By: Rachael Zipperer
The future of food is here. Kind of. Almost. Not really.
A few weeks ago, the world’s first lab-grown hamburger made its debut. Only three people had the opportunity to taste the five-ounce burger which was two years and $325,000 in the making, and the general consensus was that it tasted almost, but not quite, like a real burger.The project to develop this “culture burger” grown in a petri dish using stem cells from a cow’s shoulder was mostly backed by money from Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
After the burger’s initial unveiling, Brin released a video through the Guardian with the intention of providing more information about the project and what it means for the future of meat production and consumption. In the video, Brin and a number of scientists involved in the project give great attention to the issues of “feeding the world” while still being environmentally and ethically conscious. Brin acknowledges that there is obvious hesitation from the public about eating meat grown in a lab because there is a perception that the meat will be not be up to par in taste and texture, or at the very least unnatural and frankly just weird. Brin’s response to this feeling is that “If what you’re doing is not seen by some people as Science Fiction, it’s probably not transformative enough.” He and others view this step toward animal-free meat production as revolutionary. One scientist in the video predicted how the market for meat will be completely different in 10 to 20 years because of this product. When this time comes, he said, there will be two identical products in grocery stores, one made from animals and one in a lab. In this scenario, he claims, the products will taste, look, and cost exactly the same, the only difference will be the knowledge that one was made through animal slaughter and the other was not.
The lab burger was developed as a potential solution to the problem that is excessive demand for meat. Rapid population growth as well as increased meat consumption per capita has made the production and consumption of meat an issue of great importance. With the vast majority of meat consumed by Americans coming from factory farms, both environmental and ethical issues arise out of our demand for meat.
The process of factory farming is cruel to animals, which are kept in inhumanely close and unclean quarters, only to be slaughtered in an unregulated and unsanitary process that resembles the opposite of an assembly line. Even if the rights of animals in these conditions are ignored, the effects of factory farming on humans are overwhelmingly negative as well. Factory farms drain natural resources and contribute disproportionately to greenhouse gas emissions, while the slaughter process has increased health risks associated with meat eating.
The culture burger has been advertised as providing a solution to these problems. However, it is not so simple.
So far the burger is the only kind of meat that has been experimentally grown in a lab. There is no plan for developing lab grown chicken or pork products. So even with the perfection of culture burger over the next decade, the problems associated with factory farming will continue as long as people eat other meat as well.
There is also speculation about the nutritional value of the culture burger, specifically its iron content. Without the nutrients that in part make meat appealing to consumers, it is possible that this product will not be viable in competition with real meat.
Ethical concerns are not eliminated by the culture burger either. Though the current lab burger does not require animal slaughter, it still needs to take resources from animals, namely blood from unborn cow fetuses. This raises the kinds of ethical questions about use of animal products that have made veganism appealing.
In the video for the Guardian, Sergey Brin describes why he decided to back the project for the culture burger. He notes all the problems of meat consumption, population growth, and factory farming, and he lists three possible solutions: we all become vegetarian, we ignore the problems, or we do something else. So the “something else” is the lab burger, but with all the problems that will still exist even after the culture burger is perfected, it is not really the solution.
Brin discounts the solution of “everyone becoming vegetarian” because he does not see that as a realistic option. In an ideal situation, worldwide vegetarianism would be the perfect solution to the ethical and environmental problems of meat consumption, but it is undeniably true that people are not willing to make that change. Western culture is simply too attached to meat. Less than 5 percent of Americans are vegetarian, and closer to 1 percent are vegan, and many of the people who do not eat animals still eat food products (like soy bacon) that resemble the taste and texture of meat. Even the “meat” used in the culture burger had to be altered to better fit our conception of what a burger should look like; it was initially white, so it was dyed with beet juice to more resemble red meat. So this whole project, beyond its other flaws, is still catering to a culture that refuses to give up or significantly cut down on meat. At this moment we cannot tell if there is a solution to this meat consumption problem, but it seems that the unwillingness to make cultural change to how we think about meat is the largest hindrance to our finding the answer.
