The Lab-grown meat debate lacks imagination

Today I visited my local supermarket and found no lab-grown meat in the store. This of course is the case in any supermarket in the world. However, there are already two states that have banned it. Florida says it’s “unlawful for any person to manufacture for sale, sell, keep, offer for sale, or distribute cultured meat”. If you do it anyway, you could face 60 days in jail. In Alabama, it can go up to 90 days.

Reasons given are ethical and safety in nature, but everyone knows that this is mainly for political reasons and to protect the meat industry. It doesn’t matter, because it leaves more opportunities in other parts of the world to develop cultured meat. In 2023, the Dutch government allowed tasting trials. And Bar Crenn in San Francisco and Huber’s Bistro in Singapore are already serving lab-grown chicken on a limited basis.

The question is why do we need lab grown meat?

Aren’t there already a lot of meat alternatives you can buy at your local supermarket? Yes, and especially in the last few years it has really taken off. More and more people have days when they don’t eat meat. Sometimes they just eat vegetables, and sometimes they try veggie meat.

It’s very rational to choose these, mostly soy-based, alternatives. It’s better for the environment, it’s better for animal welfare, it reduces disease (especially heart disease), and increasingly it’s the cheaper option.

Thinking with our gut

It may be a rational choice, but eating is not about the ratio. It’s deep in our culture. Dishes are created around meat. It’s also about sitting around the grill with family and friends.

And most of all, meat is about taste.

I’ve been a vegetarian for 22 years now. I became one for animal welfare and environmental reasons. Still, a lot of people make the mistake of saying, “You don’t like meat”. I don’t like meat? I love meat! I just choose to eat vegetarian alternatives.

Over the years, I have tried several veggie brands that have come on the market, such as Garden Gourmet, The Vegetarian Butcher, Beyond Meat, and Impossible Burger. They’re OK. They now look more like meat, and the texture is more like meat. They’re still not completely meat, and they certainly don’t taste like meat. Often I just skip the alternatives or mask them with herbs and sauces.

The molecular level

Lab-grown meat would change all that. It’s literally meat at the molecular level. They’ve been researching it for over a decade. In 2013, the first lab-grown hamburger was introduced, and it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. In the ten years that followed, this may have been reduced to $50, and as noted, lab-grown chicken is already available in limited quantities. There will be more trials in the coming years, and we will see when it becomes widely available.

I think there will come a time when we will look back on a time when animals were kept on an industrial scale as we look back on slavery in the days of colonization. Until then, more than 200 billion chickens are slaughtered every year. That’s more than the number of people who have died in all of human history. From the time the first humans walked upright to those who have died today. Can you imagine that?

Imagine

For now, the debate on lab-grown meat will continue. A debate about the impact for farmers, environment, animals, costs and taste.

In all of this debates on lab-grown meat there is on thing missing:

imagination.

Think of the meat alternatives available in the supermarket, these are mainly burgers, mince pies, nuggets and so on. The same ‘meat’ products that we get from animals. The same thing is now already happening with lab-grown meat. The first lab-grown meat was a burger, and now it’s chicken.

Here in the Netherlands, and in most other countries burgers, sausages and chicken make up the majority of both meat and vegetarian meat. The question is why? Why do we need to stick with familiar, but boring choices of meats?

The real gourmets, of course, also try different things like

• Wild deer
• American Wagyu
• Porterhouse
• Kangeroo filet
• Lobster

What these foods have in common is that they take the best part of the animal, the most tender part. However, this has some disadvantages, the animals must be raised and fed in a certain way. Meat from wild animals tastes different because they live and roam in the wild.

The other disadvantage is that this is only the “best” part of the animal. The most expensive beef is naturally tender and comes from the muscles high up on the animal — beef rib and loin. Tenderloin, striploin, ribeye, and porterhouse steak are part of this exclusive category. Unfortunately, these cuts make up only 8% of the carcass.

The third drawback is that these animals are only raised in certain parts of the world. If I have to eat kangaroo meat in the Netherlands, it comes from Australia, Kobe beef from Japan, and lomo (tenderloin) from Argentina.

The price we want to pay

All these exclusive meats and fish come at a price. So you can’t find them in the supermarket, but only in exclusive restaurants. Often eaten by rich people. But imagine this? At the molecular level, a tenderloin is not that different from a chicken.

So what if this research on cultured meat were to focus on more exotic meats? Then our supermarkets of the future could look like this:

• Wagyu steaks
• Kobe beef
• Matsusaka Beef
• Moose Tenderloin
• Jamón Ibérico de Bellota
• Filet Mignon
• Porterhouse
• Mountain sheep
• Caribou Steak
• Axis deer
• Kangeroo filet
• Wallaby
• Ring-necked pheasant
• Antelope
• Smoked eel
• American Glass Eel
• Sukiyabashi Jiro Tuna
• Bluefin Tuna
• Tiger fish
• Diver scallops
• Orange lobster (rare lobster)
• Wild Alaskan King Salmon
• Swordfish
• Sable fish (black cod)
• Humphead Wrasse
• Zebra lionfish
• Ortolan Bunting (Songbird eaten in France, now illigal)
• Dolphin meat
• Turtle meat
• Fugu (Pufferfish)
• Giant Salamander

Well, I think you get the point. Lab-grown food could specifically produce a high variety of the best parts of an animal. Parts that most of us haven’t actually eaten in our lives. This is not only because their price goes often well over 50 dollars a pound, but also because these products are local, limited in supply or from protected animals.

Why do we still will eat chicken or burgers, when everything is possible?

Of course, many of them will pose technological and scientific challenges, but I just want to imagine a picture of the future. Where our supermarkets aren’t just about pork, beef and chicken. This will certainly be a cultural shift, but the shift may also make it more acceptable because of the exclusivity and variety. At least, I can’t wait to have that $5 blue tuna or Kobe beef on my plate.