Lab-Grown Meat: Exploring the Potential Benefits and Challenges of Cellular Agriculture

Lab-Grown Meat: Exploring the Potential Benefits and Challenges of Cellular Agriculture

Is the cultivated meat the future of food or a scientific experiment that has gone wrong? Also known as IVM, cellular agriculture, artificial meat or synthetic meat, means grown stem cell muscle tissue in a laboratory instead of harvest cattle.

The creation of cultured meat requires the addition of a collagen matrix (from living or dead animals) to the adult stem of a living animal cell, which proliferates together in skeletal muscle bands grown in a laboratory. Adipose cells should be co-cultured to reproduce the taste of natural meat and improve texture and tenderness. Cultured meat cultured also requires a circulatory system to provide oxygen and nutrients and eliminate metabolic waste.

Although has been possible the technique of muscle tissue generation in vitro for over 100 years, only recently it has been developed for commercial purposes. In 2013, after five years of research, Mark Poste from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands presented the first hamburger made from bovine stem cells. This hamburger cost prototype over $ 300,000 to produce and involve a combination of more than 10,000 individual strips of muscle fibers to make a product that consumers recognize.

A closer look at the costs

While making the first hamburger needed a significant amount of time and money, grown meat could possibly be more profitable than traditional beef farming practices. In vitro growth takes several weeks before you can harvest meat, rather than weeks or months or years for chickens to pigs or cows. In addition, grown meat can be kept at the establishment where it is grown, reducing the need for land, labor and feed for livestock. In addition, you can create a new and profitable industry. However, more research is needed to develop technology and make it accessible to large populations.

If the development of farmed meat has succeeded in large-scale agriculture and agriculture, as we know, they suffer significant changes. The researchers hypothesized that cultivated meat could lead to monumental changes in meat production, perhaps replacing industrial agriculture or increasing demand for small-scale agriculture. The livestock sector is the growing agricultural sub-sector and employs faster 1,300 million people. Although the cultivated meat itself would create a new profitable industry could greatly affect traditional agriculture.

Global meat production has more than doubled since 1970, and researchers believe that farmed meat could reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to meat production and pastures from deforestation. Researchers comparing crop and traditional meat production found to produce 1000 kg of farmed meat involves about 7 to 45 percent less energy use, 78 percent to 96 percent less greenhouse gas emissions and 99 percent less use of water.

The researchers suggest that the development of this technology could help protect some endangered species because rare species cells in captivity could be used to produce exotic meats, which reduces the world trade of meat of these animals.

Potential impact on health

Cultured meat can be designed to have an impact on health and nutrition outcomes that alter the profile of essential amino acids and fats in addition to adding vitamins, minerals and bioactive compounds that match or exceed the amount of natural meat . For example, grown meat could grow to contain more protein and polyunsaturated fatty acids than traditional meat and reduce or eliminate saturated fats, which could reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

Because the production of farmed meat could be cheaper than traditional farming, and thus more accessible, could increase access to meat in developing countries. In this case, cultivated meat could reduce or alleviate certain nutritional deficiencies in these populations and support the physical and mental development of children.

Controlled conditions used in growing cultivated meat could improve food security by minimizing for animals and pathogens, such as Salmonella, Campylobacter and E. coli diseases. IVM can also reduce animal-related diseases that people can get, including avian and swine flu and bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease.

Scientists also hope that cultivated meat could reduce the need for pesticides, fungicides, heavy metals, aflatoxin, melamine, anabolic agents and antibiotics used for large-scale traditional meat production.

One case for all cultivated meat

Ethical treatment of animals is a concern because stem cells need to be collected from an animal source of origin - whether living or not - and meat engineering does not completely eliminate animal suffering. If the animal from which the stem cells are taken alive, even recovering the right type of muscle tissue will involve an invasive technique. The serum to aid and develop cell cultures must be taken from adult animals, standard newborn or fetal standard cell culture supplements, causing ethical problems. In the future, this substrate could be replaced by plant sources such as fungi or other crops. Some people like vegans and members of certain religious groups believe that any exploitation of animals is not necessary for human health, so these issues could become an obstacle. It is not known how cultivated meat can be considered under religious food laws, such as halal.

Today, consumers and can continue to choose herbal meat substitutes for many reasons, ranging from ethics and environmental concerns to taste and preference for texture. Meat analogues made from soy, wheat gluten and other proteins from grain legumes and mioproteína have no cholesterol, have a similar texture and meat may have a lower cost than actual meat. In addition, these alternatives are accepted as food halal and can be kosher depending on the treatment.

Acceptability low consumption is a major concern for researchers who develop meat culture. Researchers at the College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences at Sultan Qaboos University affirm that to adopt culturally widely, meat engineering will have to be similar or superior to the color of natural meat, aroma, Flavor, texture and tenderness. Some experts suggest that most people who do not support culture meat doubt that the product could be appetizing. In addition, natural products are a growing desire of consumers and the creation of a cultured meat product clearly deviates from this trend.

The future of cultured meat

Some researchers predict that without new ways to make meat accessible to the general population, livestock products such as meat, meat will become an expensive food and luxury that are not accessible to all.

The cultivated meat is not yet available to consumers, but researchers believe it will probably be between 10 and 20 years. Understanding how the meat grown and could equal or exceed the nutritional profile of natural meat could help increase acceptability is cultivated. Ultimately, consumers will decide whether they support this trend of food in the future