Cultured Meat : Cruelty free AND healthier meat ?
Written by Laila Mottaweh
When we face problems , ecological , medical or industrial for instance , we turn to science and technology because we know that they can provide us with the tools necessary to counter these problems . The way we produce meat , I speak of the mass production of livestock , the millions of cows and chickens that we cram together in extremely tight enclosures under torturous conditions is barbarous , in addition to being unsustainable .
Have you ever stopped and wondered at what the impacts of meat consumption had on our planet ?
Meat production produces 18 % of our greenhouse emission , which exacerbates the already urgent phenomenon of global warming . This phenomenon is the same one - which causes the melting of icebergs , which threatens to engulf coasts underwater . In addition , a lot of resources that we could be benefitting from ( and feeding the hungry , for example ) are allocated towards raising , feeding , abusing and butchering livestock . It doesn ’ t end here , did you know that the meat industry takes up 70 % of our lands ? If we use this space to plant more vegetables and plants , we ’ d be able to feed a lot more people , a lot healthier and affordable diets .
It is no surprise that meat consumption has become part of a system that threatens our species . We can no longer ignore this problem . Researchers have been working hard to actually find sustainable solutions , and they are doing so through scientific breakthroughs , one of them being the main topic of this article : Meat Culture .
Scientists are using the potential of cells to produce tissue , to produce muscle , to produce food – and they are doing so through the process of In Vitro cultivation of muscular fibers . Time magazine even declared cultured meat production to be one of the 50 breakthrough ideas of 2009 .
Fact : Did you know that In Vitro cultivation of muscular fibers was performed as early as 1971 by Russell Ross ?
The procedure is relatively straightforward . You take a biopsy from a cow with a little piece of muscle which already has stem cells , and from just once cell we can make 10 000Kg of meat if we just change the technology !!! We lay them around in a petri dish , harvest them , then we assemble together the sheets created , until we have a hamburger . This is what happened in August 2013 , when the world ’ s first laboratory grown burger is cooked and eaten in London !
There are multiple benefits to this technology : It is a much more human production of meat , but is also environmentally friendly . It could be made healthier by manipulating the composition of the culture medium , the fat content and fatty acid , and by replacing harmful saturated fats with healthy fats , like omega-3 . This meat would have no Xenoviruses , no bacteria , no antibiotics or hormones which we pump our livestock with . It would also allow us to actually use the resources we would waste on maintaining livestock .
Would you be Willing to try
Culture Meat ?
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