Billions of animals are slaughtered everyday around the world to meet the food requirements of human beings. Earlier, they were hunted in the wild leading to extinction of many species. Now selected animals are reared under controlled conditions, fed suitably and slaughtered to produce quality meat for human consumption. In the wild, animals had at least an opportunity to defend themselves and escape. Reared animals have no such choice.
Apart from violence involved in the process, it is ethically abhorrent to rear animals and slaughter them for food, as if to establish supremacy of man over all other life forms created on earth due to its superior intellect.
Production of meat-based diet consumes significantly more of natural resources than grain-based diet. For example, production of a kg of chicken requires 4,325 litres of water, a kg of mutton or beef, 8,763 litres, while a kg of vegetables requires 322 litres and kg of fruits 962 litres. Further 80 per cent of agricultural land is used for production of fodder and 30 per cent of grains produced is used as animal feed. Rearing and processing livestock for meat production is estimated to cause 14.5 per cent of global warming (Acikgoz 2018).
With exciting discoveries in the field of ‘Synthetic Biology’ several research projects have been initiated to produce laboratory grown cultured meat named as ‘Clean meat’ and stop/reduce slaughtering of animals.
In the early 2000s, Jason Gaverick Matheny, a PhD holder in Applied Economics from Oxford University, co-authored a concept paper on production of ‘cultured meat’ and founded an organisation ‘New Harvest’ dedicated to support research on production of synthetic meat, (Jason had worked for six months in India in Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation’s HIV project).
PETA offered US1million dollars and Dutch Government, US $ 4 million for international research on synthetic meat. In 2012, international research on synthetic meat involved 30 laboratories around the world. The first synthetic beef burger of the world was produced by Dr Mark Post of Maastricht University, Netherlands.
He had taken stem cells from a cow, grown them in his laboratory into strips of muscles and combined them to make a burger. It was demonstrated to the Press, cooked and eaten in London on August 5, 2013. The cost of production of the burger (which probably included the cost of innovative research) however, was astronomically high ($300,000).
Since then a number of companies around the world have made significant advances in production of ‘synthetic meat’ and tried to cut down its cost.
A start-up ‘Mosa meat’ founded by Mark Post, produced ‘Clean meat’ at a significantly lower cost. The price of a burger has come down within 4 years to $11.36 in 2017. A Silicon Valley start-up, ‘Memphis meat’ produced poultry based clean meat, chicken tenders and duck a l’orange in 2017.
According to this company, “Our meat is delicious. It’s real meat and lifelong meat eaters immediately recognise it and enjoy it.”
Another company ‘JUST’ proposes to produce chicken nuggets, sausages and Foie gras (the liver of a fattened goose or duck prepared as food) before end of 2018. ‘Finless Food’, San Francisco, declared in 2017 that it would bring fish based ‘clean meat’ to the market by end of 2019.
According to PTI report, March 28, 2018 ‘Human Society International’ and ‘Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology’, India are working on lab grown meat, which may become available in India by 2025.
The technology consists of taking a biopsy sample of stem cells/stem like cells from the muscle of a live animal and growing them in a nutrient rich serum medium.
The cells turn into muscle cells and proliferate doubling the number every few days. After the cells have sufficiently multiplied they are encouraged to form strips similar to living tissues. The fibres are then attached to a sponge like scaffold and flooded with nutrient serum solution and mechanically stretched (exercising) to increase their size and protein content to develop into muscle tissues.
The final product is artificial meat, which can be cooked and eaten.
The type of meat depends on the animal and its body part from which the cell samples were taken. It may be beef, chicken, duck, goat, sheep or even fish.
Winston Churchill had famously said 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.”
The nutrient serum used currently to produce synthetic meat is blood based and derived from live animals. Hence the cost of initial production was astronomically high.
It has been substantially reduced with refinement of technology and scale of production by commercial producers. Efforts are on to develop a blood free synthetic serum. A plant-based medium, which will have a significantly lower cost, is under development.
The next problem is to achieve taste and texture similar to real meat. This can be achieved by further research. It will however, be difficult to distinguish ‘clean meat’ from real meat in meat products, which are laced with condiments.
Composition of synthetic meat/clean meat will be the same as those of animals, since they are produced from cells taken from live animal tissues.
Unlike meat from slaughtered animals, ‘clean meat’ will be a bone and blood less meat. Grown under aseptic conditions, it will be safe from contamination with pathogens and agricultural chemicals.
Theoretically the cells can be multiplied indefinitely until they are contaminated due to negligence. Rearing of animals will continue for other animal products, such as milk, wool, leather, horn etc. and also their meat, when they become non-productive and are slaughtered.
However, large scale slaughter of animals simply for their meat can be significantly reduced if people accept ‘synthetic meat’ or ‘clean meat’ as a substitute.
A Guardian survey conducted on the eve of Mark Post demonstrating the first beef burger in 2013 showed that 69 per cent of people were willing to try synthetic meat as substitute of meat from slaughtered animals.
A survey on Dutch population showed that 63 per cent of population were prepared to accept cultured beef (Tom Ireland, 2017).
An interesting on line-study was conducted with the population of USA by Matti Wilks and Clive JC Phillips of University of Queensland, Australia (2017) on acceptance of laboratory grown ‘clean meat’ as a substitute of farmed meat (meat of farm grown animals).
It showed that about 1/3rd of US population were willing to accept ‘clean meat’ as a replacement of slaughtered meat.
Men were significantly more inclined to accept ‘clean meat’ than woman. It was more acceptable to politically Left liberals than political right conservatives and to vegetarians than non-vegs. Their main concerns were, high cost, limited taste and that the product was unnatural.
Once the cost of production comes down acceptance of ‘clean meat’ products laced with condiments can increase significantly. Josh Tetrick, CEO of ‘JUST’, a clean meat producer, told CNN that chicken nuggets, sausages and foie gras could be made available in restaurants of US and Asia before end of 2018. McDonald’s alone sells 75 hamburgers every second (Matt Simon, 2018).
(Dr Mitra, a Professor and a researcher, has more than 100 technical publications. Email: gnmitra@gmail.com)
