The future of food

This article was originally published by The Capilano Courier.

NORTH VANCOUVER (CUP) – “Twenty years from now if you enter the supermarket, you would have the choice between two products that are identical. One is made in an animal, it now has this label on it that animals have suffered or have been killed for this product. It has an eco text because it’s bad for the environment and it’s exactly the same as an alternative product that has been made in a lab. It tastes the same, and is the same quality; it has the same price or is even cheaper.” – Dr. Mark Post

There is a large disconnect between the meat we purchase at the grocery store and the process by which it got there, neatly wrapped in Saran and Styrofoam. Meat consumption worldwide has increased considerably over the past four decades, making sustainability of livestock systems a growing challenge. The average Canadian consumes upwards of 137 pounds of red meat and poultry per year, an average of 100 grams per day. Yet the harrowing truths of the economic impact of modern commercial agriculture rarely make headlines.

“Around the world, millions of people don’t get enough protein,” explains nutritionist Albina Beresnyeva. “Animal sources of protein tend to deliver all the amino acids we need — but people tend to forget that there are other sources like some fruits, vegetables and grains that can make up for a lack of meat.”

Aside from concerns over the right to kill animals for meat when less expensive and equally nutritious alternatives are readily available, a growing concern involves the resources that go into the production of a single meat product. 

Cars and electric power are two culprits that are quickly pointed to when the discussion of greening our future is on the table, but the foods we eat — meat in particular — tend to slip by unaddressed. According to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), our meat-centred diets create more greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide in the environment than transportation or the electric power industry.

Our meat-centred diets create more greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide than the electric power industry.

And red meat has the worst reputation of all. Beef production produces 13 times more gasses and chemicals which lead to global warming than are emitted from poultry production. With current meat production levels contributing between 14 and 22 per cent of the 36 billion tons of CO2 greenhouses gases worldwide, the amount of energy required for one simple half-pound of ground beef is enough to make someone gawk — yet not enough to consider removing meat from their diet altogether. 

Most people do not associate their store-bought steak with costs such as transportation, refrigeration and gas-guzzling farming equipment. The relationship people have cemented between themselves and a meat-based diet dates back to living in caves in fur pelt loin-cloths.

The business of eating meat has been evolving alongside the human race as it grows, and the demands flow and ebb. Humans have evolved to consume meat and the positives that have resulted from this relationship are notably profound. Meat has been a direct contributor to the increase in complexity and relative size of the brain as well as physical growth. The hunting and killing of animals, butchering and sharing the foodstuffs was a key in the development of human intelligence, and in increasing our brain size through the consumption of proteins.

Hunting and our inherent need for protein, in our earliest history, promoted the development of language and socialization — communication itself developed from our need for an ideally balanced diet. But in 2014, food farming has become a mega-industry and sustaining a healthy relationship with meat without compromising an already fragile environment has increasingly become a question of ethics.

With meat consumption on the rise, there has also been an increase in the mass-scale feed industry. More animals for slaughter means that a demand for the foods that feed them must also be met. Meat has thus become an environmentally expensive food. “A meat-based diet does require more energy,” says Beresnyeva. “Besides energy, meat proteins demand more land and water resources. So in many ways, a vegetarian diet would be more sustainable in an environmental sense.”

The meat industry requires resources such as grain, water, fertilizers, energy and fuel — cattle also demand large areas of land. With production trying desperately to meet rising demand, there is an overwhelming potential for a compromised final product. With the global population set to rise from seven to nine billion people by 2050, t the demand for meat is set to double.

The Moo Kid in Town

In 2008, Dr. Mark Post, a cardiovascular biologist from Maastricht University, began working on an unusual endeavour to find a scientific solution to the growing ethical debates on meat production. After five years, in August 2013 at a special event in London, the fruits of his lab work were brought to the table accompanied by a bun, sliced tomato and romaine lettuce: introducing the first in-vitro hamburger.

“Meat is muscle, muscle from an animal. By our technology we actually are producing meat — it’s just not in a cow,” he explained to CulturedBeef.net. Produced using stem cells — basic cells that can turn into tissue-specific cells — from cow shoulder muscle found at a slaughterhouse, the cells were then multiplied and placed in petri dishes where they would become muscle cells, slowly developing into tiny strips of muscle fibre.

Over 20,000 strips were used to make the five-ounce patty which was first tasted by Josh Schonwald, author of The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food, and Hanni Rutzler, a nutritional scientist who has built up an international reputation for her research into eating and drinking as well as penning  The Future of Food.

Although the burger was criticized as tasting dry, due largely to its containing absolutely no fat and falling short of flavourful, Schonwald remarked on the similarity to its traditionally farmed counterpart. “The mouthful is like meat. I miss the fat, there’s a leanness to it, but the general bite feels like a hamburger.” Receiving high marks from the test audience in achieving the appropriate burger texture, both tasters skipped the bun and fixings to get the full experience of the first lab-grown burger. 

And scientists are not overly concerned about the initial criticisms on flavour. “Taste is the least [important] problem, since this could be controlled by letting some of the stem cells develop into fat cells,” explained Stig Omholt, director of biotechnology at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

Dr. Post, along with his team of scientists from Maastricht University in the Netherlands developed the burger with the hope that the ability to grow meat in labs could combat world hunger and climate change simultaneously. 

