2023-11-18 08:03:57
The same as animal meat, but without the animal. This is how scientists define synthetic meat. We are faced with a real alternative to ‘real’ meat that, thanks to its hypothetical low environmental impact, aims to revolutionize the food industry. A ‘food’ that, however, raises numerous questions and has its supporters and detractors. Now, what exactly is this synthetic meat?
The first ‘laboratory’ hamburger
In 2013, the first hamburger created in a laboratory was presented at a massive event in London. For its production, scientists took stem cells from the cow’s muscle tissue, which they cultivated, promoting its growth so that it had a ‘hamburger’ shape. This synthetic product was the result of two years of production and cost about 250,000 euros per unit, that is, per hamburger. An exorbitant price, but also a work that laid the first stone in the field of artificial meat.
This cultured or synthetic meat is, therefore, a laboratory creation, the result of extracting stem cells from animal muscles – such as cows, chickens or pigs – and combining them with other elements. We see in this way that, despite its name, this type of meat is not completely exempt from animal origin, which, although in a different way, continues to appear in the equation: not on the plate, but as a ‘patient’ in the hands. of scientists.
Approved for production and sale
In June 2023, the US Department of Agriculture approved the production and sale of synthetic chicken meat by two companies (‘Upside Foods’ and ‘Good Meat’). Each of them will initially be associated with a restaurant: ‘Upside’ with the Bar Crenn in San Francisco and ‘Good Meat’ with the China Chilcano of the Spanish José Andrés in Washington DC. Now, the further idea is to also market other laboratory-grown meats and put them on sale in supermarkets and restaurants.
This USDA decision made the United States the second country, after Singapore, to legalize synthetic meat. An important boost for the industry after that London hamburger a decade ago: more than 150 companies are currently developing artificial meat in the US, with an investment of 896 million dollars (812 million euros) in 2022 alone.
Although not all countries are so ‘friendly’ to this invention: Italy has become the first European country to ban artificial meat and the fines for selling these products amount to 60,000 euros. A measure with which the Meloni Government wants to protect the Mediterranean diet and health.
How is synthetic meat made?
Artificial meat is produced from muscle stem cells taken from animals. That is, taking “cells from animals that normally produce meat for us and using those cells as an energy source to grow meat outside the animal,” as explained by David Kaplan, director of the Center for Cellular Agriculture at Tufts University. (United States), in an interview collected by National Geographic.
These animal cells – which are often obtained by biopsy of a live or recently sacrificed animal, or by extracting cells from a fertilized egg – are placed in a culture medium that contains the elements necessary for their growth, thus ensuring that the cells are multiply in a laboratory. In addition to other nutrients, these elements are mainly the following:
Fetal bovine serumMyoglobinVitaminsAmino acidsFat and connective tissue
These muscle cells in their culture medium are placed in a growth disk to take the desired shape. In addition, since cells need to adhere to something to grow, ‘scaffolds’ must also be placed so that the cells grow and form a structure like that of meat – the material these scaffolds are made of can be starch, pectins or others, and will also be part of the final product. And to achieve the tone of a real muscle, the cells are subjected to electrical stimulation.
The result, in theory, is a product that looks, smells, tastes and feels like the meat we are all used to eating.
In favor of cultured meat…
It is estimated that around 70 billion land animals are slaughtered annually worldwide for food, of which around 300 million are cattle. Animals that, in many cases, live overcrowded in narrow cages. Furthermore, the environmental impact of feeding all those animals is enormous and most of the crops are destined for livestock. Without forgetting that agricultural and livestock waste contaminates surface and groundwater and that livestock farming is directly responsible for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
In theory, growing meat could solve all or many of those problems.
…and against meat farming
One of the main drawbacks of artificial meat is the one explained by Marco Springmann, an environmental scientist at the University of Oxford (United Kingdom), to CNBC: the amount of energy required for the production process is so large that cultured meat has a carbon footprint five times that of chicken. To this we must add its high economic cost of production and the ethical objections that it can generate.
Furthermore, although in practice the taste and smell are almost indistinguishable from real meat, there are still problems in getting the texture just right.
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