Artificial meat could soon find its way to supermarket shelves -
© Shutterstock via The Conversation
The environmental cost of artificial meat has just been reassessed on the rise, according to a study published by our partner The Conversation.
The consumption of nuggets made from “manufactured” meat has however just been authorized by the Singapore health authorities.
The analysis of this phenomenon was carried out by Éric Muraille, biologist, immunologist and researcher at the FNRS (Université Libre de Bruxelles).
Cultured meat, or "in vitro" meat, also called "clean meat" by its supporters, is meat produced in the laboratory using bioengineering techniques.
In 2013, Mark Post, professor at Maastricht University, presented the first cultivated meat burger.
Since then, the utopia of consumption of meat without animal exploitation, resulting from "cellular agriculture", has made many followers among animal advocates, but especially in industry.
The American administration already established in 2018 a regulatory framework paving the way for the marketing of these products.
Many start-ups sponsored by big names in the food industry have been created for this purpose.
Their ambition was to put on the market, from 2020 or 2022, cultivated meat of beef, poultry or fish at an affordable price.
It's now done: on December 2, 2020, the Singapore health authorities authorized the consumption of nuggets made from chicken meat made in the laboratory by the Californian start-up Eat Just.
So, artificial meat, utopia or real food revolution?
What global food supply in 2050?
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), conventional meat production represents a considerable share of greenhouse gas emissions (18%), land use (30% ), as well as global water (8%) and energy consumption.
In addition, the organization estimates that meat consumption should double by 2050. And this, while meat production is already close to its maximum.
How to solve this problem ?
For Mark Post, “cows are very inefficient”.
Their “bioconversion rate” is estimated at 15%.
In other words, to produce 15 g of meat, you need 100 g of vegetable protein.
The only way to sustainably produce meat would be to increase this rate.
For Mark Post, who produced the first in vitro burger, one thing is certain: cows are not very efficient at bioconversion © Lomig / Unsplash
To achieve this, different approaches have already been considered in the past, such as the production of meat made from proteins from plants or insects.
These alternatives do not seem to appeal to consumers, however, due to the difficulty in mimicking the taste and texture of conventional meat or to cultural prejudices.
Meat "in vitro" could help circumvent these problems.
How do you grow meat?
Concretely, it all starts with the isolation, from the muscles of an adult animal, of a small number of muscle satellite cells, the function of which is to participate in the process of muscle regeneration.
These are not yet muscle cells, but stem cells which are capable of multiplying and, under the influence of certain hormonal factors, of differentiating into muscle cells.
Cultivated in bioreactors, sterile enclosures containing nutrient liquids, these satellite cells are stimulated by growth factors, which induces their intensive proliferation.
They are then transformed into muscle cells, before being mechanically assembled into a consumable muscle tissue, so an artificial steak ...
The promises of cultured meat
According to the website of the Dutch company Mosa Meat, founded by Mark Post, there are only advantages to producing cultivated meat.
It would drastically reduce the environmental impact of meat production as well as the risk of infectious diseases transmitted from animals to humans.
In addition, the taste of cultured meat would be close to that of conventional meat.
Our “Meat” file
Cellular farming is praised by many authors, such as Paul Shapiro, author of the bestseller "
Clean meat: How growing meat without animals will revolutionize dinner and the world
" ("Clean meat: how the production of meat without animals goes revolutionizing the dinner and the world ”) and CEO of The Better Meat Co. According to him, cultivated meat would be essential to feed a world population which will be close to 9.5 billion in 2050, while respecting animals and preserving the environment.
An environmental cost reassessed on the rise
Beyond the announcement effects of start-ups, the large-scale production of cultured meat raises some fears about its real environmental impact.
Certainly, the first scientific comparison made in 2011 between conventional meat and cultivated meat was very flattering for the latter.
Compared to conventional meat, it would reduce greenhouse gases by 78-96% and require 7-45% energy and 82-96% less water.
But more recent studies suggest that its environmental impact may be greater in the long term than that of livestock.
Unlike previous work, this took into consideration not only the nature of the gases emitted, but also the energy cost of the infrastructure necessary for cell cultures.
Animals have an immune system that protects them against infections, especially bacterial ones.
However, this is not the case with cell cultures, which poses serious problems.
Indeed, in an environment rich in nutrients, bacteria multiply much faster than animal cells.
If we want to avoid obtaining a steak of bacteria, it is therefore essential that the cultures be carried out under conditions of high sterility, in order to avoid contamination.
In the pharmaceutical industry, cell cultures are performed in "clean rooms", very controlled and sanitized.
Sterility is most often guaranteed there by the use of single-use plastic material.
This considerably reduces the risk of contamination, but multiplies pollution by plastics, the level of which in ecosystems is already alarming.
Certainly, part of the cultivation material, made of stainless steel, can be sterilized by steam and detergents.
But this operation also has an environmental cost.
To avoid contamination and control growing conditions, artificial meat is produced in vats (or bioreactors) that resemble those used by the pharmaceutical industry (above) © Shutterstock (via The Conversation)
While few studies have been devoted to the environmental impact of the pharmaceutical industry, the available data suggests that its carbon emissions are 55% higher than those of the automotive industry.
In addition, livestock provide many by-products other than meat.
It also participates in the recycling of large quantities of plant waste that cannot be consumed by humans and produces fertilizer.
Pastures also allow carbon sequestration.
What will they be replaced by?
The long-term environmental cost of a transition from conventional meat to cultured meat is therefore extremely complex to assess.
Anabolic hormones and endocrine disruptors: significant risks
In animals, muscle volume increases slowly and muscle satellite cells multiply little.
To obtain in a few weeks in vitro what the animal takes several years to produce, it is necessary to continuously stimulate the proliferation of muscle satellite cells by growth factors, including anabolic sex hormones.
These hormones are present in animals and humans, as well as in conventional meat.
They stimulate protein synthesis in cells, resulting in increased muscle mass.
They can therefore be rightly presented by industry as “natural growth factors”.
However, overexposure to these hormones has well-established deleterious effects.
In Europe, the use of growth hormones in agriculture has been prohibited since 1981 by Directive 81/602.
This ban was confirmed in 2003 by directive 2003/74 and validated by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in 2007. What will be the final concentration of these hormones in cultivated meat?
In addition, a growing number of studies document the toxicity of commonly used plastic products.
Endocrine disruptors, compounds capable of interfering with and disrupting the hormonal system, can be transferred through plastic packaging to food.
Not surprisingly, the same phenomenon has been documented in cell cultures performed in plastic containers for in vitro fertilization.
"Endocrine disruptors" dossier
Unless you ban the use of plastic during cultured meat production, it therefore risks being particularly contaminated by these substances even before packaging.
Healthy and sustainable food also requires education
Cultivated meat is today presented as an ecological, moral high-tech product, cooked with great fanfare by chefs.
But it will only be able to constitute an alternative to traditional meat by conquering the world market, in other words by transforming itself into a competitive product at low prices.
This requirement for profitability will select the least expensive production techniques.
Will the impacts on health and the environment still be taken into consideration during this change in production scale?
Finally, it should be remembered that high meat consumption is harmful for the environment, but also for the health of individuals.
However, a large majority of individuals ignore or still refuse to accept these conclusions.
It is therefore essential, in order to hope to move towards a diet that is not only sustainable but also healthy, to improve information and education in order to stimulate an informed debate on the crucial subject of meat consumption.
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This analysis was written by Éric Muraille, biologist, immunologist, researcher at the FNRS (Université Libre de Bruxelles). The original article was published on The Conversation website.
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