[blackwasp]

Lab grown meat is nothing but synthetic proteins developed using in vitro cells of animals rather than from slaughtered animals. Compared to regular meat, a cultured meat can have positive moral, health, environmental, cultural, and economic effects. It’s well known that meat is more harmful to the environment that automobiles (Related Thread (Meat / Beef production is more harmful to the environment than cars!!)). It is estimated that 14.5% of all green house emissions come from animal meat. That figure is equivalent to all of the transportation industry on earth - trucks, buses, trains, planes, ships, cars etc. Infact, avoiding dairy and meet is the single largest way to reduce your environmental impact, not reducing plane travel and buying that electric car.

Winston Churchill foresaw the biggest food innovation of the 21st century back in 1931: "We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium."

Today that prospect nears, but is still so new it doesn't have a widely agreed-upon name: cultured meat, clean meat, lab-grown meat, cultivated meat or, by its detractors, test tube meat.

All those terms denote meat grown from animal cells, rather than from a living, sentient animal. I'll call it cultured meat, but regardless of name, it may start arriving at small scale in 2022 from companies such as Mosa Meat, Memphis Meats, Aleph Farms, and Meatable. It will be positioned as a more sustainable, environmentally friendly option for meat eaters. But who it will appeal to and at what price remains a different story.

Meat production's footprint on natural resources is an accepted issue. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says the livestock sector "is increasing pressure on ecosystems and natural resources" and "in some cases its impact on ecosystems is out of proportion with the economic significance of the sector." The FAO also estimates that 26% of the earth's land that isn't covered in ice is used for livestock grazing, and that 33% of all crop lands are used to grow crops to feed to livestock that are fed to people in a sort of nutritional bucket brigade.

Cultured meat doesn't require grazing land or tons of feed. Instead it's grown in bioreactors like those already used to produce pharmaceuticals and ethanol. A few animal cells are chosen for the type of meat desired, and placed on a biological scaffold to grow into the right shape and structure in a bioreactor that turbocharges cell growth from a speck to a serving.

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The alternative meat market, on the whole, was worth US$14 billion in 2019 – just one per cent of the US$1.4 trillion global meat industry. But Barclays estimates it will grow ten times its size to US$140 billion by 2029.

Tissue culture from plant and animal cells is not in itself a new technology, and the former has been used to produce high yielding clones of economically important crops like rubber and banana.

But tremendous advances in molecular science, cell culture technology, bioreactor engineering and food science make it possible to assemble cells into tissues which resemble the meat from slaughtered animals.

Lab-grown meat further aligns closely with the “Singapore Food Story”, an initiative by the Government to strengthen the country’s food security. One of its major thrusts is to encourage innovation in alternative proteins at home.

With limited land and water resources, Singapore’s potential to improve its food self-sufficiency is to rely on technology-enabled farming and culturing meat in bioreactors.

Both are akin to growing food in traditional agriculture systems, albeit using less space and capitalising on the country’s high technological capabilities.

These reasons have provided the impetus for Singapore to move its agriculture into controlled environments, such as vertical vegetable farms.

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When it comes to making realistic lab-grown meat, one of the hardest things to replicate is not the taste, but the feel. In a new study, researchers created a spongy 3D scaffold out of soy protein that both scientists and tasters say made a clump of bovine cells feel like the real deal, Inside Science reports. Scientists have been able to grow “nuggets” of muscle cells to use for hamburgers and meatballs (above). But for this new study, they wanted to create something that felt more like a steak. So they seeded and grew three cell types—smooth muscle, endothelial cells, and satellite cells—a combination that gave the end product more meatlike texture properties than the scaffold alone, the researchers write in Nature Food. When three volunteers tasted the “steak,” they reported a good taste, aroma, and, most importantly, texture. The researchers say their new scaffold could help scale up the production of different types of cultured meats—and provide protein sources beyond animal agriculture.

