cultured meat « A Compassionate World

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Cultured meat & common sense

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

The battle to end factory farming will need to embrace a range of potential solutions. Some of these are tried and tested, like free range and organic farming. Others are more futuristic. I’m convinced cultured meat will have an important role to play. It’s produced by taking cells from a donor animal, which are then multiplied in a vat on a nutrient soaked scaffold. According to New Harvest, an organisation funding work in the US and Europe, a single cell could in theory produce enough meat to feed the global population for a year.

In addition to cultured meat, there are a number of other futuristic ways of producing food, some of them as abhorrent as the factory farm systems they seek to replace. For example, Wired magazine recently reported on a proposal to grow chickens whose cerebral cortexes are removed and their bodies attached to a network of tubes. ‘Food, water and air would be delivered via a network of tubes and excrement would be removed in the same way’, the magazine reported. Other similarly extreme ideas include blind chickens, who, it is argued, wouldn’t mind being packed together, and headless chickens, whose stationary bodies would simply lay eggs.

When factory farming emerged after World War II as a supposedly cheap way to produce food, our understanding of animals and their sentiency was limited. As ethologists, animal behaviourists and others who studied animals began to document their studies, scientific knowledge of animal sentience began to grow. It provided the evidence necessary to support what common sense already tells us; that animals are sentient beings, they feel pain and suffer.

A huge battle was won when the EU gave legal recognition to animal sentience in the 1990s. It’s been strengthened recently as an Article in the Lisbon Treaty.

What concerns me about these ideas to produce animals without heads, brains or without sight is that it undermines the essential respect for animals and takes us into new and deeply worrying territory. And it’s so unnecessary. That is why Compassion is calling for a common sense approach to feeding the world; Food Sense. A better, more common-sense approach is not only achievable, to me it’s essential.

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Cultured meat and greenhouse gases

Monday, June 27th, 2011

Reading recent press reports about the benefits of cultured meat I am convinced once again of its potential to make an important contribution toward Compassion’s objectives.

Cultured meat is produced by taking cells from a live farmed animal (killing is unnecessary) and growing them in a nutrient-rich medium in sterile conditions. The cells are nurtured and developed into pieces of meat. To learn more about cultured meat, please read my earlier blog.

The press reports were prompted by a scientific paper, “Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production,” published in the academic journal, Environmental Science & Technology.

The researchers at Oxford University and Amsterdam University found that in “comparison to conventionally produced European meat, cultured meat involves approximately 7-45% lower energy use (only poultry has lower energy use), 78-96% lower GHG (green house gas) emissions, 99% lower land use, and 82-96% lower water use depending on the product compared”.

They conclude the “overall impacts of cultured meat production are substantially lower than those of conventionally produced meat”.

We already know from the study we commissioned with Friends of the Earth that we can feed the world without intensive farming of animals and crops. We also showed how we can farm using humane and sustainable agriculture without a massive expansion of land use for farming. This new research on the benefits of cultured meat adds further evidence to our case that we need to end factory farming. The means are clearly there but it’s our job to make sure we have the will.

To learn more, including what you can do, please visit the Your Food section on Compassion’s Web site.

Tags: cultured meat, feeding the world, green house gas, In vitro. Posted in General | 3 Comments »

In-Vitro Meat

Thursday, November 25th, 2010

Scientists at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands are working on the production of in-vitro meat as a potential substitute for the meat currently sold in our supermarkets.

Global meat consumption is set to double by the year 2050, driven by economic growth in areas such as Brazil, Russia, India and China. We’re running out of land with serious implications for the continued and increasing growth of grain and soya for animal consumption; not to mention the animal welfare and environmental issues, such as pollution, that arise from this increased demand, particularly when factory farming is employed .

Over consumption of meat has a number of adverse effects on human health including increased risk of heart disease and cancer. There’s an increasing market for meat substitutes which have the taste and texture of meat, without the health and environmental issues.

In-vitro meat is an animal flesh product that has never been part of a living animal. Cells are taken from a live animal and grown into muscle tissue in a laboratory. These cells are what are referred to as ‘satellite cells’; they form stem cells which are programmed to produce muscle. Given the right conditions they continue to grow into muscle outside of the body. In-vitro meat should not be confused with imitation meat, which is a vegetarian food product made from vegetable protein.

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Innovative Solution

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

What if we could replace all the mince meat that we eat in dishes like hamburgers, sausages, cottage pie, meatloaf, lasagne and spaghetti bolognese with a virtually identical product; meat without killing animals?

Is this too good to be true? I don’t think so. Within the next decade, we could well see this happen.

This is because meat cultured in cell culture (in vitro) could become economically viable, certainly within most of our lifetimes. It will replace the meat eaten presently as ground or mince meat, which is said to account for at least one-half of all meat consumed. This will mean, in turn, a significant reduction in the number of animals killed for food and may well hasten our goal of ending factory farming by 2050.

This is why at our recent Board meeting, the directors unanimously agreed to a new policy. They agreed that the “development of cultured meat offers an innovative solution to meeting growing global demand for meat in a way that avoids the serious animal welfare problems associated with intensive livestock farming.” Compassion is therefore supporting this emerging technology as part of a package of solutions to providing a humane and sustainable food system for the future.

