Sonja Bettel
"It's conceivable that clean meat can also be made healthier than natural meat."
In August 2013 in London in front of cameras and in the presence of 200 journalists the most expensive burger was fried and tasted. 250.000 pounds, it was reported at the time, cost the carefully roasted meat loaf. Not because it came from a Kobe cattle that had been stroked to death, but because a group of Dutch scientists worked for several years on breeding this piece of beef in the lab. They want to revolutionize the meat production of the future and save life on planet earth. In a few years, a hamburger made from cultured beef could cost just ten euros or less and taste as we are used to.
clean meat: the artificial meat from the Petri dish
The idea of raising meat in the Petri dish was already made by British statesman Winston Churchill. In December 1931 he speculated in an article in the "Strand Magazine" about the future: It is absurd that we raise a whole chicken, if we only want to eat the chest or leg, in about 50 years we would be able to breed them in a medium ,
At the beginning of the 2000, retired businessman Willem van Ellen encouraged researchers from the Universities of Amsterdam, Eindhoven and Utrecht and a Dutch meat processing company to engage in the development of in vitro meat. The InVitroMeat project received state funding from 2004 to 2009. Mark Post, a vascular biologist at the University of Maastricht, was so fascinated by the idea that he stuck to it. The first tasting of his laboratory burgers in August 2013 was attended by US journalist Josh Schonwald and Austrian nutrition scientist and food trend researcher Hanni Rützler.
The burger was already very close to the taste of naturally grown meat, they agreed, but somewhat dry. It lacked the fat, which gives juiciness and flavor. Visually, you could see no difference to conventional Faschiertem, even when roasting the meat behaved as you are used to. It had been propagated from individual cells of a bovine muscle for weeks on nutrient solution in laboratory bottles.
For the environment and conscience
But why the whole effort? On the one hand, for reasons of environmental and climate protection. To produce one kilogram of beef, you need 15.000 liters of water. According to estimates by the World Health Organization, 70 percent of agricultural land is used for meat production, which accounts for 15 to 20 percent of greenhouse gases. By the year 2050, meat production could increase worldwide by 70 percent, because with prosperity and increase of the world population also the hunger for meat grows.
For Kurt Schmidinger, activist at Association against animal factories and head of the initiative "Future Food - meat without animal husbandry"The ethical aspect is equally important:" Worldwide, more than 65 billions of animals are killed every year for nutrition. In order to produce one calorie of meat, seven calories of animal feed must be used and large amounts of feces and wastewater are produced. "So a purely plant-based diet that Kurt Schmidinger operates would supply far more people, avoid animal suffering and protect the environment. However, Kurt Schmidinger, who studied geophysics and works in the IT industry, is a realist: "Already in the 90 years, I thought it would be good to be able to artificially breed meat for people who do not want to do without it "Time and again he was looking for such opportunities, but it was not until 2008 that the first in vitro meat congress took place in Norway.
Schmidinger collected information and wrote a doctoral thesis at the Department of Food Science at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences. On the website futurefood.org he publishes on alternatives to meat consumption, including "cultured meat" or "clean meat", as in vitro meat is now called for reasons of better marketability.
The majority of consumers are currently skeptical about the meat from the test tube or reject it completely. However, this could change as market introduction becomes more tangible and more is known about the methods of production, the benefits and the taste of the cultured meat.
clean meat - Better and cheaper
At the beginning of 2010, the Dutch scientists succeeded for the first time in growing larger quantities of muscle tissue from a cow's stem cells. The problem was that muscle cells in the living organism usually need exercise to grow properly. The excitation of the cells by surges and the movement of the laboratory containers, however, cost a lot of energy. Meanwhile, the researchers can make the meat out myoblasts (Muscle forming precursor cells) and also grow fat with less energy expenditure, and they could replace the serum from unborn calves, which was initially used as a nutrient solution by another medium.
It is conceivable that "clean meat" is also made healthier than natural meat. Thus, it is conceivable that the proportion of fat is reduced or increased in healthy Omega 3 fatty acids. In addition, pathogens in the meat could be largely prevented without even using antibiotics.
But it will take a few more years to produce on an industrial scale. However, the Dutch researchers are no longer working alone in this field. In the US and Israel, startups are working on meat and fish cultivation methods, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin and Richard Branson, the multinational food company Cargill and the German PHW Group (including Wiesenhof poultry) have provided millions of dollars and euros for it. One can therefore assume that cultivated meat has the potential for a huge deal.
Whether the cultivation of meat improves or worsens global distributive justice will be shown. In any case, a decentralized production is conceivable for the Dutch researcher Mark Post: communities would keep and care for a few animals, from which stem cells would be taken from time to time, and then use it to cultivate meat in a facility. In order to meet the religious requirements of Jews or Muslims, an animal could also be killed, but it could then be used to cultivate a multiple of kosher or halal meat.
Vegan: world food entirely without animal suffering?
Photo / Video: PA Wire.
