Twenty years from now, if you enter the supermarket you would have the choice between two products that are identical. One is made in an animal, it now has this label on it that animals have suffered or have been killed for this product. It has an eco text because it’s bad for the environment and it’s exactly the same as an alternative product that has been made in a lab. It tastes the same, and is the same quality; it has the same price or is even cheaper. — Dr. Mark Post, unveiling a synthetic burger to journalists in London, England. environment becomes a question of ethics. the demand for meat is set to double. \. THE M00 KID IN TOWN In 2008 Dr. Mark Post, a cardiovascular biologist from Maastricht University in Maastricht, Netherlands, began working on an unusual endeavour to find a scientific solution to the growing ethical debates on meat production. In August 2013, at a special event in London, England, the fruits of his lab work were brought to the table accompanied by a bun, sliced tomato, and romaine lettuce—it was the unveiling of the first in-vitro hamburger. “Meat is muscle, muscle from an animal. By our technology we actually are producing meat—it’s just not in a cow,’ Post explains in a video on his website, CulturedBeef-net. The patty was produced using stem cells from cow shoulder muscle found at a slaughterhouse. The cells were multiplied and placed in petri dishes where they would become muscle cells, slowly becoming tiny strips of muscle fibre. Over 20,000 strips were used to make the five-ounce patty which was first tasted by Josh Schonwald, the author of The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food and Hanni Rutzler, a nutritionist and food trend expert. Although the burger was criticized for being dry—due largely to the burger containing absolutely no fat—and falling short of flavourful, Schonwald remarked on the similarity to its traditionally farmed counterpart. He said, “The mouth feel is like meat. I miss the fat, there’s a leanness to it, but the general bite feels like a hamburger.” Receiving high marks from the test audience in achieving the appropriate burger texture, both tasters skipped the bun and fixings to get the full experience of the first lab-grown burger. And scientists are not overly concerned about the initial criticisms on flavour with experts weighing that some stem cells could be grown into fat cells which help flavour meat, instead of just muscle. Dr. Post, along with his team of scientists from Maastricht University, developed the burger with the hope that the ability to grow meat in labs could combat world hunger and climate change simultaneously. With a two-year project dedicated to creating the one beef patty, plus required testing of the tissue, this is likely the most expensive hamburger ever. Sporting a price tag of $325,000, the creation was a landmark among the science community and a growing audience of futurists interested in food. UN UU However, some still find something unsettling about ingesting a meat product made entirely in a lab, even if the final product is genetically identical; it just came about through an entirely different, if not immensely more complex, process. What is disturbing is that humans are more easily off-put by a man-made product with the same nutritional value than by the conditions of the product before it is packaged. Creating a meat product that can label itself cruelty-free is revolutionary. Although it’s still years away from being available on the consumer market, the debut of the in- consumption worldwide has increased considerably over the past four decades, making sustainability of livestock systems a growing challenge. The average Canadian consumes upwards of 36 kg of red meat and poultry per year, or a little over an average of 100 grams per day. “Around the world, millions of people don’t get enough protein,’ reads a report from the Harvard School of Public Health. The report goes on to say that while sources of protein originating from animals will deliver the amino acids one requires, other protein sources often lack some. It warns that vegetarians need to be aware of this, but that eating a variety of protein vegetables and fruit will close that nutritional gap. Ethically, concerns arise not just from the right to kill animals for meat when less expensive and equally nutritious alternatives are readily available, but also from the resources going to the production of meat products. Cars and electric power are two culprits quickly named when the discussion of “greening” our future is on the table, but the foods we eat—meat in particular—tend to slip away from the discussion. According to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), our meat-centred diets cause more greenhouse gases (GHG)—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—than transportation or the electric power industry. And red meat has the worst reputation; beef production contributes more than 13 times as much to GHG emissions as is emitted from poultry production. With livestock production levels in 2006 