Can technology give us consequence-free meat?

The current meat landscape

Displayed behind the tall stainless steel counter at Whole Foods is a glistening array of cuts of beef, lamb, and pork, in shades of pink, red, and white. Next to each selection is a small sign with some information about provenance (“Born, Raised, and Harvested in USA”) and indicating Whole Foods’ own proprietary animal welfare rating. On a recent trip I counted eighteen types of fresh beef cuts, two types of ground beef, two types of pre-mixed beef meatloaf, and one beef meatball option. Each 100 gram (3.5oz) serving of beef here, which is about the size of a bar of soap, represents about 105kg of CO2, the equivalent footprint of a 300 mile trip by car.

As a climate conscious consumer, I turn to Whole Foods’ robust “plant based meat alternatives” selection, which includes ten kinds of tofu, two kinds of tempeh, three kinds of flavored jackfruit, four kinds of ground meat analogues, and twelve kinds of veggie sausage, including a gluten-based chorizo from a brand called “No Evil” that shouts out Mexican leftist insurrectionists the Zapatistas.

I try to select a meat-free option for dinner, but due to an allergy to legumes I have to look past Beyond Meat’s very realistic looking packaged ground (pea protein) and Impossible Burger’s that promise to bleed (soy). Wheat gluten, which is the basis of Upton’s Naturals ground seitan upsets my partner’s stomach, leaving us with some barbecue flavored jackfruit as our only meat-free option. Unfortunately jackfruit, while a good source of fiber and vitamin C, is very low in protein.

Certainly, plant-based proteins do have a smaller carbon footprint. Tofu produces just 1.6kg of CO2 per 100 gram serving. Even the heavily processed and packaged Beyond Burger claims to produce 90% less carbon emissions when compared to beef. It seems clear that providing plant based proteins for human diets is a net carbon win. But what about people like me who, for one reason or another, can’t consume plant based protein? Are we doomed to obligate carnivorism, like cats?

Market disruptors to the rescue

Currently, dozens of companies are employing biologists and engineers and raising millions of dollars in funding in order to produce “real” meat — including beef, chicken, and seafood — in a lab without raising or slaughtering a single animal.

The entrepreneurs working on these products, which they prefer to call “cultured” or “in-vitro” meat, are using regenerative medicine technology to make cells sampled from real animals develop into muscle. The companies believe in carbon reduction as a selling point, and tout their environmental superiority over agriculturally produced meat. The vision is that growing meat in a lab could free up the millions of acres of land currently used for grazing and housing animals, a leading cause of habitat loss for myriad species.These futurists also hope it could reduce the greenhouse gas emissions caused by the animal agriculture industry.

Cultured meat has captured the public’s interest, and gathered significant investment, but so far nothing has come to market. There are now 50 or so companies that plan to produce cultured meat or seafood for human consumption world wide, with several more attempting to produce pet food or agricultural protein supplements. In 2018 Memphis Meats claimed they would be releasing a cultured chicken product, which failed to materialize.

Are we there yet?

We regularly clone cells for diagnostic and industrial purposes. How much harder could it be to produce some cow muscle cells at scale?

It turns out, quite hard. The problem is mostly that cell culturing technology was developed primarily for bio-medical purposes, and the techniques, equipment, and materials need to be drastically scaled up if they are to be used for food production. There are significant industry bottlenecks that may or may not be resolvable, and in the process cost enormous sums of money.

One of those bottlenecks is fetal cows. Cultured animal cells need something to grow in, and that something needs to replicate the place that cell would normally grow: the inside of an animal, which is rich with salts, sugars, vitamins, fats, proteins, and hormones. The current source of this rich soup required to grow animal cells is… animals. The vast majority of animal cell culturing is done in a medium called fetal bovine serum (FBS). FBS is gathered through a disturbing process that involves dissecting the uterus from a freshly slaughtered pregnant cow, taking the uterus into a special clean room, cutting it open and puncturing the heart of the still-living fetal cow in order to siphon off its un-aerated blood. Large amounts of this product are used in cell culture — over one million liters a year — which requires the sacrifice of 500,000 fetal cows. So, despite the marketing hype the cultured meat industry remains dependent on animal agriculture and slaughter.

Industry scientists have been trying to find an alternative to FBS for many years. Some members of the cultured -meat industry, including Memphis Meats, recently claimed that they’ve developed such an alternative. However, due to industry competition they are keeping their proprietary trade secret cards close to the chest.

Bringing the Meat to Market

When Mark Post created the first lab-grown burger in 2013 it cost $325k and required growing the cells over three months in hundreds of separate Petri dishes, then laboriously harvesting and assembling them into a patty. In an Atlantic article published in April of 2019, just about a year ago, the author writes that the cost of cultured chicken nugget she eats at Just Foods’ lab is an estimated $100. That’s a significant decrease in price, to be sure, but there’s a long way to go before these products are affordable.

There are significant regulatory hurdles too, with both the FDA and USDA wanting to weigh in on authorizing commercial sale of these products, and organizations like the American Cattleman’s Association attempting to thwart the use of the word “meat” for products that don’t come from a slaughtered animal.

What happens when we get there

Industry has been working hard to bring cultured meat to market — but to what end? Would cultured meat really provide a net benefit in terms of carbon emissions over plant based meat analogues, or even actual meat?

The footprint of cultured meat is inexorably tied to the larger energy grid used to power processing as well as the energy usage of pharmaceutical and agri-businesses that produce the biotechnology and feedstocks cultured meat requires.

While cultured meat would provide a benefit in terms of land use, whether it would present a significant net carbon savings remains in contention. A 2015 study in Environmental Science and Technology had a more conservative estimate of the CO2 savings than the studies funded by industry groups, gauging industrial energy use per kg of agricultural beef at 78.6 MJ, with the in-vitro beef at a significantly higher 106MJ per kg. However, the authors found that agricultural beef had a much higher “global warming potential” at the equivalent of 30.5kg CO2 per kg, while in-vitro was determined to be a mere 7.5kg CO2 per kg.

Extant data points to a plant-based diet as the best way to ensure human health, mitigate climate change, provide for a growing population, and protect animal welfare, land, and biodiversity. If we accept that people just won’t or can’t quit eating meat, investment in cultured meat seems worthwhile. But cultured meat has the same carbon-output problems as any other industry that uses energy derived from burning fossil fuels, plus a reliance on animal agriculture to supply key materials. Unless the cultured meat startups use their funding and momentum to promote renewable energy and openly share key innovations, they won’t present a significant improvement over animal agriculture.