With the July 4th Independence Day coming, the stores across the states are stocking up meat in preparation of the holiday indulgence. According to the market research group Nielsen, people spent more than $804 millions on beef in the two weeks around the holiday last year. Beef, a diet started since the prehistoric times, is still considered as one of the most indispensable food on the American tables. But about 14.5 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions currently come from raising the livestock for the meat. The pathogens in conventional meat are the most common sources of fatal food-related infections. And reseach shows that regular indulgence of meat are linked to higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and even cancer.
Professor Mark Post of the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, debuted the first cultured burger in 2013. Since then, scientist around the world have been working on cultured meat as a more healthy and environment-friendly substitute for meat from animals. It's estimated that the "clean meat" production could reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 96%, the land usage for raising livestock by 99%, the water usage by 90% and the energy usage by 45%.
Cultured meat uses the same tissue engineering technology that's being used in regenerative medicine to repair organs. The satellite cells, which are adult stem cells found by the muscle cells, are isolated painlessly from live animals via biopsy. The satellite cells are proliferated as many as possible and then starved to differentiate the satellite cells into myoblasts and then to myocytes. The muscle fibers are then mixed with fat cells and additives to reproduce the texture and taste of traditional beef.
The most suspected culprit that raises the risk of heart disease and certain kinds of cancer is the heme iron in meat, by causing DNA damage and induce formation of N-nitroso compounds. The cultured meat can be made completely free of heme iron. “I think that removing heme iron from meat would make for a colon-safer product,” says Graham Colditz, a cancer researcher at Washington University in St. Louis
Saturated fatty acids are well known to contribute to heart disease, by building up the fatty deposits in the coronary arteries. Since the fat in the cultured meat can be controlled by the lab, the percentage of saturated fat can be greatly reduced in the cultured meat. “If they are going to make their own fats, they will be able to replace the saturated fatty acids with, for example, omega-3 fatty acids,” Said Joan Salge Blake, spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
Because cultured meats are produced in sterile environments, they would be free of bacteria and free of the use of antibiotics in the food-producing animals. According to the Food and Drug Administration, antibiotics usage in livestock now constitute 72 percent of all U.S. antibiotic sales. This greatly reduces the possibility of contamination and food-related infections. It also eliminates the increase of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria caused by the abusive usage of antibiotics.
The cost of the first cultured burger by Mark Post was $330,000. Although the expense has greatly reduced in the years, growing the muscle cells in large number for industrial production is still a challenge today. Muscle grows only about 0.5mm in culture. That's why it took about nine weeks to grow a cultured burger which consisted 30 billion cells.
Another barrier to climb is the public resistance of cultured meat. In a 2017 Pew survey, 2/3 of the respondents said that they would not be willing to eat meat grown in a lab. The clean meat industry is trying to solve this resistance by making their process as transparent as possible so that the consumers would understand it better and promote acceptance.
Currently, many countries are active in the cultured meat research, like the company Memphis Meats in the States, the Supermeat in Israeli and the Mosa Meat in Netherlands. In January this year, America's largest meat company, Tyson Foods, announced that they would invest in the Memphis Meats. This shows that the traditional meat company are supporting this innovative idea of culturing meat. Tyson Foods would also help the "clean meat" startup by scaling up the production and providing it with their well-established distribution networks to the retailers. Most resources believe that the "clean meat" would be able to be purchased in the market in 2-3 years. And Mark Post claimed that this cultured burger would be offered to the public as the price of "about $11 for a hamburger".
