Originally published June 21, 2023 12:54 pm PDT
U.S. regulators have granted Upside Foods and Good Meat, two California-based companies, approval to sell lab-grown, or “cultured,” meat.
“Instead of all of that land and all of that water that’s used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way,” claims Josh Tetrick, CEO of Eat Just, the company behind Good Meat, The Associated Press reports.
However, lab-grown meat still requires animal death, as the current cell medium being used in the process contains Fetal Bovine Serum, which is derived from the blood of a dead calf.
The Agriculture Department’s approval follows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s earlier confirmation of the reported safety of both companies’ products.
The cultivated meat, generated from animal cells in steel tanks, will initially be served in selected restaurants before it makes its way to supermarket shelves.
Upside Foods has teamed up with Bar Crenn in San Francisco, and Good Meat with a restaurant in Washington D.C., run by chef Jose Andrés.
These cellular agriculture products won’t be readily available at your local grocery store, primarily due to the high costs and production limitations, as per Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at UC Berkeley.
The products are actual meat, not plant-based substitutes like those produced by Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods, though they are cultivated in a laboratory.
Globally, over 150 companies are exploring cell-based meat production, ranging from chicken to beef, the latter posing the most significant environmental challenges.
Despite the initial public apprehension or the “ick factor,” Amy Chen, COO of Upside Foods, believes people become more open once they understand the production process and taste the final product.
“It is the meat that you’ve always known and loved,” she alleges.
To create these meats, cells from live animals or a master cell bank are sustained with a concoction of essential elements that promote cell growth.
Over three weeks, Upside Foods creates large sheets of chicken cells, which are later shaped into various products.
Meanwhile, Good Meat forms large cell masses that are also molded into diverse meat products.
Although initial production will be limited, Upside Foods want to expand from 50,000 pounds to 400,000 pounds of cultured meat per year.
This is, however, a minuscule amount compared to the 50 billion pounds of chicken the U.S. produces annually, The Associated Press notes.
Consequently, industry experts suggest a timeline of several years before cultured meat becomes more widespread, with a larger market introduction anticipated in the next seven to ten years.
American Faith reported earlier this month that Bio Tech Foods is constructing a commercial-scale, cell-cultured meat plant in Spain.
The initiative aims to upscale cultivated meat production to industrial levels, with backing from the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (ICEX).
The factory is expected to be the “world’s largest” and “should produce more than 1,000 metric tons of cultivated beef per year.”
That news emerged during the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association’s annual meeting in Riverton.
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) President Todd Wilkinson voiced concerns over the potential impact on the cattle industry and pointed to a recent study highlighting the higher carbon footprint of lab-grown meat.
“They can say that it’s designed to feed the world, but it’s feeding the world a non-natural product and it’s a product that is going to require more energy to produce, and don’t tell me it’s sustainable,” he said.
A recent UC Davis study found that the so-called “global warming” potential of lab-grown meat is between four and 25 times greater than the average for retail beef sold in stores, according to a report from the College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences.
Other safety concerns regarding lab-grown meat include the use of unknown chemicals, microbial contamination, and mutations in the cells.
Potential health problems associated with the new product have to do with the cancer-promoting properties of cells that multiply in the process, as “consuming lab-grown meat with such faulty cell lines may have unwarranted effects on the human body, the exact effects remain unknown,” News Medical points out.
“Cultured meat is still a new product and its public health consequences are unknown,” the source emphasizes. “There is a possibility of cell lines dysregulation considering the exponential growth and multiplication of the cells. As it is not possible to control the culture process entirely some unwanted progression may take place.”
A recent Bloomberg report revealed that lab-Grown meat is made from “immortalized” cancer cells.
The same cells used to “produce vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and other biotherapeutics” are now being used to make the unnatural meat substitute, according to a report.
Due to the nature of growing meat in labs, scientists must employ “immortalized” cancer cells, or cells that are technically “precancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous.”
The first immortalized cell line came from Henrietta Lacks in the 1950s, when a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital used Lacks’ cervical cancer cells and developed the first immortal human cell line.
The cells were used to develop the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and in vitro fertilization.
The primary difference between normal cells and immortalized cells is that the immortal cells, “by nature of their name, “divide forever” and grow, whereas normal cells reach a stopping point of growth.
Robert Weinberg, who discovered cancer is linked with genetics, stated, “If a cell is immortalized, that implies that it’s already completed one of the prerequisites to become a cancer cell.”
“It’s essentially impossible for a cell from one species to gain a foothold in the tissues of another species,” he said. “So even if one were to take highly malignant cells from a cow and drink them, I don’t see what the problem would be.”
Despite immortalized animal cells reportedly not posing a threat to humans, the cultured meat industry is “anxious about its use of immortalized cells and is doing what it can to avoid the subject,” Bloomberg noted.
For example, Upside Foods had lab-grown chicken taste testers sign a waiver that reads, “The cultured meat and related food products in the Tasting are experimental” and “The properties are not completely known.”
Sarah Wagner contributed to this article.
