It’s no secret that plant-based meat alternatives have grown quite popular over the past few years. With the growing population of vegetarian, vegan, and plant-forward lifestyles, more and more food companies are coming out with new and improved recipes for fake-out products. Although Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat seem to be the leaders in the movement, a new prospect may be on the horizon: cultivated meat.
Cultivated meat, otherwise known as lab-grown meat, cultured meat, or cell-grown meat, isn’t another meat-free alternative like you may think. Rather, it is quite literally made in a lab and uses real animal tissue to grow large grafts of meat. As science continues to build knowledge in the biology of stem cells and tissue engineering, companies are able to manufacture the biology of meat (components such as skeletal muscle, fat, and connective tissue) through the cultivation of animal stem cells. Sounds wildly futuristic, doesn’t it?
Supposedly, the process is entirely harmless to the animal. Cells are collected from a living animal, such as a cow, and are oxygenated and multiplied to create large stands of cell clusters — or a string of beef muscle. It would take about 20,000 strands of cells and upwards of eight weeks to create your typical burger.
It’s possible that people don’t give up meat because they “don’t like the taste,” or, rather, they could have larger ethical reasons for their decision. Many people make the switch to a meat-free lifestyle for ethical reasons, so a product like this could be perfect for people who advocate for animal rights. And since no animals are being harmed or exploited in the process of cultivating meat in a lab, this seems to be a large ethical benefit to the cause.
Cultivated meat seems to be a promising development in the food industry. In 2019, almost 834 million animals were slaughtered for human consumption in Canada — the majority of which accounted for broiler chickens and laying hens — and despite the spike in plant-based interest, this number continues to rise each year. Therefore, if we could manufacture a large amount of cultivated meat to keep up with consumer demands, it has the potential to aid in reducing the amount of livestock bred purely for meat consumption.
It would also serve to decrease the carbon footprint that is associated with raising large quantities of livestock. Agriculture practices, which include livestock, were responsible for 10 per cent of the USA’s greenhouse gas emissions recorded in 2019. A large part of this, of course, is cow farts. Methane produced by the cattle industry accounts for over a quarter of this percentage. This doesn’t even include methane emissions from livestock manure — another twelve percent of greenhouse gases produced through agriculture. Sure, you would still need to raise cattle to collect their cells, but the number of animals would be drastically lower.
There are more reasons to not eat meat besides just ethical reasons. There are negative health risks associated with your consumption of animal products, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes.
So, does this really fix all of the problems associated with eating meat? I’m not sure. In my opinion, the process of cultivating meat seems like a lot of work (and money and time) to only partially fix the problem of the industry — especially when there are so many alternative products on the market today that account for both health and environmental concerns.
But I do think that this is a step in the right direction. Regardless of the potential health benefits that a plant-based lifestyle brings, the reality is that the majority of society still consumes animal products. To make it clear, I do think that living a plant-based lifestyle is a privilege. A person’s emotional and physical health, financial circumstance, and economic position all play a large role in the options that are available to them. Some people do not have the means to make personal choices in their dietary decisions, and so I speak more to those privileged enough to be able to make these types of decisions.
With that being said, though, I think that a product like cultivated meat could be a great option for those who struggle with making the switch to plants because it would provide them with alternative meat sources that are familiar to them. While it will take large systemic changes in our food industry in order to sustainably feed the masses, some companies, such as GOOD Meat, have already found ways to produce large quantities of lab-grown meat. We know that changes need to be made in the food industry in order to protect our planet, and this might be a way to speed up the process.
Image: Brielle Quon/The Cascade
Sydney is a BA English major, creative writing student, who has been a content contributor for The Cascade and is now the Opinion editor. In 7th grade, she won $100 in a writing contest but hasn’t made an earning from writing since. In the meantime, she is hoping that her half-written novels will write themselves, be published, and help pay the bills.
