Which sounds most appealing to you (assuming you aren’t vegetarian)?
- Vat-grown protein
- In-vitro meat
- Test-tube meat
- Cell-cultured meat
- Clean Meat
Hmmm … was that really that hard?
Some simple truths:
- Meat consumption has a heavy climate footprint (“dire consequences for the planet“)
- Animal husbandry, writ large, has become ever-less humane
- with ever-more laws and efforts to hide the inhumane nature of industrial husbandry from the public
- Health impacts from this husbandry, industrial processing, and the (often poor) quality/nature of the meat products are significant.
- As they grow wealthier, humans (nearly uniformly) want more meat
- While vegetarian diets can ‘solve’ the meat dilemma, the share of vegetarians in developed economies has remained relatively stable over time …
Humans want meat. They ask “Where’s the beef?” And, there are more of those “humans” going up the economic spectrum every day, thus the “where’s the beef” chorus gets louder with every passing moment.
The United Nations reports that animal agriculture contributes more greenhouse gas emissions than all of our cars, trucks, boats, and planes combined. It’s also a leading cause of rainforest destruction,03:11air, water, and soil degradation; and on top of all that, it’s just a grossly inefficient way to produce our food.
We have, it seems, two inextricable trends that can’t both continue indefinitely: either humanity stops eating meat from today’s climate-wrecking husbandry or, well, we lock in climate catastrophe.
A variety of researchers and firms are taking on this challenge (to reduce dramatically the environmental impacts while satisfying people’s “meat protein” desires) and are increasingly entering the market place. Fundamentally, there are two basic approaches.
The first seeks, in essence, to trick the palate: creating meat-eating like experiences using grains and vegetables. This offers significant environmental (reduced land, water, and emissions impacts of about 90 percent) along with reduced health impacts (though many current products have, for example, high salt content). Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are two preeminent examples of this, with serious investors and valuations with products showing up in restaurants, fast-food outlets, and on grocery store shelves. When it comes to these, as one reporter put it,
Both burgers were a breakthrough in the fake meat world, where previous veggie burgers were derided as tasteless pucks. If the goal is to get humans to eat less meat — for their health and the health of the planet — making a burger that simulates the taste and texture of meat is critical in winning converts.
Hmmm … “fake meat” doesn’t necessarily get buy-in from omnivorous humanity.
Another option is to grow meat: grow it not on the hoofs but in vats. To culture the meat from cells rather than raise living creatures for slaughter. ‘Vat-grown meat’, like plant-based options, offers easily order-of-magnitude environmental benefits like the plant-based products while delivering “meat”. While we already are eating significant amounts of vat-grown products (Omega-3 supplements in milk are just one example, and, well, there are always wine and beer to consider), these are essentially plant based food products. There is serious investment and valuation in firms pursuing cultured meat production.
Should, can, and how will ‘cultured meat” satisfy human craving for meat?
With Clean Meat, Paul Shapiro has provided an excellent introduction into cellular agriculture. “This isn’t a substitute or replacement for meat, but meat without the animal.”
This is a technology revolution: growing leather; growing tuna; growing foie gras; growing beef; growing chicken meat in the “second domestication” which will offers the potential for continued meat eating and use of animal-based products (leather) with a softer hand on the planet and better human health.
If lab meats can replicate the taste and texture of traditional meat — at a lower cost and with fewer downsides — it would be a game-changer for global nutrition.
One way to consider the situation,
“Factory farming is kind of like coal mining. It’s pollutes and it’s damaging our planet, but it gets the job done. Cellular agriculture is like renewable energy when it was still its nascence. It has the promise of getting the same job done, but without so many terrible side effects.” Isha Data, CEO, New Harvest [p 19]
This is a rich and important space — with serious opportunities for radically changing humanity’s food system and impact on the planet. It also is a technology with massively disruptive impacts (and opportunities) for farmers, animal husbandry, slaughter houses, large multi-national firms, veterinary medical services (from rural vets to drug firms), animal transportation, and so much more. Vested interests with threatened revenue mean opposition.
This is an example of where, with passion and government, techno-optimism provides a viable vision of an improved life style with much lower climate impact.
If this works, slaughtering animals for the table could become something like hunting within a few decades. Only the ‘richest’, hobbyist, and ‘poorest’ eating from slaughtered animals (luxury, entertainment, & necessity).