“Instead of the millions and billions [of animals] being slaughtered now, we could just clone a few cells to make burgers or chops.” – Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA

With a two year project dedicated to creating one beef patty, as well as required testing of the tissue, these could arguably be the world’s most expensive hamburgers. Sporting a price tag of $325,000, the creation was a landmark for the science community and the growing audience for a future of cultured meat.

National media dubbed the product the “Frankenburger.” The unveiling of an edible cow-free bruger brought in some surprising support from animal rights groups, including PETA. “As long as there’s anybody who’s willing to kill a chicken, a cow or a pig to make their meal, we are all for this,” said Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s president and co-founder in an interview with CBC. “Instead of the millions and billions [of animals] being slaughtered now, we could just clone a few cells to make burgers or chops.”

The big reveal of the first lab-grown hamburger demonstrated that mankind can grow meat without the standardized system of raising, slaughtering and processing animals. The Dutch government originally funded Post’s program to produce the in-vitro burger, but by 2010 the initial grant had run dry, leaving a mysterious benefactor to step in to see the project to completion. During the London debut of the in-vitro burger, which may have been the main attraction, Dr. Post revealed the identity of the independent financial backer to an awe-struck crowd: Google cofounder, Sergey Brin. 

“Sometimes a new technology comes along and it has the capability to transform how we view our world,” explained Brin. “I like to look at technology opportunities where the technology seems like it’s on the cusp of viability, and if it succeeds there, it can be really transformative to the world.

“There are basically three things that can happen going forward,” he continued. “One is we will all become vegetarian; I don’t think that’s really likely. The second is we ignore the issues, and that leads to continued environmental harm. And the third option is we do something new.

“Some people think this is science fiction, it’s not real, and it’s somewhere out there. I actually think that’s a good thing. If what you’re doing is not seen by some people as science fiction, it’s probably not transformative enough.”

Disturbed Culture

However, there is still something that seems unsettling about ingesting a food product made entirely in a lab, even if the final product is genetically identical to an animal product— it just came about through an entirely different, if not immensely more complex, process. What is disturbing is that humans are more easily off-put by a man-made product with the same nutritional value than by the conditions of the product before it is packaged.

Creating a meat product that can truthfully label itself “cruelty-free” is revolutionary. Although it’s still years away from being available on the consumer market, the debut of an in-vitro burger brings factory farming and animal cruelty back into the spotlight. “We have a vision in our minds of this pristine farm, a couple cows, couple chickens. But that’s not actually how meat is produced today,” said Brin. “When you see how these cows are treated, it’s certainly not something I’m comfortable with.”

Although moral views on killing animals are greatly divided, there is a general consensus that willfully causing something to suffer is evil. A future with the possibility of cultured meat being made available to the marketplace has the potential to replace old school livestock practices. Current meat production systems in North America have led to their fair share of unnatural problems including foodborne illness — removing the animal itself from the equation may leave some vegetarians morally at a loss. The manner in which we think of lab-grown food is what stands in the way of our appetite.

“In theory, it’s a much better quality burger. Once you get over the lab-grown gross factor, it’s actually quite exciting. No more ground up cow anus or testicle in your burger. Just lovely bits of muscle from an organic cow,” said Nathan Gray, a science journalist with FoodNavigator.com. A squeamish feeling still tends to linger when posed with a burger created in a petri dish by a scientist in a lab coat as opposed to a butcher in a blood stained apron.

The debut of an in-vitro burger brings factory farming and animal cruelty back into the spotlight.

There is an apprehension that is a basic human instinct. The concern about the hamburger, at its core, relates to whether or not it’s natural. Although nature is not always synonymous with goodness, what makes something “natural” is hard to define, much like something as abstract as human intelligence in nature. Human children are natural, but if they are born from in-vitro fertilization are they no longer considered natural? Defined as existing in or caused by nature, “natural” means something cannot be made or caused by humankind.

With science making leaps and bounds, the in-vitro burger being a prime example, the definition of “natural” itself may evolve. Arguably, creating cultured meat is less unnatural than raising farm animals in intensive farming confinement systems, injecting them with hormones, and feeding them artificial diets.

The “father of animal liberation,” philosopher Peter Singer, has praised the recent effort to produce cultured meat. “My own view is that being a vegetarian or vegan is not an end in itself, but a means towards reducing both human and animal suffering, and leaving a habitable planet to future generations,” said Singer. “If in-vitro meat becomes commercially available, I will be pleased to try it.”

Conventional meat grown within the animal itself is not always good for overall health; research has shown that being a regular meat eater can lead to heart disease and diabetes due to the saturated fatty acids. Post believes that cultured meat may have the potential to be better for us. “We gain greater control over what the meat consists of, for example its fat content,” said Dr. Post in an interview with The Atlantic.

The in-vitro hamburger stands as the realization of an potentially game-changing concept, and an exciting step towards the future of our foods. Made up solely of muscle fibre, the range of nutrients in cultured meat would be different from the conventional option. Dr. Post’s creation included no growth hormones, which have already been banned in the European Union but are still approved in Canada and the US; nor did it include any residue of pesticides, de-wormers or tranquilizers.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 72 per cent of antibiotic sales in the country are given to animals in factory farms. Yet there are still ethical implications to embracing cultured meat, due in large part to the controversial nature of using stem-cells.

The main concern is whether society itself is lsoing touch with nature. And surely there will be unexpected impacts caused by something as seemingly innocent as a five-ounce burger patty — yet there is an excitement when there can be outstanding positives to an industry that is struggling to meet demand which means compromised environments for both the animals and humans involved. That includes you.