Compassion believes cultured meat has the potential to start a brand-new relationship between us and how our food is produced. Cultured meat has the potential to be healthier, safer, less polluting and more humane than conventional meat. Fat content can be more easily controlled. The incidence of food borne disease can be significantly reduced. Inedible animal structures (bones, respiratory system, digestive system, skin and the nervous system) need not be grown. As a result, the production of cultured meat is likely to be more efficient than conventional meat in its use of energy, land and water as well as producing less waste.

Furthermore, as the technology develops and economies of scale work in its favour, more complex pieces of meat (e.g. chicken leg, lamb cutlet) will be produced as cultured meat. This will profoundly impact – and drastically lower – the projected number of food animals reared worldwide.

I believe in the not too distant future many of us who eat meat will choose cultured meat for everyday meals. We will also choose for special occasions particular cuts of meat from animals raised using higher welfare methods, such as free range, and humanely killed in slaughterhouses with CCTV and other monitoring systems to protect animal welfare.

This ideal for a more humane world was also the vision of our founders, Peter and Anna Roberts. They established Direct Foods in 1969. As an organisation, our relationship with cultured meat, albeit in a different form as textured soya protein, originates with Peter and Anna, who were dairy farmers shocked at the direction agriculture was taking. Direct Foods’ mission was to provide plant-based, meat-like alternatives. This included Sosmix, Burgamix and Protoveg.

From working closely with Peter for so many years I learned the importance of campaigning as pragmatic idealists. Progress is made in steps – small and large – along the way. I believe if he were with us today he would also be championing cultured meat as an innovative solution that could transform our food and farming system for the better and for all.

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Cultured meat

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

I recall first hearing about meat grown in a laboratory in 2005 when I was called into a Sky TV studio at short notice to talk about it. I remember thinking it could not be possible. I am used to seeing pigs, chickens, cows and other animals frequently reared in cruel conditions on farms and killed in slaughterhouses whose practices had failed to move forward with the times. This is what meat so often means to me. These are the issues that Compassion works hard to change every day. The idea of test tube grown rather than factory farmed meat seemed more like a scene from a bad 1950s science fiction novel. Nonetheless, I was intrigued.

What if it were possible to feed people meat without killing billions of animals? What about its environmental and economic impact? Using animals to produce food to feed people is grossly inefficient and often heavily subsidized by government. Does it require massive doses of antibiotics? Closely confined animals need drugs routinely to stop them from becoming sick and spreading disease. Does this therefore mean lab grown meat could be healthier to eat? I also thought about the people who work on factory farms and in slaughterhouses and how horrible their jobs must be. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for them if they had less dangerous and more satisfying places to work in?

Like me, you probably do your best to keep up with developments in technology and how they make a positive impact on how we live. True, sometimes there are serious setbacks. Overall, however, I believe we are better off with them. Yes, I was initially skeptical about lab grown meat. But as I learned more from the New Harvest Foundation I realized this could be truly revolutionary. ‘Cultured’ meat – as I subsequently discovered it is correctly called – has the potential to make all the difference to everything we care about: animals, people and the environment.

So, what is cultured meat?

Like bread, cheese, yoghurt and wine, cultured meat basically involves the process of growing cells from outside of the organism to which they belong to produce a finished product. Cultured meat is produced by taking cells from a live farmed animal (killing is unnecessary) and growing them in a nutrient-rich medium in sterile conditions. The cells are nurtured and developed into pieces of meat. Living tissue is already grown in the laboratory and used, for example, to repair and replace diseased or injured organs such as skin. This in vitro (meaning in glass) method of growing tissue was developed by the biomedical industry as part of the initiative to replace live animal experimentation. Within the next decade, the technology will have advanced to be capable of producing the equivalent of mince or ground meat. More than 50 per cent of the meat eaten in the world is consumed this way (e.g., burgers and other convenience food products). This means that if cultured meat as mince becomes economically viable and replaces present methods of meat production to produce ground meat a significant number of animals will be not be bred and killed. Further, as the technology develops and economics of scale work in its favor, cultured meat will be able to produce more complex pieces of meat (e.g., chicken leg, lamb cutlet).

Compassion’s relationship with cultured meat, albeit in a different form as textured soya protein, originates with our founders, Peter and Anna Roberts. Dairy farmers shocked at the direction agriculture was taking, they started Direct Foods in 1969. Its mission was to provide a plant-based meat-like alternative. Direct Foods’ products included Sosmix, Burgamix and Protoveg, which fuelled many an animal welfare activist in its time!

Cultured meat may not be the whole answer to all our problems. There are still some challenging issues to address. Some will oppose the technology. Some will refuse to eat it. That is their choice. Nonetheless, I am convinced cultured meat will become an important piece in the strategy we’re building and implementing to move beyond factory farming. Please read more about our Strategic Plan 2009-2014.

In short, cultured meat is an exciting scientific innovation that could have far-reaching beneficial consequences for all.

Tags: cultured meat, factory farming, food. Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »