Search

Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Cultured meat is a novel technology that uses tissue engineering to expand cells taken from animals to grow muscle for consumption as food. Those supporting the technology anticipate it could radically disrupt livestock farming with, they propose, significant benefits for the environment, human health, and animal wellbeing. This paper examines the emergence of this sector through the prism of one of the leading companies – Memphis Meats – in particular focusing upon their online recruitment activity in online videos. Founded in 2015, by 2020 they had announced investment of over $160 m to build a pilot-plant and recruit staff to bring cultured meat closer to commercialization. This paper argues the company’s recruitment videos work to enact what I term “producibility”, a concept aligned to existing work on “edibility”, that emphasizes the process of becoming that foodstuff (included novel foodstuffs) undergo. I deploy existing theoretical work on multiple categories of futures – big/little, individual/institutional/field – to analyze Memphis Meats’ online recruitment activity. I argue that, by entangling science and food futures, the company’s videos work to assert the status and politics of cultured meat, render it producible and edible, and articulate a novel and transformative food-professional identity: the cultured meat producer. Wellcome Trust [under Grant WT208198/Z/17/Z]

Cellular agriculture is the controlled and sustainable manufacture of agricultural products with cells and tissues without plant or animal involvement. Today, microorganisms cultivated in bioreactors already produce egg and milk proteins, sweeteners, and flavors for human nutrition as well as leather and fibers for shoes, bags, and textiles. Furthermore, plant cell and tissue cultures provide ingredients that stimulate the immune system and improve skin texture, with another precommercial cellular agriculture product, in vitro meat, currently receiving a great deal of attention. All these approaches could assist traditional agriculture in continuing to provide for the dietary requirements of a growing world population while freeing up important resources such as arable land. Despite early successes, challenges remain and are discussed in this review, with a focus on production processes involving plant and animal cell and tissue cultures.

The rapid development of technologies for cultured meat production has led to new challenges for producers regarding appropriate communication with future customers in order to deliver products to a viable market. Communication analysis of social media enables the identification of the key characteristics of the monitored topic, as well as the main areas of communication by individual users based on active digital footprints. This study aimed to identify the key characteristics of cultured meat based on communication analysis of the social network Twitter. Communication analysis was performed based on 36,356 Tweets posted by 4128 individual users. This analysis identified the following main communicated characteristics: clean meat, future meat, and sustainable meat. Latent Dittrich allocation identified five communication topics: (1) clean and sustainable products, (2) comparisons with plant-based protein and the impact on agribusiness, (3) positive environmental aspects, (4) cultured meat as an alternative protein, and (5) the regulation of cultured meat.

Cultured or “clean” meat (CM) is arguably a more ethical and environmentally sustainable alternative to farmed meat, but several potential psychological barriers exist to its acceptance in the marketplace. The perceptions of youth, as a specific consumer cohort, have not been reported to date despite young adults having more flexible dietary habits and being more likely to avoid red meat because of animal welfare and environmental concerns. Thus, youth represent a demographic that may be more accepting of CM and for whom the pro-environmental consequences of early adoption may be realized across an entire lifespan. In this study of college-aged Canadians (mean = 20 years), we examined perceptions of CM (mixed methods) and assessed the effects of educational messaging about its benefits and then naturalness framing on intention to consume it (within subjects quantitative experimental design). Results show that youth believe CM to be unnatural, ethical, and environmentally friendly, and that taste is an important element of acceptance. Linear regression showed that food disgust was a significant predictor for both intent to incorporate CM into regular diet and completely replace meat/meat substitutes with CM. In both instances, increasing food disgust was associated with lower behavioral intent. Environmental values were also a predictor for completely replacing meat/meat substitutes with CM, where it positively affected intent and showed a similar effect size to food disgust. Both messaging on the benefits of CM and naturalness framing increased intent to consume it across all three measures and by a similar magnitude [p (F) < 0.05]. These findings provide timely and actionable information for both CM producers and marketers and contribute to scholarship on the role of values and psychological traits in sustainable food choices.

