REPORT
LAB-GROWN MEAT COULD BECOME THE PROTEIN SOURCE OF THE FUTURE.
In a small office three floors above the lobby of the busy Maastricht University Medical Centre, the world’s leading scientist specialising in stem cell meat is eating his lunch pack. The modest surroundings do not produce the impression that this man is the founding father of a brand new category of meat, which could revolutionise the food industry and ensure the future protein supply of the world. Even the lunch pack is remarkably uninspiring: two slices of toast bread with a slice of cheese in between.
Science Illustrated has gone to the Netherlands to visit Professor Mark Post, who heads Maastricht University's Department of Physiology and is the man behind the world’s first stem cell burger, which was cooked and consumed in front of the world press in 2013. Since then, only 15 people have had the pleasure of tasting a piece of stem cell meat from Mark Post’s lab, but that will probably very soon change. Right now, the professor is working on removing his stems cells from small culture dishes, converting cell cultures into meat in huge bioreactors of up to 25,000 litres instead.
STEM CELL MEAT COULD SAVE US
Stem cells are undifferentiated cells, i.e. they have the potential to develop into all types of cells in the body, such as nerve cells, skin cells, or bone cells. Generally, they can be divided into two types: embryonic stem
cells, which only exist in very young embryos, and adult stem cells, which exist in all tissue throughout life. Adult stem cells are ready to replace dead cells in the body, but unlike embryonic stem cells, they can only develop into cell types that already exist in the tissue in which they live. Adult stem cells in muscle tissue will always produce muscle cells and so, they are ideal for Mark Post’s growth process. Stem cells can divide almost indefinitely – in theory, one stem cell could become one quintillion muscle cells or 10 tonnes of meat.
Mark Post has obviously explained the problem of beef cattle many times before:
“Conventional meat production causes so much pollution that a vegetarian in a large, petrol-guzzling SUV is actually better for the environment than a meat eater on a bicycle. And there will be many more meat eaters in the future, so if we do not develop new alternatives now, we will soon have major problems,” Mark Post says.
The environmental advantages of stem cells are obvious. According to a study by the University of Oxford, the production of labgrown meat emits 96 % less greenhouse gas, takes up 99 % less land, and requires up to 45 % less energy than beef cattle breeding.
FROM ABATTOIRS TO "BREWERIES"
“Imagine a brewery. Large tanks with the volume of half an Olympic swimming pool,” Mark Post explains his vision of the future production of stem cell meat. He shows me a small, 1.5 l container with something that looks like a miniature ship's propeller at the bottom. The container is a prototype of a
bioreactor, in which he and his team of four scientists are testing their cell cultures.
Preparing for the first "performance" in 2013, the team spent three months producing two burgers, which each consisted of approximately 30 billion muscle cells. All individual cells were grown in culture dishes, which were manually filled with individual stem cells and a nutrient fluid including vitamins, minerals, and sugar for the cells to feed on. The elaborate process meant that the price of one burger was $340,000.
With the bioreactors, the process will be utterly different, Mark Post promises. In a culture dish, the cells can only grow in one layer, but the large bioreactors involve an extra dimension. The problem is that the cells need a surface to grow on, and the scientists intend to solve it by filling the nutrient fluid with microparticles for the cells to grow on, while the ship's propeller makes sure to circulate nutrients to all the cells of the liquid.
According to plan, the scientists will move from the small prototype of 1.5 l to bioreactors of 25,000 l over a period of four years. One such bioreactor would be able to supply 10,000 people with meat at a price of about DKK 250 per 500 g. Considering the high price, Mark Post expects expensive restaurants to be the first to buy the new type of meat, but within a period of eight years, the new method will be so efficient that the stem cell burgers will be cheaper than ordinary ones.
WHO WOULD EAT LAB MEAT?
In principle, there is no difference between the process taking place inside a cow and the one that Mark Post is carrying out with the cells in the lab. Nevertheless, one of the major challenges facing his project is the outside world’s immediate disgust concerning labgrown food – the disgust factor, as he calls it. However, the disgust factor is all about emotions, he explains, and they can be changed.
In the Netherlands, you can buy a snack called frikandel – a type of deep-fried sausage consisting of a mixture of dubious meat scraps, which often come from different animals. When Mark Post lectures about stem cell meat, he asks the members of the audience who admit to be frikandel eaters if they know what the snack is made of.
“Many of them do not know, and they do not want to know, which is very interesting. It proves that we are prepared to eat things we do not know what is – provided we are familiar with the taste and know that it is harmless. I do not see why the same should not be true for stem cell meat.”