Jack Paschal
May 8 2022
The joy of cooking cannot be understated.
We have the power, each of us in our homes (granted we have the materials) to create a consumable work of art with the ability to melt the soul away. We have always eaten, and the ability to not just hunt and gather materials for eating but to settle and cultivate such materials (livestock, grain, legumes, etc.) literally propelled us from prehistory to the beginnings of “organized society” as we understand it today. It is innumerably important to the success, development, and basic operation of our species. Eating healthy and nutritious food can uplift your mood, increase brain function, and clear your mind. Meat is one method of gaining necessary nutrients like B-complex vitamins, proteins, zinc, iron, and iodine, to name a few, making it a tasty and imperative tool for maintaining efficiency. By 2050, global demand for meat will increase by 70%. Currently, global livestock production is one of the primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and thus climate change, meaning that if we are to satisfy this projected need we must increase livestock production, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, hastening the ever-shrinking window to reverse the effects of our way of life on the planet. As a result of this, nations around the world are witnessing a rise in demand for meat alternatives. Whether it be for health reasons or sustainability the industry is growing and corporations, restaurateurs, NASA, and private research labs are all pining to make a breakthrough. Potentially, there is a lot of money in this field. Potentially, it has the opportunity to destroy the beef and poultry markets of the world. Potentially, it could reduce greenhouse gas emissions to such a degree that we could actually have a chance of being ok (as far as the earth’s health is concerned).
Potentially, potentially, potentially.
In our industrial tradition, livestock are funneled through a four phased operation before meeting you in the meat aisle of your local Save A Lot, Giant, Harris Teeter, or whatever. It starts with Breeders who raise the calf from birth before going to auction where nowadays they can expect downwards of 85 dollars a head. The calves are bid on (undersold) and move along to the Backlot/Background Ranchers, the middle stage of their lives where they graze and gain weight. Again they’re brought to auction, again they’re bid on for less than they’re worth, and again they move along –to the final stage of their lives, the Feedlot, where they’re “finished” (final plumping). From there the feedlot owners engage in a flat rate transaction with one of four meatpackers, the only corporations in the process. In recent years the meatpackers have been paying less and charging more for their product, resulting in declining wages for almost everyone involved in the process (barring a very very select few). Ever since Raegan the meatpacking industry has been consolidating power, and in recent years the four remaining companies have been charged with anti-competitive behavior for price gouging during the pandemic. Not only that, but this consolidation and lack of fair wage has resulted in less nutritious meat.
“Meat alternative” is almost a misnomer for what I’ll be discussing in this paper. This is because the alternative I’ll focus on is actually made of mammalian cells, same as the chicken nuggets I purchased from the McD’s around the corner (assuming it was actually meat in there) or the blood red steak of my fever dreams. It is actually meat, though it wasn’t harvested from a living being, enabling the designation. There are a slew of reasons to not eat meat. Disdain for the industry (explanation imminent), a fear for the safety and continuation of the earth (Livestock farms in the US produce 15% of total greenhouse gasses alone), the autonomy of animals (why aren’t we considering the lobsters??) Most of these reasons have very little to do with the actions of individuals, though that is precisely where the burden lies.
First let’s discuss the technology and processes. Without mortally wounding the animal, a sample of its cells is retrieved. From here –depending on the group and their specific blend of cultured meat– blood, fat, and muscle cells are isolated and grown in incubation chambers until enough matter is compiled to print a specimen. At Aleph farms, one of the leaders in Lab-grown meat, their samples are placed in amino-rich nutrient baths, placed in incubators set to mimic the internal temperatures of a cow, and prompted with protein cells. In 3-4 weeks, a credit card sized sample can be taken and cooked. One of their main competitors is Redefine meat, a non-mammalian alternative that has opened up the first large-scale factory farm for their alt-meat production. Most of this process unsurprisingly is rooted in Bio-fabrication for medical purposes, the tech necessary being developed within that field first. There are a number of machines being used to extrude the alt meat, but the most recent development has come out of Osaka University. The team at OU recently printed a precisely imitated cut of wagyu, visually notable for its marbling of fat and muscle tissue. This achievement marked a breakthrough in that it demonstrated a keen co-mingling of blood, fat, and muscle cells in an organized structure, which was achieved by injecting the matter into a gel based print bed, enabling even pressure on all sides of the growing cut.
Most of the research entities discussed up until this point have been corporations (with the notable exception of Osaka University) or private research labs, however I wanted to focus on NASA, and specifically the deep space food challenge. This was an open call for closed loop systems of food production which found new innovations in feeding astronauts on long term space travel
(side note Aleph farms won a grant from this program as well as a contract w/ NASA that prompted a donation from Leonardo DeCaprio to Aleph’s space colonization program which is funny if you’ve seen Don’t Look Up though it could totally be skipped)
I think it’s really fair to be excited about the prospects of this tech, I also think it’s really fair to write it off. For all of the good this premonition presents, the challenges facing it are just as substantial. The necessary knowledge and equipment to research this topic are expensive, meaning that those with large swaths of money dictate whether or not this happens (which is dictated by profit). Furthermore, this process uses 50-100% more energy than traditional cooking methods (conversely, it would lower agricultural emissions by 78-96%, use 99% less land, 82-96% less water and the energy it takes to enable agri. production would decrease by 7-45%). I think the economic aspects are as much a hurtle: we’re not gonna subvert the US beef industry with a new beef industry. Furthermore, with this much money at steak (lol) the motivation to ax the product for mass production is really high, alluding to an innate lack of accountability in the development of this tech. The fact that this work is only happening on the whims of the wealthy should be scary to us. So much of this research is being conducted by competing entities, if this work is actually being done in an effort to address the most prevailing existential and physical threat to humankind (the earth no longer existing) as it claims to be, why is it being done by people whose motivations are profit and dominance.
Sources
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-020-0568-z https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4646826/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25236-9 https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/09/3d-printed-ribeye-steak-usda-fda/