Clean Meat: the Future of Food?

by Finn Crawford

Picture a world where meat products are cheap, readily available, and produced without killing any animals. Startups such as JUST, Memphis Meats, and Finless Foods have recently been working to make this dream a reality by creating what they call “Clean Meat”. Just to be clear, Clean Meats are not imitation meats, products made from plant protein and intended for the vegan/vegetarian market. Instead, Clean Meat is real animal tissue grown in labs, rather than within the animals’ bodies themselves.

Clean Meat, otherwise known as cultured meat, is created by first extracting a tiny amount of muscle tissue from a living animal, then isolating the progenitor cells, which are essentially stem cells specific to the muscular system. Next, these progenitor cells are placed in a growth medium, a liquid containing an assortment of nutrients and enzymes with controlled temperatures, pH and oxygen levels. The purpose of this is to mimic the environment that these cells would encounter within a living animal, thereby spurring natural growth. Within the controlled environment of the growth medium, these muscle cells multiply exponentially, forming cell strands composed of around 1.5 million cells (Schaefer). These strands are ultimately layered together, along with independently synthesized fat cells to create something that resembles meat.

This process, however, is by no means perfect. For one, it is extremely inefficient and expensive. In order to create just one 3 ounce patty, over 10,000 cell strands are required (Egan). The immense amount of time and money it takes to synthesize so many strands is reflected in its high price point. A ‘Clean’ hamburger sold in 2013 cost $330,000, meaning widespread production of lab-grown meats, for now, is a long shot (Linford). Additionally, while the process is very successful in recreating ground meats such as chicken fingers, sausages, and burgers, scientists are still far from being able to grow full-muscle meats, such as steak, resembling what is found on dinner plates today.

Despite the various shortcomings of growing meat in a lab, the potential benefits of Clean Meat are enormous. By rendering extensive livestock operations nearly obsolete, lab-grown meats could revolutionize the food industry. In 2016 alone, it was found that Americans consumed 25 billion pounds of beef, sourced from over 50 million individual cows (White & Brunker). This figure is especially daunting considering that raising a single cow requires nearly 100,000 gallons of water per year (White & Brunker). Furthermore, cows were estimated to be responsible for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions by releasing methane into the atmosphere through flatulence (White & Brunker). Living conditions in many large-scale livestock operations are also extremely cruel; forced breeding, growth hormones, and cramped living spaces are typical in today’s large-scale meat production. On the whole, the world would drastically benefit if the food industry were to transition from the massive resource consumption, destruction of the environment, and inhumane conditions that characterize modern industrialized farms, to the lab-based approach that circumvents all of these factors.

While we may be very far from widespread production of delicious, tender steaks from just a few muscle cells, the endeavor to synthesize these proteins is definitely a step in the right direction. There is still hope for this seemingly far-of enterprise; the Clean Meat startup, JUST, plans on taking an undisclosed product to market next year (Birdsall). It will, by no means, be an immediate culinary revolution; the process is imperfect and still not completely cost-effective. Nevertheless, world-changing inventions don’t develop overnight, so while we may have to wait for Clean Meat to become commonplace, agricultural inefficiency and ecological destruction could make Clean Meat an inevitable part of our future.