CULTURED MEAT AND ITS CURRENT TREND

CULTURED MEAT AND ITS CURRENT TREND

Recently, there has been a significant development in the world of sustainable food production with the United States’ approval of lab-grown meat, specifically cell-cultivated chicken, by two California-based companies.

• Two California-based companies, Good Meat, and Upside Foods received U.S. government approval to produce and sell the ‘cell-cultivated chicken’.

What is Lab-Grown Meat?

• Lab-grown meat, officially known as cell-cultivated meat, refers to meat that is grown in a laboratory setting using isolated cells derived from animals.
• These cells are provided with the necessary resources, such as nutrients and a suitable environment, to replicate and grow into edible meat.
• The process typically takes place inbioreactors, specialized containers designed to support the cellular cultivation process.
• The first country to approvethe sale of alternative meat was Singapore in 2020.
• Cell-Cultivated Chicken:
  • Cell-cultivated chicken refers to chicken meat grownin a laboratory setting using isolated cells that have the resources needed for growth and replication.
  • Bioreactors, specialized containers designed to support a specific biological environment, are commonly used to facilitate the cultivation process.
  • Once the cells reach a sufficient number, they are processed, often with additives, to enhance texture and appearance,and prepared for consumption.

Cultured meat, sometimes called lab-grown, clean, or cultivated meat, is grown in a lab from a few animal cells. It’s real meat, but it doesn’t require animals to be slaughtered the way traditional meat does.

The idea is to create a more ecologically friendly and humane meat industry. Some industry experts think this process, called cellular agriculture, is the wave of the future. By the end of 2019, 55 companies worldwide were working on it.

But it’s still early days for cultured meat. It’s not clear yet just how healthy and cost-effective cultured meat will be, or whether it will taste good enough to entice people to buy it. It could be months or years before you see cultured meat on store shelves or in restaurants.

CURRENT SCENARIO OF WORLD POPULATION:

The current population of World is 8,045,311,447, it is 0.88% increase from 2022.In 2050, the world’s population is going to be 10 billion and feeding this population with the current food system is impossible. In future sure there will be a Climate Disaster and there is deficit in supply of good quality protein to human population is impossible, it advocated that innovation in food technology is very essential for our future generation. This write up will outlook the role of culturing meat.

Making Cultured Meat

To make lab-grown meat, scientists take stem cells, the so-called building block cells, from an animal. They bathe the cells in a liquid containing nutrients to help them duplicate and put them into a bioreactor, a lab device for growing organisms.

Once the “unstructured” meat has developed, the next step is to make it a realistic meat product. Companies are trying to find the best way to produce burgers, nuggets, and other products from cultured meat. Some are using “scaffolding” made from soy protein, gelatin, or other sources to shape the lab-grown meat.

Depending on what kind of meat they’re cultivating, this process should take 2 to 8 weeks.

How is Cell-Cultivation Technique Significant for Meat Production?

• Climate Mitigation:
  • Lab-grown meat offers a potential solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissionsassociated with livestock production.
    • According to theFood and Agriculture Organization (FAO), livestock production contributes about5% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions, mainly in the form of methane and nitrous oxide.
  • Land Use Efficiency:
    • Cell-cultivated meat requires significantly less land compared to traditional meat production methods.
      • A 2021 report estimated that lab-cultivated meat would use63% less land in the case of chicken and 72% in the case of pork.
    • Animal Welfare:
      • The development of cell-cultivated meat aims to minimize the need for animal slaughter.
      • By producing meat directly from cells, cultivated meat offers the possibility of reducing animal sufferingand improving animal welfare standards.
    • Food Security and Nutrition:
      • Lab-grown meat has the potential to address futurefood security
      • Cell-cultivated meat can betailored to be healthier and meet specific dietary requirements such as being designed to contain less fat.

What are the Challenges to Cell-Cultivated Meat?

• Consumer Acceptance:
  • Achievingtaste, texture, appearance, and cost parity with conventional meat remains a challenge for cell-cultivated alternatives. Perception of cultured meat as “artificial” or “unnatural” may impact consumer willingness to adopt these products.
• Cost:
  • The cost of cell-cultivated meat isexpected to remain high; primarily attributed to the complex and resource-intensive process of cell culturing. Scalability and quality control processes may impose additional costs.
• Scalability:
  • Currently, production is limited to small quantities, and scaling up while maintaining product quality and consistencyis a significant challenge. Developing efficient and cost-effective bioreactor systems and finding suitable cell culture media are critical steps in achieving scalability.
• Resources:
  • Researchers requirehigh-quality cells, suitable growth mediums, and other resources to ensure the quality of the final product.
• Environmental Impact Concerns:
  • Some studies suggest that the environmental impact of cell-cultivated meat production could be higher than traditional meat production if highly refined growth mediums are required.
• Intellectual Property and Patent Issues:
  • The field of cultivated meat involves numerous Intellectual Property and Patent Companies and researchers are filing patents for various techniques and technologies involved in the production of cultivated meat. Resolvingintellectual property disputes and ensuring fair access to technology will impact the growth and development of the industry.

