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Page added on May 20, 2015
The future of meat
Meat — despite popular movements to decrease the amount humans consume — is still a central part of diets around the world. People who live in industrial countries (like the United States) eat roughly 210 pounds of it each year. And consumption in the developing world, where people eat closer to 66 pounds each year, is climbing fast. Growth is such that by 2030 the average human is expected to consume just under 100 pounds per year, 10 percent more than today.
Our collective affinity for meat likely began out of circumstance — humans that lived inland from the coast had little choice but to hunt in order to live — and has persisted for evolutionary reasons. Meat carries nutrients like zinc and protein, promotes growth, and provides energy. It also doesn’t hurt that the price of meat has fallen dramatically.
But the reality is that there are several downsides to society’s growing appetite for meat. Cheap meat, for one, might leave consumers with extra cash, but it has — largely — come at the expense of animal welfare. It also isn’t great for the planet, which the U.S. government recently noted. “Meat is undoubtedly an environmentally expensive food,” Vaclav Smil wrote in his 2013 book “Should We Eat Meat?”
But what if there were a way to produce meat that would avail us of the need to slaughter animals? What if we could continue to order hamburgers without also feeding the livestock industry as much as a third of the world’s grain production? And what if it could be done for a reasonable price?
Professor Mark Post, who is part of the faculty at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, has been asking that question for almost a decade now. Two years ago, Post’s team of researchers presented their first major discovery in the form of a five-ounce hamburger patty, which was created in a lab, but still was remarkably similar to ones sold on supermarket shelves. The reception was promising: The media was abuzz, and the BBC made several food critics try it, one of whom conceded “this is meat to me, it’s not falling apart.”
Now, Post is working to overcome some of lab-grown meat’s biggest obstacles, including its price. And he believes it’s only a short matter of time before he succeeds.
“It was $350,000 when we first publicized the patty,” said Post. “At this point we’ve already managed to cut the cost by almost 80 percent. I don’t think it will be long before we hit our goal of 65 to 70 dollars per kilo.”
That would drop the five-ounce burger to below $10, a number that Post hopes will eventually drop even further.
To understand how it’s possible to grow a hamburger that is made of actual animal tissue — rather than a protein substitute — you need to understand a bit about how muscle tissue works.
When muscle tissue is damaged, the body repairs the injured tissue by calling on a specific type of stem cell, called a myosatellite cell. Myosatellite cells can be taken from an animal without causing it harm. They also can reproduce fairly quickly. And they tend to form muscle fibers when they do.
These characteristics, it turns out, are very useful for someone trying to replicate the process by which muscle forms naturally.
“The thing is, you can take those cells and then let them replicate as they would in the case of injury inside the body of a cow,” Post said. “And you can help them form muscle tissue again.”
The process is hardly straightforward. Rather, it involves carefully extracting the cells, allowing them to multiply and then coercing them into differentiating. Once the cells have differentiated, which is a fancy term for the process in which cells change to assume different responsibilities, they combine into muscle fibers, at which point protein forms.
“The result are these little strips of tissue,” Post said. “It’s the same tissue grown by cells inside of the body. Except we grow them outside of it.”
It takes about 20,000 of them to make the burger publicized in 2013.
Perhaps the single largest reason why initial publicity around Post’s futuristic hamburger was met with such reluctance is that it was less affordable than most houses in the world.
“Obviously this is all still being done on a small scale, in an academic environment,” Post said. “That’s why it costs so much. Once we scale up it will be a different story.”
Post expects to be able to produce the patties on a large enough scale to sell them for under $10 a piece in a matter of five years.
“Once we can grow the tissue in a reactor the size of an Olympic swimming pool, we should be able to achieve that sort of volume,” Post said. “For perspective, half a swimming pool would allow us to feed about 20,000 people for a year.”
Irrespective of how much meat Post manages to produce, and how cheap it becomes as a result, there remains the question of whether society will ever actually warm up to the idea of eating lab grown beef.
Skepticism runs rampant enough that shmeat, which refers to the sort of synthetic meat Post had created, was a runner-up for Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year in 2013. And the moniker frankenmeat has frequently been invoked.
But Post is confident that the benefits of cultured meat will eventually coerce people to give it a try.
“What people need to realize is that it will have a positive effect on many things, including animal welfare, because we would need to slaughter fewer animals, our efficiency with certain resources, and the environment,” he said.
Cultured meat, according to a 2011 study, has a significantly smaller carbon footprint than regular beef, pork, and even poultry production. It also requires far less land and water than all three.
“The last thing we have to do is boost protein production beyond where we’re at,” Post said. “Normally, protein forms through exercise, as it is in real life with a cow. But you can also do it through electricity and other ways. We’re very close to a sustainable process.”
How exactly will it work? That’s a bit of a secret.
“I would elaborate, but these methods are soon going to be patented!” Post said. “We actually have already done it, just not on a large scale. It’s going to be really important for improving the meat’s nutrition and taste.”
13 Comments on "The future of meat"
Rodster on Wed, 20th May 2015 8:51 pm
Eat more Chikin
Davy on Wed, 20th May 2015 9:01 pm
We are entering a world going in two different directions. One direction is progress regardless of the humanity. That direction is pursuing technology that is more efficient but is their more humanity. Is this a closer relationship to our creator, higher power, and or the truth? This humanity I speak of is of course subjective and emotive. The pursuit of technology like lab grown meat is objective and calculating.
