Meat grown in the lab. Too space age, even for NASA?
It might have captured the imagination of journalists, but the food industry still needs some persuading that harvesting meat in the laboratory has commercial potential, scientists behind the groundbreaking technology have admitted.
Despite the intense media interest in the tissue engineering technology, which recreates 'meat' in the lab by taking cells from animals and growing them on nutrient-rich sheets, scaffolds or 'beads', researchers have not as yet secured any funding from food companies or venture capitalists.
Professor Vladimir Mironov, who is growing meat from chicken muscle cells in a bioreactor at the Medical University of South Carolina, says: "This is a disruptive technology, and venture capitalists and food manufacturers don't seem to look more than three years ahead, and they can't expect to see a return in that sort of timescale. They haven't got any vision. Having said that, we're talking about growing this stuff in industrial scale bioreactors, not Petri dishes, and it isn't cheap."
Mironov is one of a group of scientists from universities in New York, Utrecht, Missouri, Baltimore, South Carolina and California affiliated to a research organisation called New Harvest, which is devoted to developing meat substitutes. However, funding is currently coming from charitable donations, and will not last forever, he says. "We have been exploring all sorts of sources for funding. One is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). There was $2.5m up for grabs but they have rejected our application. Another is the US Department of Defense, which has an advanced research programme."
However, Henk Haagsman, professor of meat science at Utrecht University, claims it is only a matter of time before food manufacturers recognise the commercial opportunity that cultured meat could offer.
He says: "The fact that food manufacturers are interested,even if they haven't given us any money, has helped us get a grant from the [Dutch] government to pursue our research. "The priority at the moment is finding a plant-derived growth medium to grow the cells in."
The technology could ultimately signal the end of industrialised livestock production, claims Jason Matheny, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland.
He says: "The benefits could be enormous. With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that's better for the environment and human health."
It would also be efficient in that inedible animal structures such as bones and the nervous system need not be grown, and fat and nutrient content could be controlled, he says. "The challenge is getting the texture right."
