Cell Cultured Meat | Devanshi
- hederahelixscience
- Sep 16, 2021
- 2 min read
The UN estimates the world’s population to reach up to 9.7 billion people by 2050. The rising world population means there will be an increasing number of individuals that will need to be fed which suggests the production of food also needs to rise at the same pace. However, increasing the production of foods such as meat will continue to increase the extent of climate change through factors such as deforestation. Cell cultured meat can be an alternative to this in the future as it will reduce the extent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions such as methane and allow the distribution of cruelty-free meat.
The process of cell-cultured is as follows:
1. Biopsy- Primary cells or the right stem cells are extracted from a live animal through biopsy.
2. Rate of proliferation vs differentiation- primary cells and stem cells are different in their own ways. For example- primary cells are already differentiated as they are developed and while proliferating they are already muscle cells (main component of meat) but reproduce at a slower rate than stem cells . On the other hand stem cells need to be converted into muscle cells but reproduce more quickly.
3. Growth medium- After the type of cell has been selected (stem cell commonly in this industry) they are put in culture dishes with a growth medium in a bioreactor. The bioreactor provides the same conditions as the animal’s body such as warm temperature and other factors. The cells are left to grow until they resemble same as meat.
4. Scaffolding- The scaffolding process provides the texture that is needed to replicate meat which allows the tissues to be later processed in food products such as burger patties.
Over the years, there is an increasing amount of funding and research that is being provided towards the production of cell-cultured meat. In the UK there are startups such as Higher Steaks led by Benjamina Bollag which have grown their first lab-grown bacon which is approximately 70% cultivated meat to 30% plant-based. Countries such as Singapore already have started the selling of lab-grown chicken made by the US startup Eat Just at the restaurant named 1880.
However, cell-cultured meat is still in the early days of development and as more entrepreneurs and scientists enter this field it will allow cell-cultured meat to be widely available and at a lower price as currently, it is very expensive to produce and consume cell-cultured meat. Furthermore, to be able to be widely distributed, startups need to ensure trust between consumers such as ensuring the meat is not contaminated in any form which is already being implemented in practice through government regulation and ensure the scalability of the project. In addition to this, there is little scientific data available to review independently where we can identify how much water/electricity the product uses to ensure it is more sustainable than the system in place currently. Therefore, if cultured meat is widely available in the future, startups need to ensure they can deal with the image problem around this topic as people are more likely to think of cell cultured meat as unappetising and scientific.
References
https://www.highersteaks.com
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