Upside Foods, which produces meat from cells rather than from slain animals, has successfully passed its first premarket evaluation by the Food and Drug Administration. It came to the conclusion that there were “no additional concerns” regarding the security of the company’s chicken production process. Although Upside Foods still needs Department of Agriculture certification before it can sell its chicken products in restaurants and stores, it represents a significant advancement in the development of a more moral and healthful kind of meat.
Naturally, not everyone supports chickenless chicken. Organizations that aim to safeguard human health have expressed concerns about cell-cultured beef, and despite the FDA’s tentative clearance, some people are still skeptical. Before deciding whether cell-cultured beef is safe for human eating, the Center for Food Safety, for instance, branded the FDA’s evaluation “grossly insufficient” in a news release and urged “additional study and more transparent data.”
Additionally, some members of the general public feel uncomfortable with cell-cultured beef. According to polls of public opinion, customers are hesitant to embrace cell-cultured beef as a healthy food alternative, especially older and less educated buyers.
Although caution isn’t always a bad thing, these criticisms about cell-cultured meat are really simply neophobia that hasn’t been given much of a chance to hide. Meat that has been grown in labs rather than on farms is true. However, these opponents are blind to the fact that the great majority of beef consumed in the U.S. today is anything from “natural.”
To begin with, 99% of animals bred for food reside on factory farms, according to Sentience Institute’s study of USDA Census of Agriculture statistics. These farms frequently provide modest dosages of antibiotics to their cattle as a preventative step against disease. This is because the animals are so closely packed together that illnesses easily spread from one to another.
Then there is the peculiar diet that these animals follow. For instance, cows no longer see as much grass as they formerly did; instead, they are fed grain in feedlots where they are become obese before being slaughtered.
Even the animals themselves have undergone extensive genetic engineering, so they are very different from the foods our grandparents consumed as children. The chickens, cows, pigs, and even the fish we eat today are all the results of this process. When preparing to eat turkey on Thursday for Thanksgiving, keep in mind that the birds are not only artificially inseminated; they are also carefully bred and larger than their wild relatives.
It’s difficult to claim that the pharmaceutical-filled, corn-fed, genetically modified, and artificially inseminated animals kept on the typical farm today are in any way “natural.”
It should come as no surprise that some animal rights advocates are against cell-cultured meat, but for a totally different reason: because starting cells for cell cultivation must be obtained from living animals, cell-cultured meat isn’t entirely cruelty-free. This has some validity. Many businesses at the forefront of cell-cultured meat research employ fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is taken from pregnant cow fetuses after the mother is killed. Early in the production process, Upside Foods employs a tiny quantity of FBS together with chicken cells taken from the muscle and fertilized eggs of real chickens to maintain cell proliferation and viability.
But compared to conventional livestock rearing and slaughter, the method used by Upside Foods and many of its competitors in the business today is still incredibly animal-friendly. FBS is taken from animals after they have been killed, but getting it from a muscle or fertilized egg is similar to taking a biopsy; while this may be moderately painful for the animal, it is scarcely comparable to the brutality and mutilation farmed animals endure.
The procedure of creating a cell line from a biopsy, which the business claims can create enough meat “for years, if not decades to come,” also eliminates the need for taking additional cell samples from animals.
But compared to conventional livestock rearing and slaughter, the method used by Upside Foods and many of its competitors in the business today is still incredibly animal-friendly. FBS is taken from animals after they have been killed, but getting it from a muscle or fertilized egg is similar to taking a biopsy; while this may be moderately painful for the animal, it is scarcely comparable to the brutality and mutilation farmed animals endure.
The procedure of creating a cell line from a biopsy, which the business claims can create enough meat “for years, if not decades to come,” also eliminates the need for taking additional cell samples from animals.
It is true that switching from eating bacon and wings to apples and kale will lower a person’s risk of diet-related diseases like heart disease, some forms of cancer, diabetes, and obesity. However, in practice, individuals are unwilling. Authorities on public health have been urging people to consume less meat and more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes for decades. I even established the Reducetarian Foundation as a nonprofit with that objective in mind.
But I’ve come to terms with the fact that cultural customs, habits, and taste preferences are essentially insurmountable. If they weren’t, and people only made sensible eating decisions based on health, salads rather than hamburgers would be the national meal of the United States. Health advocates should embrace cell-cultured meat because it has the same public health advantages as stopping industrial farming, such as lowering air and water pollution, antibiotic resistance, and zoonotic illness.
Additionally, cell-cultured meat may eventually become more nutrient-dense than meat from killed animals. “Control over cell biology… allows for the fine tuning of nutritional properties to improve human health,” a group of scientists wrote in a paper published in 2022. “Muscle and fat cells can be engineered to produce essential nutrients like anti-oxidative carotenoids that would otherwise not be found (or only at low concentrations) in conventional meat.”
The development of cell-cultured meat is expected to encounter a variety of challenges, as is the case with any new technology. However, many of the criticisms are either unconvincing, irrational, or simply naïve. No, cell-cultured meat isn’t flawless as we now understand it. But it’s definitely worth a shot because it may prevent the misery of billions of animals and even enhance public health.