How lab-grown meat is made: From petri dish to the dinner table
Ready to step into a world where your meat is grown, not raised? Explore the science behind the USDA-approved, lab-cultivated chicken that promises to taste just like the real thing — without harming a single animal. Yahoo News explains the process, potentials and challenges of cultivated meat, one cell at a time.
Video Transcript
- The average American eats about 278 pounds of meat a year and global meat consumption is outpacing population growth. But for those who shy away from a carnivorous diet due to ethical or climate concerns, alternatives have been limited. Well, the USDA just cleared the way for something new and it looks like real meat, and it tastes like real meat, because, well, it is real meat.
- Cultivated chicken is chicken grown from real animal cells. The only thing that's missing is raising and slaughtering an animal. But this is chicken cells that are growing into meat.
- Cultivated meat is made using a tissue engineering technique adapted from regenerative medicine. And what does that mean? Cells are taken from live animals, selected for quality, and mixed with a nutrient-dense growth solution in large vats called bioreactors.
After a week or two, the meat cells will have multiplied enough to be harvested and then they're molded into more realistic meat shapes. The technique isn't new. Scientists have been growing human tissue for decades. But it wasn't until 2011 that scientists started experimenting with growing animal cells for human consumption. GOOD Meat announced building plans for the world's largest cultivated meat facility in 2021, boasting the capacity to produce 30 million pounds of meat annually once fully operational, a little shy of the over 80 billion pounds the USA consumes each year. And since lab grown meat requires complicated methods and expensive facilities, it's unlikely to become a home staple anytime soon.
BILL WINDERS: I don't know that any advocates of lab-grown meat say that this is going to make meat more accessible, in part, because the costs are so high.
- So where will it help?
BILL WINDERS: The two big effects that proponents of lab-grown meat claim that it will have will be to reduce the, I guess, the violence to animals in terms of raising them in humane conditions, and in terms of slaughtering them, and reduce the environmental impact of meat production.
- Early studies show that cultivated meat could use land 60% to 300% more efficiently than poultry farming and 2,000% to 4,000% more efficiently than raising cattle. However, it's still not clear how much energy is used on the front-end of growing meat, to make growth solution, to build the facilities, to make the specialized equipment, especially if they were to produce at scale. And though there's still challenges with production and likely marketing, having to remove the ick factor of lab-grown cutlets, California-based startup GOOD Meat and Upside Foods cleared the hurdle for FDA and USDA approval to sell their cultivated chicken in the United States.
Meat is a dense source of nutrients, especially for low income families. And as prices rise, food insecurity rises too. But will an innovation like lab-grown meat help?
BILL WINDERS: Technology is really geared towards whatever the most profitable places for the companies. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't necessarily entertain or pursue those options, but I think that it gives us some pause and some caution about how many resources we're going to devote towards something like lab-grown meat.