Cultured meat aspires to be biologically equivalent to traditional meat. If cultured meat is to be consumed, sensorial (texture, color, flavor) and nutritional characteristics are of utmost importance. This paper compares cultured meat to traditional meat from a tissue engineering and meat technological point of view, focusing on several molecular, technological and sensorial attributes. We outline the challenges and future steps to be taken for cultured meat to mimic traditional meat as closely as possible. ispartof: Frontiers in Nutrition vol:7 ispartof: location:Switzerland status: published

Due to the considerable environmental impact and the controversial animal welfare associated with industrial meat production, combined with the ever-increasing global population and demand for meat products, sustainable production alternatives are indispensable. In 2013, the world's first laboratory grown hamburger made from cultured muscle cells was developed. However, coming at a price of $300.000, and being produced manually, substantial effort is still required to reach sustainable large-scale production. One of the main challenges is scalability. Microcarriers (MCs), offering a large surface/volume ratio, are the most promising candidates for upscaling muscle cell culture. However, although many MCs have been developed for cell lines and stem cells typically used in the medical field, none have been specifically developed for muscle stem cells and meat production. This paper aims to discuss the MCs' design criteria for skeletal muscle cell proliferation and subsequently for meat production based on three scenarios: (1) MCs are serving only as a temporary substrate for cell attachment and proliferation and therefore they need to be separated from the cells at some stage of the bioprocess, (2) MCs serve as a temporary substrate for cell proliferation but are degraded or dissolved during the bioprocess, and (3) MCs are embedded in the final product and therefore need to be edible. The particularities of each of these three bioprocesses will be discussed from the perspective of MCs as well as the feasibility of a one-step bioprocess. Each scenario presents advantages and drawbacks, which are discussed in detail, nevertheless the third scenario appears to be the most promising one for a production process. Indeed, using an edible material can limit or completely eliminate dissociation/degradation/separation steps and even promote organoleptic qualities when embedded in the final product. Edible microcarriers could also be used as a temporary substrate similarly to scenarios 1 and 2, which would limit the risk of non-edible residues.

Clean Meat is an emerging technology which promises to revolutionize the global food market. Alongside technological developments, the social impact of this innovation is being explored. Consumer acceptance will depend on multiple factors. For Orthodox Jews, the critical question will be whether the new food can be defined as kosher. In the absence of an exact precedent in Talmudic case law, scholars have begun to examine which set of principles would govern the status of the new meat product. Traditionally, meat is permitted for kosher consumption only when it derives from a kosher species which has been kosher slaughtered in accordance with strict regulations. There is room to suggest that this same set of rules would determine the status of any product derived through cellular agriculture, and thus the source cells would have to be extracted from a kosher species and only after kosher slaughter. Another approach would be to view the process as so different from the traditional growth of meat that it may be defined as kosher, even where traditional meat would not. Three determining factors will be: (1) the source of the original cells from which clean meat will be produced (animal species and cell type), (2) the nature of the growth medium, and (3) the exact nature of the process involved, which will determine whether the final product is considered a “new entity” or merely an “inheritance” of the starter cells. An authoritative ruling must be based on an in-depth appreciation of the scientific methods involved.

Background Cultured meat forms part of the emerging field of cellular agriculture. Still an early stage field it seeks to deliver products traditionally made through livestock rearing in novel forms that require no, or significantly reduced, animal involvement. Key examples include cultured meat, milk, egg white and leather. Here, we focus upon cultured meat and its technical, socio-political and regulatory challenges and opportunities. Scope and approach The paper reports the thinking of an interdisciplinary team, all of whom have been active in the field for a number of years. It draws heavily upon the published literature, as well as our own professional experience. This includes ongoing laboratory work to produce cultured meat and over seventy interviews with experts in the area conducted in the social science work. Key findings and conclusions Cultured meat is a promising, but early stage, technology with key technical challenges including cell source, culture media, mimicking the in-vivo myogenesis environment, animal-derived and synthetic materials, and bioprocessing for commercial-scale production. Analysis of the social context has too readily been reduced to ethics and consumer acceptance, and whilst these are key issues, the importance of the political and institutional forms a cultured meat industry might take must also be recognised, and how ambiguities shape any emergent regulatory system., Highlights • Cellular agriculture includes tissue engineering and fermentation based approaches. • Five key technical challenges with cultured meat production are made explicit. • Social issue studies disproportionately focus upon ethics and consumer acceptance. • New analysis of political, institutional and regulatory issues is required.