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Scientists at the University of Bath have grown animal cells on blades of grass, in a step towards cultured meat.
If the process can be reproduced on an industrial scale, meat lovers might one day be tucking into a slaughter-free supply of "bacon".

The researchers say the UK can move the field forward through its expertise in medicine and engineering.

Lab-based meat products are not yet on sale, though a US company, Just, has said its chicken nuggets, grown from cells taken from the feather of chicken that is still alive, will soon be in a few restaurants.

Chemical engineer Dr Marianne Ellis, of the University of Bath, sees cultured meat as "an alternative protein source to feed the world". Cultured pig cells are being grown in her laboratory, which could one day lead to bacon raised entirely off the hoof.

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There's increasing concern about the impact of meat consumption on the planet. Around a quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving up temperatures are estimated to have come from agriculture.

Beef production is considered the worst offender with cattle emitting methane and nitrous oxide from their manures, but also from their digestive processes.
There are also additional gases from fertiliser application to land, from the conversion of land for pasture or feed production.

Because of these impacts on the climate and because of a range of other concerns about issues such as welfare and sustainability, scientists have in recent years sought to develop meat that can be grown from animal cells in factories or laboratories.

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[Eddy]

Since I do eat all kinds of meat, I will definitely give lab "meat" a shot. Or for that matter any synthetic meat.

In the long run, I'll choose whichever tastes & feels good and is reasonably priced. I'll most likely be eating both types.

Right now - religion, environment, compassion etc are not my decision influencers but who knows what'll happen once I turn 50 in another decade

[digitalnirvana]

Definitely yes. Farming for meat and dairy is not environmentally nor ethically sustainable in the long run unless we want to end up with a Soylent Green type of scenario.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by blackwasp

Lab grown meat is nothing but synthetic proteins developed using in vitro cells of animals rather than from slaughtered animals.

Can you please update the first post? Just a week back, Singapore became the first government to give approval to a Lab-grown meat.

Source: The New York Times

The nascent laboratory meat industry won a small victory Wednesday on that last point, as an American start-up became the first to win government approval — in this case, an announcement by the city-state of Singapore — to sell the fruit of its labs to the public in the form of “cultured chicken.”

The company, Eat Just, is based in San Francisco and describes its product as “real, high-quality meat created directly from animal cells for safe human consumption.” Singapore’s Food Agency said on Wednesday that it had approved the product for sale as an ingredient in chicken nuggets.

[fhdowntheline]

The problem is not with meat consumption or any food consumption- it is with AVAILABILITY for consumption. Never before have countries with large populations had food, especially processed food so readily available for an affordable price. Forget lab grown meat. Take the simple example of namkeens like Chakli, Chivda which are almost a staple snack in every house. There was a time not too long ago, when such things were made at home only during festivities or a special occasion. People simply couldnt afford to buy processed foods, and there was low availability as well. Now there is no concept of seasonal or regional specialities. You can have Lucknowi biryani for breakfast, Hyderabadi biryani for lunch, Ambur biryani for dinner sitting inside your house that is atleast a thousand km from any of those regions.

Where I stay in Pune, the latest trend is that we have people selling fresh seafood in mobile outlets every other day. That wasn't the case 20 years ago.

[avira_tk]

This is just another garbage product from the industrial agriculture complex. Propaganda for eating bugs and soy.

Here's a video that tells you how you can save the planet.

https://youtu.be/7W33HRc1A6c

[K_Drive]

You will be happily eat the butter chicken if it smells and taste good. It only matters if you mention it is lab grown chicken and all kind of thoughts comes in to your mind and it inversely effect the taste. I don't believe the mutton served in hotels are just mutton. They may mix it with other animal meat that you will never have knowingly.
https://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.c...w/70183023.cms

[fhdowntheline]

Originally Posted by avira_tk

This is just another garbage product from the industrial agriculture complex. Propaganda for eating bugs and soy.

