This patent is for a process that will allow meat to be “grown” in a factory.
Now, we all remember a time when we couldn’t have imagined DNA testing, the internet, or LOTR looking realistic on screen.
I would be interested to know if anyone out there with the academic background to comment, thinks this is the rantings of a lunatic, or something equivalent to what a Pentium IV processor would have been in 1975.
It’s not all that far-fetched. Basically they’re just talking about growing muscle tissue in a big vat instead of on an animal. I wonder if it would be kosher. :j
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Artificial Meat are completely against this concept.
In an issue of Scientific American last year, a team was working repairing heart damage by growing heart muscle on a miniature scaffold in the lab, then inserting it by surgery into the patient. In a sense, the biggest challenges to success have already been crossed, and the only remaining hurdles are relatively minor details.
Cells, given an adequate environment, will grow. They do not need to be part of a living being.
It’s not just meat. Many researchers hope to eventually grow full replacement organs. No more begging your sibling for a kidney when you can just grow one in a jar.
Wow, ‘chicken little’ from the Merchant War book universe [a vat grown chickenmeat culture] and also referenced in Bujold’s Vorkosigan universe [again, vat grown cultured meats]
I do hope it takes off, can you imagine McDeath chicken nuggets that are all meat and no filler? or cheap decent tasting chicken/beef for the masses that arent going to cost an arm and a leg…or how about a cheap log of lobster ‘tail’ or ‘shrimp’ that doesnt cost an arm and a leg…
I cant wait=)
I knew organ tissue was already being grown.
The question I had was one of economics. If replacement heart tissue was $10,000. an ounce, it would be a bargain. That would be quite an expensive roast, though.
Is there any conventional wisdom regarding whether it would ever be more economical to grow a steak in a factory than it is to grow it on a cow?
Well, from what I understand it is sort of like hydroponics…a bunch of chemicals circulating that emulate the bloodstream feeding nutrients and oxygen to the cells, and somehow removing the waste products [just like the bloodstream] so they may use something like that synthetic liquid that they were playing with a decade or so back that you can ‘breath’ because it holds a wicked amount of O2, with the nutrients added in. Not sure how they get the waste products out though…
Honestly, I am not paying for a download of the paper to read [though I do know a patent inspector, maybe i can ask him if he can make any comments on it] so I dont see how they will get a good thick chunk of meat out of the deal because you have to get the nutrient solution to service all the cells, so I see it more in ‘sheets’ and smaller pieces.
Grrrr…hamsters…
One more time, with feeling:
I question the taste and texture of this. Part of the enjoyment of cooking and eating are the different types of meat. Backstrap for quick broiling, ribs for high-heat BBQ and roast for stews, etc etc. This seems to me to be 100% lean meat, which is healthy, but damn hard to cook (lean meat needs less time otherwise it turns to shoe-leather).
This might be a good replacement for meat-loaf type meals, and possibly fast-food stuff, but you’ll never replace a nicely marbled t-bone, IMHO.
-Tcat
On the topic of differences in cuts of meat, it would seem to me that if they could grow muscle, they could could grow fat, too, and achieve whatever marbling might be desired.
I, for one, fervently hope this works someday. As a person who wants to minimize the suffering of animals but at the same time was raised on, and gets stroppy without, meat, I’d really like to be able to eat a goddamned hot dog without having an ethical crisis.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote a story about the society that resulted from the widespread adoption of this technology. The premise was the president of an artificial meat production company testifying before Congress about their rival company.
This guy had to start at the very beginning, explaining what meat was and where it originally came from (making at least one senator sick in the process), and noting that his company and his competitors made the same substance artificially, in a variety of different types and flavors.
The kicker was that the rival companies new product, which had achieved market dominance overnight, was artificial HUMAN meat…
I have a guess to this:
Harry Turtledove wrote a short story (it was in his book “Departures”) about someone who genetically engineered a pig that ruminated.
In order for a mammal to be kosher, it must possess two characteristics: (1) it must have split hooves and (2) it must chew it’s cud.
Pigs already have split hooves. In his story Turtledove (through a rabbi as the main character) explores whether or not this genetically engineered pig would be kosher (now that it has both characteristics).
In the end, Turtledove has the rabbi eating the pig.
However, while Harry Turtledove is an excellent author (and wonderful at his alternate history work), he is not too much of a halachic authority.
The Talmud actually discusses cases of an animal giving birth to a creature that resembles a different animal. For example, a non-kosher animal giving birth to something resembling a kosher animal, or vice-versa. The end result is that if the mother was a non-kosher animal, then the offspring is not kosher as well; if the mother is kosher, then the offspring is too, regardless of it’s appearence (absent other health factors which might render it non-kosher).
This is expressed in the rule of “that which comes out of an unclean (non-kosher) animal is unclean and that which comes out of a clean (kosher) animal is clean.”
That said, a genetically engineered ruminant pig would to me seem to be non-kosher, since it would have been born from a normal non-kosher pig, and so I suspect that while HT produced an interesting and thought-provoking story,
Likewise, if you took pig meat and cloned it in a jar, I would suspect that the same rule would apply.
Zev Steinhardt
N.B. I am not a rabbi. If you are Jewish, please consult a rabbi before eating anything of questionable kashrus.
There are a couple of problems with these nutrients. We have been growing ‘meat’ in dishes for over 100 years now. It is called tissue culture, and is commonly used in biomedical research. Most of these cells are derived from tumors (they do not have the nasty habit to stop dividing and shrivle up, like ‘normal’ cells), but there is a lot of experience culturing priamry cells as well. Most cells loose the ability to look like the original tissue. Muscle is extremely complex, and a single cell type cannot replicate the necessary environment for everything to work out.
Mammalian cells are much less self-sufficient than bacteria. They need a constant supply of nutrients, but also growth factors and other goodies. There are virtually no cells that grow in defined media, where every part of the medium in which they are grown is understood. Most cells need to be supplemented by serum, which we get from fetal bovine sources mostly. I am pretty sure a muscle cell would require undefined growth factors and that the only way we can grow it efficiently is to grow it in serum, which sort of defeats the whole point of growing tissue in a vat: you may as well eat the cow, while you are bleeding it.
Muscle cells have a very hard time staying ‘differentiated’ (in their proper shape and form) in a dish. This patent does not seem to address at all how one would solve that issue. I think we are pretty far away from seeing this be an efficient process which beats growing a cow, killing it and eating it directly.
;j As far as kashrut is concerned, my understanding is that if the substance is derived enough from the original, it looses its original properties and can be eaten. I have no idea whether single cells would be considered to be derived. / ;j