Increasing public awareness of foodborne illnesses, factory farming, and the ecological footprint of the meat industry, has generated the need for animal-free meat alternatives. In the last decade, scientists have begun to leverage the knowledge and tools accumulated in the fields of stem cells and tissue engineering toward the development of cell-based meat (i.e., clean meat). In tissue engineering, the physical and biochemical features of the native tissue can be mimicked; cells and biomaterials are integrated under suitable culture conditions to form mature tissues. More specifically, in skeletal muscle tissue engineering, a plurality of cell types can be co-cultured on a 3D scaffold to generate muscle fibers, blood vessels and a dense extracellular matrix (ECM). This review focuses on tissue engineering of skeletal muscle and the adjustments needed for clean meat development. We discuss the skeletal muscle structure and composition, and elaborate on cell types from farm animals that have the potential to recapitulate the muscle ECM, blood vessels, muscle fibers and fat deposits. We also review relevant biomaterials, primarily for fabricating scaffolds that can mimic the intramuscular connective tissues, as well as gene expression studies on the biological pathways that influence meat quality.

Recent years have seen increasing interest in research on consumer acceptance of clean meat. Whilst some consumers are enthusiastic about the prospect of reducing the health risks, environmental harms, and animal welfare implications associated with conventional meat production, others have concerns about the product’s taste, price, safety, and naturalness. Some evidence suggests that acceptance of clean meat will vary substantially across cultures, though there is currently a lack of quantitative research in Asia and country comparisons on this topic. Both are likely to be important areas given the forecasted increase in meat consumption in developing countries. Participants (n = 3,030) were recruited through the research panel CINT to take an online questionnaire about clean meat and plant-based meat. The participants were representative of China, India, and the U.S. in terms of age and gender, though participants in India and China were disproportionately urban, high income, and well educated. As well as clean meat, participants were asked about plant-based meat, a conceptually similar product with similar potential to displace demand for conventional meat. They also answered the Meat Attachment Questionnaire and the Food Neophobia Scale. We compared these variables between countries, and used regression models to identify which demographic and attitudinal factors predicted purchase intent towards both products. We found significantly higher acceptance of clean and plant-based meat in India and China compared to the USA. We also found significantly higher food neophobia and significantly lower meat attachment in India compared to China and the USA. We identified several demographic patterns of clean and plant-based meat acceptance, as well as which beliefs were important predictors of acceptance within each country. In particular, higher familiarity predicted higher acceptance of plant-based and clean meat across all countries. We found high levels of acceptance of clean meat in the three most populous countries worldwide, and with even higher levels of acceptance in China and India compared to the USA. These results underline the importance of clean meat producers exploring new markets for their products, especially as meat consumption in developing countries continues to rise.

Cultured/clean/cell-based meat (CM) now has a near two decade history of laboratory research, commencing with the early NASA-funded work at Touro College and the bioarts practice of the Tissue Culture and Art project. Across this period the field, or as it is now more commonly termed, the “space,” has developed significantly while promoting different visions for what CM is and can do, and the best mechanisms for delivery. Here we both analyse and critically engage with this near-twenty year period as a productive provocation to those engaged with CM, or considering becoming so. This paper is not a history of the field, and does not offer a comprehensive timeline. Instead it identifies significant activities, transitions, and moments in which key meanings and practices have taken form or exerted influence. We do this through analyzing two related themes: the CM “institutional context” and the CM “interpretative package.” The former, the institutional context, refers to events and infrastructures that have come into being to support and shape the CM field, including university activities, conferences, third sector groups, various potential funding mechanisms, and the establishment of a start-up sector. The latter, the interpretative package, refers to the constellation of factors that shape or assert how CM should be understood, including the various names used to describe it, accounts of what it will achieve, and most recently, the emergent regulatory discussions that frame its legal standing. Across the paper we argue it is productive to think of the CM community in terms of a first and second wave. The first wave was more university-based and broadly covers the period from the millennium until around the 2013 cultured burger event. The second wave saw the increasing prevalence of a start-up culture and the circuits of venture capital interest that support it. Through this analysis we seek to provoke further reflection upon how the CM community has come to be as it is, and how this could develop in the future. Economic and Social Research Council; The Seventh Framework Programme; Wellcome Trust; Centre for Society and Genomics Visiting Scholarship; King's College London; KCL Mary Clark Travel Bursary; Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment and People–LEAP); The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research; Ministry of Economic Affairs