contributing around 14 per cent of the 33 billion tonnes (in 2013 humanity hit the 36 tonne mark) of GHG worldwide, the amount of energy required for a simple half-pound of ground beef is enough to make people gawk—yet not enough to consider removing meat from their diet altogether. Most don't associate store-bought steak with costs such as transportation, refrigeration, and fuelling farm equipment. The relationship people have cemented between themselves and a meat-based diet dates backs to living in caves in fur pelt loin-cloths. The business of eating meat has been evolving alongside the human race as it grows and the demands flow and ebb. Humans have evolved to consume meat and the positives that have been a result of this relationship are notably profound. Meat has been a direct contributor to the increase in complexity and relative size of the brain as well as physical growth. But in 2014, food farming has become a mega-industry; sustaining a healthy relationship with meat without compromising an already fragile T here is a large disconnect between the meat we purchase at the grocery store and the process it took to get there, neatly wrapped in saran and Styrofoam. Meat With meat consumption on the rise, in turn there has been an increase in the mass-scale feed industry. More animals for slaughter means that a demand for their food source also needs to be met. Meat has thus become an environmentally expensive food. Demanding not only resources like grain, water, fertilizers, energy, and fuel—cattle demand large areas of land. With production methods trying desperately to meet the rising demand there is an overwhelming potential for a compromised final product. With the global population set to rise from seven- to nine-billion people in 2050, ~ A vitro burger brings factory farming and animal cruelty back into the spotlight. Although moral views on killing animals are divided, there is a general consensus that suffering is an evil. A future with the possibility of cultured meat being made available to the marketplace has a potential impact in replacing old school livestock practices. The current meat production systems in North America have led to its fair share of unnatural problems including food-borne illness. Removing the animal itself from the equation may leave some vegetarians morally at a loss. The manner in which we think of lab-grown food is what stands in the way of our appetite. “In theory, it’s a much better quality burger. Once you get over the lab-grown gross factor, it’s actually quite exciting. No more ground up cow anus or testicle in your burger. Just lovely bits of muscle from an organic cow,” said Nathan Gray, a journalist with FoodNavigator.com. A squeamish feeling may linger when posed with a patty from a petri dish offered by a scientist in a lab coat as opposed to a butcher in a blood stained apron. Apprehension is a basic human instinct. The concern about the hamburger is whether or not it’s natural. Although nature is not always synonymous with goodness, what makes something “natural” is hard to define. With science making leaps and bounds, the in-vitro burger is a prime example of the existential issues and ethical quandaries people may face; the definition of “natural” itself may evolve. Arguably, creating cultured meat is less unnatural than raising farm animals in intensive farming confinement systems, injecting them with hormones, and feeding them artificial diets. The “father of animal liberation” Peter Singer has praised the recent effort to produce cultured meat. “My own view is that being a vegetarian or vegan is not an end in itself, but a means towards reducing both human and animal suffering, and leaving a habitable planet to future generations,’ wrote Singer in a commentary piece in the Guardian. “If in-vitro meat becomes commercially available, I will be pleased to try it.” The in-vitro hamburger was still just a proof of concept and an exciting step towards the future of our foods. Made up solely of muscle fibre, the range of nutrients in cultured meat would be different from the conventional option. Dr. Post’s creation included no growth hormones, which have already been banned in the European Union but are still approved in Canada and the US, nor did it include the residue of pesticides, de-wormers or tranquilizers. According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 72 per cent of antibiotic sales in the country are given to animals in factory farms. Yet there are still ethical implications on society by embracing cultured meat, due in large part to the controversial nature of using stem- cells. The main concern is whether society itself is becoming out of touch with nature and a diminishing relationship within our natural community. Surely there will be unexpected impacts caused by something as seemingly innocent as a five-ounce burger patty—yet it’s exciting when there can be outstanding positives to an industry that is struggling to meet a demand that compromises environments for both the animals and humans involved. That includes you.