Way Forward

• Increase consumer awareness and acceptancethrough transparent communication about the benefits and safety of lab-grown meat.
• Invest in R&D to improve production processes, taste, texture, and cost efficiency of lab-grown meat.
• Focus on technological advancements and optimize production facilities toreduce costs and meet market demand.
• Encourage international collaboration, harmonize regulations, and facilitate trade to expand the lab-grown meatmarket worldwide.
• Cultivated meat is a relatively new field, and establishing a clear regulatory frameworkis essential. Governments and regulatory bodies need to determine how to classify and regulate cultivated meat products to ensure safety, quality, and consumer confidence.

What About Nutrition?

Meat consumption can play a role in chronic disease. But while scientists can adjust the amounts of fat and cholesterol in cultured meat, the science isn’t clear about what impact lab-grown meat could have on nutrition.

Benefits of Cultured Meat

Some potential benefits of lab-grown meat include:

Less contamination. Advocates of cultured meat say it’s much less likely to be infected by E. coli bacteria (which lives in animal poop) and other contaminants you might find in a meat processing plant.

Fewer antibiotics. Traditionally raised livestock are often given antibiotics to help keep them healthy. This can lead to antibiotic resistance, where the drugs don’t work as well on infections as they once did.

Less environmental impact. As global demand for meat goes up, more forested land is converted into ranches and crop fields. Cultured meat requires much less land, uses less water, and produces less pollution.

Also, traditional beef production makes lots of methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide, so-called greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Lab-grown meat could reduce these emissions significantly.

Kinder to animals. While cultured meat requires a small sample of tissue, it does not require an animal to be killed. The cells can be taken from a living animal. Some of the nutrient baths used to grow the cells contain blood from slaughtered animals, but others are vegetarian.

Concerns About Lab-Grown Meat

While cultured meat has a promising future, there are concerns, including:

It’s not vegan. Since lab-grown meat contains animal cells, it’s not considered vegan. And many vegetarians are undecided on how they view this form of food.

In addition, many members of the Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish religions aren’t sure whether cultured meat could comply with the dietary laws of their faiths.

Its price. Scientists made the first cultured meat hamburger in 2012. It cost $325,000 to create. But as technology advances, the cost of cultured meat should go down. One expert predicted that large-scale production could bring the cost of a 5-ounce burger to around $11 — still expensive, but not ridiculously so.

Will people buy it? To some people, the idea of lab-grown meat just doesn’t sound appetizing. In a 2013 taste test, journalists gave the taste of cultured burgers mixed reviews. But research is going full-steam ahead, and public opinion is subject to change. So in many ways, the jury’s still out.

CULTURED MEAT:

Cultured meat, sometimes called lab-grown, clean, or cultivated meat, is grown in a well facilitated lab with the help of few animal cells. Cultivated meat is meat that is grown in a facility and not on an animal’s body. Cultivated meat is made from the same cell types arranged in similar structure as animal tissue and tastes, looks and feels like the meat people eat today. In the glance of ethics, this process doesn’t require animals to be slaughtered the way traditional meat does.

HISTORY:

1950 – Dutch researcher Willem van eelen independently came up with the idea for cultured meat. As a prisoner of war discovery of cell lines provided the basis for the idea. 1971 – Pathologist Russel Rosscultured muscle fibers from guinea-pigaorta 2001- NASA began conducting cultured meat experiments, with the intent of allowing astronauts to grow meat instead of transporting. 2013-The first cultured beef burger patty was created by Mark Post at Maastricht University.

NUTSHELL OF CULTURED MEAT PRODUCTION:

Cultured meat (including fish and seafood) is made by growing animal cells in a lab. To take a cell sample, a biopsy is done on a live animal under local anesthetic, and then the harvested stem cells are fed a growth medium containing amino acids, glucose, salt, vitamins and other nutrients and grown in a bioreactor. The cells multiply creating muscle tissue, which are then turned into the scaffolding of the final product, for instance a beef steak or a burger. The scaffolds are predominantly collagen and gelatin and help give the final product its texture and structure.Togrow beef, a cell sample must be taken from a cow, to create cultivated chicken meat; it must be taken from chicken, lab-grown salmon needs cells from salmon and so forth. Those who’ve tasted cultured meat and fish say that they are exactly like their counterpart from slaughtered animals. In terms of nutrition, they contain similar macronutrients and micronutrients, depending on the cultivated Product. The final product can be obtained within 2-8 week.

