Fake real meat - or a bunch of hooey?

August 2022

The latest food-like substance trying to transition from the laboratory to the factory, and hence to our dinner-plates, is fake real meat. That is, real animal cells, whose many-times-great grandparents were part of a real animal and which have been persuaded to multiply themselves in a great big tank, are squished together to make pretend mince-meat.

A better class of fake requires that the cells are exercised on a mini-muscle-gym to make them develop physically more like the real thing, and a scaffold for the cells to grow on to give them a muscle-like shape and texture.

Fake real meat is also known as 'lab' meat, 'cell' meat, 'cultured' meat, 'vat-grown' meat, 'lab-grown' meat, 'lab-cultured' meat, 'in-vitro' meat, and oddly 'cultivated' meat (although ploughs and weed-suppression do not feature in its production).

Fake real meat hit the news in 2011 when Netherlands university biologist, Mark Post, announced he believed he could produce the world's first, proof-of-concept, lab-grown 'hamburger' in 2012.

At that stage, the lab-burger was a long way off from a mouth-watering meal: it was pale and tasteless. Post himself hadn't actually sampled his creation, but braver souls who did were unimpressed. Undaunted, Post was sure that with some fat and "perhaps a little (highly fanciful) lab-grown blood", the fake-burgers could be made to look and taste like the real thing.

Just before the announcement of the impending Post-burger, an Oxford University study was published comparing the environmental impacts of various kinds of meat, including beef, lamb, pork and fake. It concluded that the lab-grown stuff would use up to 60 percent less energy, emit up to 95 percent less greenhouse gas, and need around 98 percent less land than meat-on-the-hoof or -trotter. Clearly an environmental and climate-change winner.

It wasn't long, however, before doubts were raised about these glowing environmentally-friendly figures. "Cell culture is one of the most expensive and resource-intensive techniques in modern biology" (Agapakis). Natural meat comes in neat packages perfected by built-in systems which supply it with food, air, protection against disease, waste disposal, water- and temperature-balance, maintenance and exercise. Duplicating all these essential conditions to grow 'meat' in packages of tens of thousands of litres will take considerable energy, external resources and ingenuity.

In early 2021, an inconvenient study quietly slipped into the scientific press. The study had taken two years and was carried out by David Humbird, a Berkley-trained chemical engineer and process consultant. Humbird's in-depth analysis of the competitive potential of fake vs. real meat concluded that the best-case scenario would be supermarket customers buying mince-meat or nugget-style products at the same price as a premium cut of the real thing. Humbird describes his experience of researching the subject as facing a "Wall of No" which is "a fractal No - You see the big no, but every big no is made up of a hundred little nos".

Humbird's assessment was doubly inconvenient. It was funded by 'Open Philanthropy', an organisation which promotes farm animal welfare, and which channels funds into the Good Food Institute (GFI) for this purpose. The GFI represents the alternative protein industry, and is dead set on ushering in a bright new era of cheap, accessible cultured protein. The last thing it wanted was a published, well-researched, conclusion that cell-meat is just too expensive ever to succeed: it would halt the flow of venture capital into GFI's prized fake real meat.

What else would you do with an embarrassing document but bury it? Open Philanthropy has never referenced the Humbird analysis anywhere, and the Good Food Institute rushed to commission an assessment of its own which was happy to report that, by simply addressing the technical and economic barriers, the production cost of fake real meat could be lowered to $2.50 a pound over the next nine years.

With its own report in hand, the GFI proclaimed to the press that "New studies show cultivated meat can have massive environmental benefits and be cost-competitive by 2030".

How come we have two reports which are a Big Yes and one which is a Wall of No? The Big Yes analyses were based on two major assumptions.

First, that lab-meat could be grown under food product conditions in which defined maximum levels of contamination are permitted. This Yes is definitely a No because the warm nutrient-rich medium in which animal cells grow (slowly) is perfect for micro-organisms and viruses to grow astronomically faster. Cells in culture don't have the advantage of an immune system: the slightest contamination anywhere in the tank, the supply lines, or the inputs will wipe out the culture. Sterile conditions are essential, and these don't come cheap.

Second, whereas whole animals thrive on a varied diet and effortlessly regulate their own body-heat, oxygen, carbon dioxide and waste, cells floating around in a totally unnatural and alien environment are unwaveringly fastidious and fragile. It takes very little nutritional, respiratory, thermal, physical or toxic stress to make them sicken and die. Factoring in a host of future, entirely speculative, technical fixes to cure all these Nos is where that imaginary pound of fake real meat for $2:50 comes from.

As Humbird commented:

"... I don't think cultured meat has legs ... it sounds like a bunch of hooey to me".

Over and above the technical problems inherent in cell culture, the scale of the facilities needed to produce a meaningful amount of fake real meat needs a reality check.

The GFI analysis was based on a vast factory producing 10,000 metric tons of cells a year. To put this in perspective, it represents a bit over 10 percent of the US market for alternative proteins and 0.0002 percent of annual US real meat production. To substitute as little as 10 percent of the world's meat supply with fake real versions would need 4,000 factories each with 600 bioreactors all running simultaneously.

Reality check

On scale alone, the above figures indicate fake real meat would barely dent greenhouse gas emissions.

Animal welfare campaigner Open Philanthropy's support of cell-based meat seems illogical. The switch clearly wouldn't lead to any improvements in animal welfare: there might be an insignificant reduction in the numbers of livestock bred, but the ones which are bred won't be treated any better.

OUR COMMENT

There are opportunities for genetic modification at every stage of the fake real meat manufacturing system: GM-enhanced meat cells, micro-nutrients and growth factors churned out by GM microbes, sugars processed from GM maize and proteins processed from GM soya to feed the cell cultures. Pretend meat represents the ultimate in processed, artificial GM 'food'.

A major concern is that eating a monoculture of vulnerable, unnatural cells which may not breed true could put the human gut microbiome and human health at risk [1].

The need for long-term safety-testing (not animal-feed-style compositional analysis) is nowhere.

Governments will be under intense pressure to promote and approve alternative proteins and might need your help to take a precautionary approach. Check out FAKE REAL MEAT PRESSURE ON GOVERNMENT - following shortly.

Background

[1] A TALE OF MICROBES, YOUR GUT AND DISEASE - December 2019


SOURCES:

• Kate Kelland, Petri dish to dinner plate, in-vitro meat coming soon, Reuters, 11.11.11
• Christina Agapakis, Steak of the Art: The Fatal Flaws of In Vitro Meat, Discover Magazine, 24.04.12
• David Humbird, 2021, Scale-up economics for cultured meat, Biotechnology and Bioengineering
• www.openphilanthropy.org
• Joe Fassler, Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable, www.thecounter.org, 22.09.22
• Lab-grown meat is vapourware, expert analysis shows, GM Watch 26.09.21
• Tom Philpott, Is Lab Meat About to Hit Your Dinner Plate? Mother Jones, 2.08.21
• Emily Waltz, Club-goers take first bites of lab-made chicken, Nature Biotechnology 39 March 2021