Let’s be clear, clean meat has many challenges to overcome before it becomes a mainstream item. And, these aren’t minor as per these examples of still to overcome issues from a scientist acquaintance:
Culture media: Growing cells in a lab requires culture media that contain the nutrients to feed the cells. This is generally accomplished by using Fetal Bovine Calf Serum (FBS) in the media – generally at a concentration of 10%. There are two concerns with this:
1. it negates the very first goal of producing meat in a lab (bypassing animal farming);
2. there are already concerns of shortage of sources of FBS for research purposes (basic science and biomedical science), it does not seem to be a viable option for an industrial production of meat. [Note: scientists are trying to identify alternatives to FBS or develop serum-free media; perhaps that would solve the issue]
Pollution: growing cells in a lab is not a “green” activity. Everything needs to be performed in sterile environment: all materials (generally all plastic) are single-use and need to be disposed in biological waste containers for “safe” destruction in incinerators; at an industrial scale, closed systems may help reduce this waste (tbd).
Challenges are there but could, well, be ameliorated (solved) through concerted effort. And, the benefits from Clean Meat are so large that dedicated investment to make that effort is more than merited.
Consider just some of those benefit streams:
- No antibiotics
- No salmonella, otherwise
- Roughly 48M Americans/year sicked by contaminated food (Salmonella) … biggest is chicken & turky meat
- Ability to control fat/etc content
- No land damage
- Localized production possible (think local brewery)
- Greatly reduced water & feed usage for animal husbandry
- Pretty much ‘total transparency’ (think about the bar with brewery there … will restaurants have vats where they directly grow for their own tables?)
- Tour a factory like touring a brewery — and then have a burger at the end of the tour …
- Eliminates moral issues with meat consumption
- And, ends figuring out who is vegan or meat eating for that dinner party ….
We live in an age of massive change. LED lights were expensive and unusual a decade ago and dominate lighting today. Solar and wind are growing exponentially. Companies that didn’t exist 20 years ago, like Facebook & Tesla, are among the largest in the world and changing the world.
In 2010, this space wasn’t much more than a rarely expressed fantasy (that dated back awhile, after all Winston Churchill wrote essay in 1931 about ability to “growing parts separately under a suitable medium” rather than growing whole chickens [p 8]) with limited research and miniscule investment. In 2013, the first burger (a $330, 000 burger) was cooked and eaten at a press event. More than a few products are on the verge of market introduction. In 2010, with the exception of exception of synthetic rennet-makers supplying the cheese industry, not a single food company was growing animal products outside of the animal commercially. “In fact, not a single one of the companies profiled in this book even existed.” [p 222] Within a few years, more than a few of these could be household names.
“Regulation, absolutely,” says Chase Purdy, Quartz reporter and author of a coming book about cell-cultured meat. “The technology is ready—the science has been there for a while.” he says. “It’s really all about governments around the world figuring out how to regulate these products.”
Incumbent opposition — recognizing fight by seeking to ban use of term “clean meat”
We have a three-way battle for our future when it comes to “meat”: traditional interests seeking to defend their space (incumbency); plant-based alternatives seeking to trick our taste buds into going vegan; and, cellular meat firms seeking to deliver meat without the slaughterhouse. The first path resembles fossil fuel firms — seeking to lock in, as long as possible, their profitability without regard to environmental and health costs and risks. The second two offer paths forward (within larger efforts for a sustainable agricultural system to feed humanity) without destroying the environment and improved human health. Reality is, there will be a mixture of the three … we will be much better off if the second two dominate.
“Humans are great at rationalizing our conduct so we don’t feel mental conflict about our behavior …” [p 233] Would Clean Meat availability directly confront this and make many walk away from slaughtered protein?
Now, going back to the opening question, it is clear that “clean meat” is a framing that works.
“It’s important because words matter in how we describe how something makes a big difference,” said Paul Shapiro, a top leader at Humane Society of the United States and author of Clean Meat. “You can only make a first impression once.”
Now, not only Shapiro recognized this reality. Sadly, so did the much larger, much stronger livestock world. And, thus, they forced the issue and got emergent firms to abandon the term “clean meat” and use “cell-based meat”. That weakened framing will, without question, slow Clean Meat’s penetration into the market-place and its role as a climate-solution tool.
As to meat’s environmental impacts, (courtesy of Diamond Trailers),
