Fake moos! But beef from a lab may save us all

What is meat? An odd question, you might think, for we are all familiar with steaks, chops and sausages and the animals from which they come. But what if the meat on your plate came not from an animal but from a laboratory, and what if you couldn’t tell the difference? Would you want to eat it?

These aren’t academic questions, for as Chase Purdy explains in this up-to-theminute survey of the latest trends in food technology, we are on the brink of a revolution that could transform not just what we put on our plates but how we see and manage the world around us.

The global meat market is worth more than $ 1 trillion a year, and putting all that food on our plates involves the slaughter of 65 billion animals, not including fish. These animals consume more than their own weight in plant matter before they can be eaten and they are responsible for 14 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. With the UN forecasting that agricultural production will have to rise by 70 per cent by 2050 just to keep pace with rising populations, something’s going to have to give.

This revolution will happen sooner than we think. Back in 2013 it cost more than $1 million to grow a pound of ‘cellular meat’ in a laboratory, but the price has now fallen to $50 and it will continue to drop rapidly as investment increases and research advances. Cells taken from living animals are grown using liquid nutrients in bioreactors, which resemble large beer vats. The finished product doesn’t yet taste as good as the real thing, but it’s getting there.

The existing meat industry isn’t happy about this. In America powerful lobby groups are agitating against what they disparagingly call ‘ fake meat’. Food regulators may also delay the arrival of lab- grown products on supermarket shelves, but so much money is being invested, and the potential economic and environmental benefits are so huge, that it’s bound to happen. And there’s another very pressing reason why we should take it seriously. Cellular meat grown in sterile laboratory conditions is free of harmful pathogens. With the world in the grip of a deadly pandemic, that is surely something worthy of attention.