Apparently, according to Science Direct, “Lab-Grown Meat Has a Big Problem Very Few People Know About”.
Well, it can’t be that it tastes like shit — because everyone knows that.
So, what is the problem? Because it must be a big one: because, despite the endless hype around it, there aren’t exactly vast factories in Kansas churning out lab-grown chickens. In fact, the whole “plant-based meat” fad is dying a quicker death than a cow zapped with a stunner.
In fact, the core problem with lab-grown meant, according to a recent study, is that it fails at the very thing it was supposedly invented to do: saving the environment. According to researchers from the University of California, Davis (UCD), and the University of California, Holtville, lab-grown meat is worse for the environment than the farmed variety.
Especially when it comes to the biggest bugaboo of all, “greenhouse gases”.
Their life-cycle assessment of current meat-growing processes – which has yet to be peer-reviewed – found cultured meat production could emit between four to 25 times more carbon dioxide per kilogram than regular beef and all its hidden costs, depending on the techniques used.
Damn. I mean, because who wouldn’t find this appetising?
Cultured meat is grown from nonspecific animal cells coaxed into forming tissues we’d be happy to eat, such as fats, muscle, and connective tissues.
Oh, du-rool, du-rool.
So, what’s the point of eating a slab of allegedly beef-flavoured frankengunk, if you can’t even signal your planet-saving virtue?
While cultured meat uses less land than herds of cattle or flocks of sheep, not to mention less water and antibiotics, environmental costs of the highly specific nutrients required to grow the product rapidly add up.
These include running laboratories to extract growth factors from animal serums, as well as growing crops for sugars and vitamins.
Then there’s the energy required to purify all of these broth ingredients to a high standard before they can be fed to the growing meat lumps. This energy-intensive, extreme level of purification is needed to prevent introducing microbes to the culture.
“Otherwise the animal cells won’t grow, because the bacteria will multiply much faster,” Risner told New Scientist.
Mmm, mmm, doesn’t that sound tasty?
The hyperbolic claims behind frankenmeat were only possible because the proponents based assumed, as the joke goes, they were growing spherical chickens in a vacuum. In the real world, the “perfect” conditions don’t exist.
The most efficient cattle-grown beef systems that already exist today can still outperform this scenario of cultivating food-grade meat, according to the researchers’ estimates.
“It’s possible we could reduce its environmental impact in the future, but it will require significant technical advancement to simultaneously increase the performance and decrease the cost of the cell culture media,” explains UCD food scientist Edward Spang.
Even then, the problems remain with trying to scale up production. That’s because frankenmeat has to be grown in insanely sterile environments.
Animal cell cultures are a lot harder to grow than bacteria and fungi as they’re far more sensitive to their environment. Unsurprising, really, given they evolved to be safely tucked within other protective layers of a body.
In the end, nature and thousands of years of agricultural revolution really did get it right.
The researchers say it would make more sense to invest in increasing the efficiencies of existing livestock farms to limit their environmental footprint, which may provide greater emissions reductions sooner that this fledgling industry of lab-grown meat can.
Science Alert
That’s even assuming that human greenhouse gases are the sole or primary driver of the climate — an assumption that’s yet to be proven. In any case at 15% of human emissions, the greenhouse gases from the entire agricultural sector (not just animal husbandry) is pretty small potatoes.
So, enjoy that steak without a qualm.