Science & Society
Cultured meat: every village its own factory?

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Rising global demand for meat will result in increased environmental pollution, energy consumption, and animal suffering. Cultured meat, produced in an animal-cell cultivation process, is a technically feasible alternative lacking these disadvantages, provided that an animal-component-free growth medium can be developed. Small-scale production looks particularly promising, not only technologically but also for societal acceptance. Economic feasibility, however, emerges as the real obstacle.

Section snippets

Prospect

Early in the 1930s, Winston Churchill first wrote about what today we call cultured meat or in vitro meat [1], and some decades later, Willem van Eelen came up with the same idea. Throughout the twentieth century the idea remained marginal, but growing problems associated with normal meat, especially unsustainability and animal welfare, have changed this. Although many vegetarian protein sources are available as alternatives, meat continues to be extremely attractive to most people. As large

Societal responses

Most people initially find the idea of cultured meat surprising; first (Dutch) responses vary from ‘wow’ (from the majority; mostly because of the prospects for animals) to ‘yuck’ (from a minority; prominent associations are genetic modification and hot dogs) [6]. After some thought, responses became more complex. Workshop discussions and media responses after Mark Post's hamburger presentation 6, 7, 8 suggest that many people regard cultured meat as a hopeful idea given their moral doubts

Manufacturing

Animal cells can currently be cultured in suspension in bioreactors up to a size of 20 m3. In principle, it is possible to grow animal muscle or organ cells in suspension on that scale for meat production, provided that a robust continuous cell line is available, be it a bovine, chicken, fish, insect, or any other edible animal cell. An adult stem cell of the pertinent tissue is a logical choice. However, developing an appropriate robust continuous stem-cell line is still a real challenge. A

Concluding remarks and future perspectives

Cultured meat has great moral promise. Worries about its unnaturalness might be met through small-scale production methods that allow close contact with cell-donor animals and thereby reverse feelings of alienation. From a technological perspective, ‘village-scale’ production is also a promising option. From an economic point of view, however, competition with ‘normal’ meat is a big challenge; production cost emerges as the real problem. For cultured meat to become competitive, the price of

Acknowledgments

We thank Dirk Martens for critically reading the manuscript.

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