Here's a video that tells you how you can save the planet.
https://Youtu.be/7W33HRc1A6c

I agree with this in many ways, it is our human ego that makes us believe that we are capable of influencing change in the planetary dynamics -whereas anything "bad" we do is ultimately causing harm only to "us" as a species. The bacteria, viruses, insects and most other species are just fine.

[Samurai]

I don't think most will make a big deal about lab grown meat. We shouldn't. We eat farm grown meat all the time, and that is not exactly very healthy.

If lab meat can avoid the mess with poultry/dairy farms, I would welcome it.

Originally Posted by K_Drive

I don't believe the mutton served in hotels are just mutton. They may mix it other animal meat that you will never have knowingly.

Traditional meat eaters who buy mutton from local mutton shops will know the difference in taste. Those who eat only at restaurants may get fooled.

[J4J]

I would definitely give this a shot.
However in the long term, I think synthetic things are proven to be more dangerous to human health(going by past records). If this stands the test of time and is reasonably priced, I think most of the people will eat this.

So many ingredients were changed in the past two decades and later on turned out to be more harmful to us.

[Sree73]

Would definitely love to try it out.
After all the future of meat industry may be in this direction. In the long run, lab grown meat industry may be equal to or overweigh the natural farming industry.

[digitalnirvana]

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

I agree with this in many ways, it is our human ego that makes us believe that we are capable of influencing change in the planetary dynamics -whereas anything "bad" we do is ultimately causing harm only to "us" as a species. The bacteria, viruses, insects and most other species are just fine.

I was going to post *whoosh* but a single word post would get me banned. So here is some filler.

Spoiler alert, avira was being sarcastic. Or I sure hope so that they were.

And yes the planet's not in danger. We are. In this very century we would be FIFTEEN billion humans. That's double of us now. And FIFTEEN times where we were a century ago.

By the way, we are in the middle of a MASS EXTINCTION event. Some people call it the Anthropocene. So no, most other species are not fine, and no, we're not just damaging ourselves. We are dragging everyone along with us towards a messy end.

Bee populations. Threatened. Insect populations. 70% decline in 50 years. Ocean life. At its LOWEST since records began.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant, because it is. But if we think we're just fine and only affecting humans... News flash! We're irrevocably damaging the ecosystem as the apex species of our time

The planet will be fine. But most of the flora and fauna we know will be gone before we course correct.

[hiren.mistry]

I am ambivalent about it. I am surely willing to give it a go, if I stick to it depends primarily on the taste and texture. Second being price, not sure how the pricing will be compared to real meats. But since this a new trend, I am expecting it to be very expensive.

I mainly consume poultry products, chicken, eggs are my staple. Very rarely we have mutton. My family prefers fish but the pricing is going through the roof.

[V.Narayan]

This invention if it can be successfully scaled up a billion times will do more to save the planet for our grandchildren than any other single invention. Solar & wind energy generation being close seconds.

A research in the Netherlands for the UN determined that 1 kg of boneless beef requires 15,500 litres of water to produce. This was the conservative estimate. Other studies took the figure to 20,000 litres! Other studies {disputed by sections of the US press} talk of 7 kgs of grain to produce 1 kg of beef and 4 kgs of grain needed to produce 1 kg of pork. Hair splitters supporting Trump could argue whether the number for beef is 6 or 8 or 5.5 but directionally the fact is each kg of meat takes up disproportionate resources {land, water, fertilizers, manpower, logistics} needed to produce grain, vegetables, fruits, dairy etc for an increasing world population.

Who knows cultured meat {I like that term} might even be made more tastier than grown meat!

Not sure what the objections are - Coca Cola consumed by the gallon is already a purely artificial factory made product.

[Jaggu]

I think this is a very good alternative to animal killing, I love meat and can feed on it without having any guilt

The spin-off to the science is the possibilities in rebuilding the damaged human body, imagine someone with permanent muscle damage getting treated with lab-cultured one. Pretty exciting the future is.