I ask you what is our humanity and where is modernism taking us. Because we can do it do we do it? In almost every case today we do it even if it reduces our quality of life on the human side. Sure in this case we could have more food. Someone can claim it is more human because we are not killing an animal or raising it in a factory farm. Yet, were are we going to stop trying to distance ourselves from our true nature? This technology and so many others are less human.
The other direction is descent. We are likely at the apex or already into the bumpy descent. We know on so many levels we have been in a bumpy plateau at least since 2005-2008 period. Descent will change the equation. We will no longer have the excess societal energy for these scientist to peruse their dubious projects. We will see a degradation of the volume of science and research. We will see entropic decay cause a surreal of normal with abnormal. Dysfunctional, abandonment, and the irrational will become normal.
We are near a point where we have nearly stripped ourselves of our humanity. Descent will if nothing else force us back to our humanity. Progress has been towards complexity and efficiency at any cost regardless of the effects on our humanity. We have a de facto religion of efficiency. People accept efficiency as progress even if their quality of life is diminished. They feel it is a sacrifice worth taking because it is part of progress. This is a slow and insidious death of our humanity. In this respect I welcome the coming collapse. It is better to die a man then to live as an emotional vegetable.
Apneaman on Wed, 20th May 2015 9:18 pm
Gonna put a lot of cows out of work…………can you imagine?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2A6YPowfwk
apneaman on Wed, 20th May 2015 11:44 pm
Fish is healthier especially Salmon.
////////////////////////////////////////
Drought leaves no water to combat salmon-killing parasite
“GRANS PASS, Ore. (AP) — A deadly salmon parasite is thriving in the drought, infecting nearly all the juvenile chinook in the Klamath River in Northern California as they prepare to migrate to the ocean.
The Klamath Fish Healthy Advisory Team, made up of state and federal agencies and Indian tribes, warns a major fish kill is likely, and the Yurok Tribe and NOAA Fisheries Service have asked for extra water releases to flush out worms that carry the parasite, known as C shasta.”
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/environment-and-nature/20150520/drought-leaves-no-water-to-combat-salmon-killing-parasite
paulo1 on Thu, 21st May 2015 8:49 am
Supposed to be an excellent Sockeye run through Johnstone Strait this summer. We will have the usual full freezer of fillets, veggies, and game. Processing 30 chickens in two weeks, which is a years supply of chicken. If I had to eat lab grown meat I would live in whole grains and grain based booze.
Talk about limits? There are limits to horrible technologies.
Get a mirror and tape it to your freezer.
BobInget on Thu, 21st May 2015 9:24 am
One widely disseminated meme goes like this: Solar Panels (PV) ‘Take up too much land’.
One truth, Cattle need lots of water. Here in Oregon one animal per unirrigated acre is common. Three or four acres for drought.
As for feed conversion…(FCR)
Cattle[edit]
For cattle, a FCR range from less than 5 to more than 20 kg feed dry matter per kg gain may be encountered.[9]
May I recommend: Crickets…. have a low feed conversion ratio of only 1.7.[21]
In summer months we use an old solar panel to
power a bright LED light shining directly into our fish pond. An old shop vac comes on periodically blowing insects into water .
The light also attracts more mosquitoes laying thousands of eggs.
I dug the pond 30 years ago to water livestock.
Lawfish1964 on Thu, 21st May 2015 9:53 am
What a crock! I’m with Davy. Why are we trying so hard to avoid the essential truths of life – that in order for us to live, other living things must die. There is no life without death.
DMMZ on Thu, 21st May 2015 11:45 am
I’m wondering what the source of amino acids is to produce this laboratory protein. If the protein comes from grain, then what’s the point?
Speculawyer on Thu, 21st May 2015 2:44 pm
There are some pretty good fake meats out there made from plant protein. Beyond Meat is pretty good. The problem is that they need to get the price down . . . it is hard to pay MORE for fake meat than for real meat!
Gilles Fecteau on Thu, 21st May 2015 4:25 pm
If the true cost of meat (including repairing the environmental damage), fake meat would be cheaper.
I am vegan and have not consumed meat for 15 years. Whoever said we need meat every day is not aware of how a large portion of humans eat.
Dredd on Thu, 21st May 2015 5:20 pm
The future of meat is subservient to the future of ice (The 1% May Face The Wrath of Sea Level Rise First).
Davy on Thu, 21st May 2015 7:33 pm
Gill, around here in the MO Ozarks we raise cow calf pairs and stockers. Many go to the feedlots but they don’t have to. We could easily raise grass finished beef around here.
You can’t grow grain and vegetables on most of this land. Are you telling me we are doing the wrong thing by the environment? Many vegetables are raised more environmentally destructive ways then our beef process. We have plenty of water around here.
With the dangerous food situation in the world today vegetarians are spreading poor advice. Vegetarians should be looking at the whole picture not just their agenda.
penury on Fri, 22nd May 2015 12:35 pm
Let me see, We have destroyed our potable water supply, we have degraded our air to the point where it is practically unbreathable,we have bred to the point where the food supply is no longer sufficient. But we have a cunning plan we will create food from the laboratory that will solve all the problems. Cognitive disconnect is so easy to adopt lets all join hands and sing .