Re: Cultivated meat: Lab-grown meat without killing animals

[Soylent Green]

Kurt Nicklas <nambla...@gop.org> wrote in
news:sqq125$56q$3...@news.dns-netz.com:

> Feed it to liberals. Kill them off.

For thousands of years, humans have slaughtered animals for meat. But Dr.
Uma Valeti dreamt of a different way: eating chicken without having to
kill a chicken. He figured out how to "grow" meat directly from animal
cells.

It's completely different from the meat alternatives Beyond Meat or
Impossible, which are made from plant-based ingredients, including
vegetable proteins. "This is real meat, no compromise, made in front of
you," Valeti said.

His company, Upside Foods, just received clearance from the USDA to start
selling their meat, made at a production center in Emeryville, California.
Here, the chicken is grown in tanks. "We'll be able to produce 50,000 to
75,000 pounds of meat every year, right away," he said.

The process begins with animal cells that have been extracted from an egg
or live chicken. The cells are frozen in tiny, thimble-size vials. "All
the cells that make the cut of high-quality cells make it into this seed
lab," Valeti said. "And from that small amount, we can grow thousands of
pounds of meat."

Coaxing the cells to multiply and grow into meat is part alchemy. In his
cultivator, a turbine mixes in all the food the cells need to grow: amino
acids, fats, vitamins. "The idea really is when an animal is alive,
there's blood circulating, constantly something is moving around in the
animal's body, touching the cells and animal's body. We're just recreating
that."

Valeti said that in about 10 days, these cells have grown into chicken
that's ready to cook.

What was, until recently, considered science fiction, is now, said Valeti,
"like a dream come true."

Growing up in India, his big dream was to become a cardiologist, a dream
he realized with the help of his parents. "They always knew my goal in
life was to become a cardiologist," he said. "And I only wanted to train
at the Mayo Clinic. And I trained at the Mayo Clinic. It was not easy to
get there. And it was a lot of work."

Working with heart attack patients, his team set out to use stem cells to
re-grow heart muscle. And he figured, why not grow animal meat in a
similar way? He said, "I realized that we were raising 70 billion animals
every year to feed about seven billion people. And when I looked at the
environmental impact of that, it was an astronomical impact. And the
amount of feed that goes to feed animals, to feed us, that equation just
seemed wrong."

Livestock is responsible for an estimated one-third of all human-caused
methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas. And so, though Valeti loved
to eat meat, he had become a vegetarian. But the scientist in him saw a
solution. And his father, a veterinarian who loved animals, was an early
supporter.

It wasn't just his dad who saw the opportunity; the very first venture
capitalist that Valeti wrote to said yes. "I did not even know what a VC
meant at that point!" Valeti said.

That was about eight years ago. Now, according to Bruce Friedrich, head of
the non-profit Good Food Institute, which promotes alternative proteins,
there's nearly $3 billion invested in more than 100 cultivated meat start-
ups around the globe, such as Aleph Farms, Believer, Good Meat, Balletic
Foods, Blue Nalu, and Meatable.

"Even companies like Tyson and Cargill, the two largest meat companies in
the United States, they have both invested in two different cultivated
meat companies," said Friedrich.

A 2022 report from Boston Consulting Group estimates that if just 11% of
meat were swapped for protein alternatives (like cultivated meat) by 2035,
it could have the same environmental impact as switching 95% of airplanes
to renewable energy.

Friedrich said, "Cultivated meat requires a fraction of the land, requires
a fraction of the water, doesn't require antibiotics in the production.
This is just a whole new way of making the exact same meat that people
love."

Not everyone is convinced. Critics say whether cultivated meat can cut
carbon dioxide emissions depends, in part, on whether its production
facilities are powered by renewable fuel. A 2023 University of California,
Davis report suggests that laboratory-grown meat using pharmaceutical-
grade processes (including highly refined or purified growth media) that
are energy-intensive is potentially worse for the environment.

The meat industry currently has the efficiency of its large scale.
Friedrich said that cultivated meat must compete on both taste and price:
"Cultivated meat already competes on taste, it's already there. But it's
got a ways to go before it competes on price. It needs to scale up."

Until then, it will be priced at a premium.

Aubrey got a taste of Upside's chicken, sampling a dish of chicken
piccata, pan seared with white wine, lemon and butter.

"Definitely the texture of chicken," she said. "And it tastes just like
chicken."

"It is chicken," Valeti said. "Chicken without killing a chicken."

You can't buy Upside's meat in grocery stores, yet. But just last weekend,
Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn served it to customers for the first
time ever in her San Francisco restaurant, Bar Crenn.

For Valeti, Upside's success is bittersweet. He lost his father to COVID
just as he struggled to get the company off the ground. "I feel my dad's
presence every day in my life," he said. "I think he's seen me growing up
and wanting to go after things that matter a lot. So, I think he's there
cheering."

It was tough to walk away from his promising career in medicine. But
Valeti says he's not looking back. "This seems very unreasonable to
everybody in the world," he said. "But I think we'll need people who are
unreasonable to be able to change what we don't like in this world."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cultivated-meat-grown-in-a-lab/