SWOT ANALYSIS OF CULTURED MEAT:

STRENGTH

• Highly skilled ambitious professions eager to develop the technology • Existing business models such as New Harvest and Modern Meadows • Interest from some investors • Existing patents skills and information for stem cell culture grow • Competitive, new, innovative technology • Profitable due to high demand.

WEAKNESS

Lack of funding and investments for further research • Difficult, challenging and time consuming.Further advancements needed. • Limited existing knowledge both from researchers and potential funders • Still small scale and very expensive to produce • Technology is not yet marketable.

OPPORTUNITY

• High demand for meat products, growing middle class and population growth • Potential to become affordably priced • Potential to minimize environmental impacts compared to existing methods of production • Can become ‘healthier’ than conventional meat products (limit saturated fat, less hormonal and antibiotic inputs) • Higher levels of food safety, traceability and transparency for the consumer • Less land use and better management of resources • Animal welfare • Humanitarian concerns such as right to food and efficiency of use of land and food improved • Political decisions made could favour more support for facilitation • Many technologies can eventually been accepted by society if there is a perceived benefit to the customer.

CHALLENGES

Technology ownership may breed oligopolies • Not accepted by the novel food legislative actions or other political decisions • Food safety testing and questions • Time constraints • Lack of societal acceptance; food is not technology therefore challenging to gain acceptance • Alternative technologies covering the same market gap available sooner and cheaper • Trend to move toward more plant based diets, based on political push and communication (health and/or environmental arguments).

CURRENT TRENDS ON CULTURED MEAT:

The Singaporean government has a “30 by 30” goal which is an effort to meet 30 per cent of the city state’s nutritional needs locally by 2030. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tasted cultivated meat and went on to provide government support to the alternative protein sector. Educational institutes in the Netherlands and the United States have developed university courses in this sector. The alternative protein sector holds great promise for the world. According to management consultants A T Kearney, the plant-based meat sector is expected to be $370 billion by 2030. In February 2019 the Maharashtra state government signed a MOU with Good Food Institute (of USA) for cell-based research and production of meat. Animal welfare organization Humane Society International (HSI) India and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad have joined hands to develop lab-grown meat in India.The partnership looks to promote the technology to develop clean meat while bringing start-ups and regulators together under the same roof. Internationally, clean meat is available in some countries, but in India, we expect it to be available by 2025.

CONCLUSION:

Developed countries move towards consuming such plantbased meats while recognizing that developing countries will take some time to develop such products. Data shows that cultivated meat uses 95 per cent less land, 78 per cent less water, causes 92 per cent less global warming and 93 per cent less air pollution, comparatively. Cultivated meat has made great progress in the last six months; Singapore has permitted the sale of cultivated chicken meat. Recently people become more aware of cultured meat products and many companies involved in culturing. Thus results in bringing down the production cost and soon will reach at every nook and corner.Additionally,it will aids in creating strong foundation of research community to profilerate in developing new technology, reduce cost and speed up the commercialization.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT CULTURED MEAT:

1. Bio artist Oron Catts served the ever first thin frog streaks of cultured meat at dinner in museum, France during 2003. 2. The first burger from beef was prepared byChef RICHARD MC GEOWN and tasted by two food critics HANNI RUETZLER AND JOSH SCHONWLAND in London. 3. The first cultured meat was made of about tens of billions lab- grown cell and consist of 20,000 separate protein strands. 4. The commercial sale of lab grown meat was first approved by Singapore government to the U.S start -up EATJUST in December 2020. 5. As per the consumer survey of 2017, 65.3% are interested to attempt the lab grown meat. 6. Culture meat is not a vegan as it involves some animal based stuff for growing. 7. The nutrient profile in lab grown meat can be altered as per the patient diet. 8. Firstly, the lab grown meat appeared in white and made red by adding myoglobin in order to resemble like real one. 9. According to Oxford University study (2011), 96% of green gas emission can be cut off by cultured meat.

Compiled  & Shared by- Team, LITD (Livestock Institute of Training & Development)

 Image-Courtesy-Google

 Reference-On Request.

Cultured Meat: Pioneering a Sustainable and Ethical Food Revolution