Billions of land mammals, and possibly trillions of fish and other marine life, are slaughtered each year to feed an unsustainable demand for protein, but innovation in the biomedical field has presented a solution in the form of lab-grown meat which could be available for purchase in the next 18 to 24 months.
One of two cultivated meat producers in South Africa, Mzansi Meat Company, says in the next few months it hopes people will be able to taste the lab-grown meat, and buy it off the shelves within two years.
The meat is made by replicating cells taken from animals, said Tasneem Karodia, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Mzansi Meat Company.
“We take cells from an animal and we give it the same conditions, so the temperature is at 37°C, we give it some nutrients, amino acids, sugars and within a three-week period we get cultivated meat,” Karodia said.
The product is then shaped into patties, bacon or fish fillets and is safe to eat because “it is just cells from an animal that we replicated”.
The first sample of cultivated meat was released in 2013 when a professor in the Netherlands, Mark Post, presented the first hamburger patty grown in a lab, said Paul Bartels, chief executive of Mogale Meats, the second of South Africa’s two cultivated meat producers.
“This has been on the cards at least for a couple of decades and even Winston Churchill called it in the 1930s. It’s interesting that he foresaw something that in those days people were obviously not thinking about,” Bartels said.
Churchill published an article in Maclean’s magazine and then Strand magazine, in which he wrote: “Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”
With meat cultivation, a small biopsy from a live animal could potentially grow up to two tonnes of meat, Bartels said.
Halaal or kosher?
A question that has arisen for cultivated meat producers is whether the product can be considered as halaal or kosher.
Halaal meat must be butchered in a specific way and the animal must be healthy at the time of slaughter, while the name of Allah must also be invoked. For meat to be kosher, the animal must be butchered by a shochet — a person certified by a rabbi or Jewish court of law to slaughter animals for food in the manner prescribed by Jewish law — and soaked before cooking.
“Whether cultivated meat is halaal or kosher is still not defined. Religious figures have to weigh in. There is some debate,” Karodia said.
“Some people say there is no slaughter and that event is required to make it halaal. There have been religious figures in Israel who have given the point of view on kosher and they are saying that cultivated meat could be considered kosher.”
Bartels said: “The religious figures involved in this discussion have said cultivated meat does not necessarily go against their religion but obviously it’s a new technology that does not follow religious processes.
“But those processes were designed because of conventional agriculture. We can see that there was a good reason to bleed out the animal as one of the requirements, but now one does not have to do that because there is no blood involved. This is a challenge for religious processes.”
Labelling
Another challenge ahead for cultivated meat producers is likely to be labelling, and they could encounter the same hurdles as the manufacturers of plant-based “meat” alternatives after a clampdown on the sector by the department of agriculture.
In a letter to producers and retailers of meat alternatives last year, the department noted that a number of the products had been labelled “vegan nuggets”, “plant-based meatballs” and “vegan BBQ ribs”, for example. These names, the department contended, were “prescribed for processed meats”.
“The biggest regulatory hurdle is getting a good understanding of what we are going to label it as. What are we going to put on the packaging to indicate to consumers what it is because it comes from an animal, but it is made in a different way, so how do we indicate that,” Karodia asked.
She said Mzansi Meats wanted to label its product as meat and give a descriptor like “cultivated”. However some consumers may not know what cultivated means, she conceded, adding: “We are working with regulators to understand what makes sense from a consumer’s understanding.”
In the US, Bartels noted, cultivated meat has encountered firm opposition from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association “because they think it will affect their industry”.
“Similar associations may oppose the labelling of cultivated meat as meat. But it’s all going to take a few years before it goes mainstream, so we can’t say for now,” he added.
Good for the environment
Producers of lab-grown meat are touting it as a viable solution, given that the industrial farming of animals is a major driver of climate change, deforestation and air and water pollution.
According to the UN, animal agriculture contributes an estimated 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“We have a growing population and people like to eat meat,” Bartels said. “The conversion to vegetarianism and veganism isn’t fast enough from a global perspective. It’s a part of our culture that we want to eat meat, the problem with eating meat is greenhouse gases that are produced in the livestock industry, it’s more than all the transport in the world put together.”
“In Africa, we are going to be doubling our population in the next 30 years and so we need to at least increase the food production by the same amount and where is that going to come from?
“We are already a water-deficient continent. This is a way where you use much less water and much less land,” he added.
Cultivated food is more sustainable because the production process only yields the meat that is desired and will be eaten, he argued. There is no production of the horns, eyes or skin which are often discarded when animals are slaughtered.
“If you look at the sustainable development goals with regards to food security on land and in the sea, with cultivated meat you end up with greater food security,” Bartels added.
