Just when you think you saw it all, meat grown in a lab appears on the horizon. It is also known as cultured or in-vitro meat and is essentially flesh grown outside of an animal’s body. Lab meat production is very straightforward: scientists harvest muscle sells from an animal, feed the cells to multiply and create muscle tissue. Biologically, cultured meat is the same as conventional meat, but environmentally speaking, it is even superior.
A recent report from the Adam Smith Institute suggests that lab meat has the potential to feed our overgrowing population and reduce greenhouse emissions by up to 96% .
Not only can lab meat satisfy the demand for food, but it can also drastically scale back the agricultural land used to farm animals. The report estimates that cultured meat uses 99% less land than conventional meat, which makes it an effective alternative to traditional protein. Even better, the authors of the study found that as few as ten of the harvested muscle cells, under maximum ideal conditions, could produce 50 tonnes of meat.
Lab meat can also eliminate antibiotics resistance, which is bacteria’s ability to defeat the drugs designed to kill them. Intensive farming is a key driver of that resistance. Antibiotics, even those with significant importance to the human medicine, are used for rapid growth promotion in livestock and to prevent illnesses in animals living in poor conditions. As a result, some mild infections in humans can become tougher and tougher to treat over time.
According to the paper, the positive impact of lab meat on antimicrobial resistance could be “the single overwhelming argument in favour of the development and use of commercially viable cultured meat”.
Lab meat could also reduce the risks of heart diseases as its fat and cholesterol levels could be monitored throughout the growing process.
Jamie Hollywood, researcher and co-author of the report, says taste is not a challenge for lab meat producers but other areas can benefit from some improvements.
He says: “The difficulty with lab-grown meat is in replicating the texture you see in real meats. If you look at steaks or chicken, there are complex cellular structures and layers of protein which cannot be replicated. “
Jamie is currently doing Masters in Sustainable Development at the Utrecht University in the Netherlands. If you want to watch the full interview with him where he talks about everything you need to know about lab meat, click on the video below.
You can access the full report on lab meat here: https://www.adamsmith.org/news/grow-meat-in-labs-to-avoid-growing-crises