Would you eat lab-grown meat?
It’s a hypothetical question for now, but scientists in the Netherlands are currently developing in vitro meat (IVM), pork muscle tissue grown from stem cells – no pig necessary. Although it’s currently still in a petri dish, scientists say IVM could someday end up on your table – provided they can get consumers to buy it.
If they succeed, IVM could potentially be a positive force for combating climate change. Under the current factory farming system, meat is a major source of global warming, causing methane production and deforestation. With meat-eating on the rise in populous nations like India and China, the world’s meat consumption is expected to double by 2050. IVM takes much less energy, space and resources to produce, potentially satisfying the world’s need for meat at a much lower environmental toll. Supporters also say IVM will be a big boost for local eating, since meat could be made in any location.
IVM could also be a solution to the considerable ethical and public health problems posed by the inhumane and unhygienic treatment of farm animals. Creepy to be sure, but unlike natural meat, IVM is not cruel. PETA, who is offering $1 million to anyone who can produce cheap, chicken-like IVM by 2012, has said it has no ethical objection to meat that’s not a piece of dead animal.
It doesn’t look like PETA will have to pay up any time soon, however. While The Telegraph reports that we could see IVM ground meat on sale in the next five years, most sources agree that 10 or 15 years is more like it. And that’s just for processed meat. Slabs of IVM steak are even farther off.
Currently, scientists are working with tiny samples of limp muscle called “soggy pork,” attempting to exercise it into a meatlike texture using electric currents. It sounds like Frankenburger is still a long way off, as technology isn’t the only hurdle between IVM and the grocery store either. Last year, Slate put the value of a pound of IVM pork (a theoretical quantity given the minute samples currently in existence) at $45,000 per pound, in light of the expensive equipment and PhD labor needed to bring home the bacon. Cheap and easy large-scale production methods will have to be developed before IVM becomes a serious competitor to natural meat.
If and when that day comes, however, it will mean serious changes. Much like the obstacles we face in the conversion to clean energy, the value of land will change, workers will have to adapt to new occupations, national economies will benefit or suffer. Tough stuff, but such is the price of progress.
