. Scientists at Utrecht University, have received a grant from the Dutch government to produce cultured meat, as part of a national initiative to reduce the environmental impact / footprint of food production.

Benefits:

"The benefits could be enormous," researchers say. Because meat substitutes are produced under controlled conditions --impossible to maintain on traditional animal farms, they can be

• safer; You wouldn't need the antibiotics that are used on animals raised for meat.
• more nutritious; Most meats are high in the fatty acid Omega 6, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems.  With in vitro meat, you could replace that with Omega 3, which is a healthy fat.
• less polluting, and
• more humane than conventional meat

Cultured meat could appeal to people concerned about food safety, nutrition, the environment, and animal welfare, and people who want to tailor food to their individual tastes."

The farm and the farmer won't be disappearing any time soon, but  now it might have some new competition.

A possible positive secondary spinoff could be increased animal genetic diversity. Now that we won't be breading animals exclusively for farming purposes, the animal kindom gene pool and its diversity could return back to natural levels.

Cons:

• Public perceptions of safety;
• Public perceptions of artificial meat,
• taste ? (send on the blind taste tests),
• The "new ethics" of substitutes- artificially grown foods, organs, tissues

Challenges:

• Palatable Texture

To grow meat on a large scale, cells from several different kinds of tissue, including muscle and fat, would be needed to give the meat the texture to appeal to the human palate.

"The challenge is getting the texture right," say scientists.  "We have to figure out how to 'exercise' the muscle cells.  For the right texture, you have to stretch the tissue, like a live animal would."

• Public Acceptance

"It might take some work to convince consumers to eat cultured muscle meat, a product not yet associated with being produced artificially " admit scientists.

"On the other hand, cultured meat could appeal to people concerned about food safety, the environment, and animal welfare, and people who want to tailor food to their individual tastes."

• The Technology and scaling to industrial production levels and to your kitchen.
• Bringing the cost equation down so it's competitve wth farm meat prices.

ETA: 2010-2015?

The Long Term Future?

Meat makers may one day sit next to your bread makers on the kitchen counter.

Sources: New Scientist, Tissue Engineering, Gizmag and New Harvest

© 2005

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

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Comments

[Tom Hoes]

Interesting article and concept.
But:
Adequate cooking destroys all pathogens but BSE, which is extremely rare and declining.
Antibiotic resistance is caused more likely by indicrriminate use in humans with viral infections; most animal antibiotics are not used in human medicine.
More than grain is used to feed animals. Ruminants (beef, sheep, goats, etc.) gain most, if not all, weight from eating forages no human would or could eat. Feeding grain to nonruminants (swine, poultry) is an economic decision - the grain is converted to more valuable and palatable products.
Ammonia production cannot cause acid rain - it is basic and would neutralize acids; it dissolves in rain and becomes fertilizer.
Given the complexity of the nutrients needed and the energy to convert, we likely will find that animals are the most efficient converter.
If health is your concern, eat leaner meats or none at all. Some of the analogs from soy or wheat protein are edible, if not exact in flavor or texture.

Thanks!