Cultured Meat

 






The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) approved the sale of a lab-grown meat product. This is the first time cultured meat has been cleared for sale anywhere in the world.


  • Cultured meat is produced using many of the same tissue engineering techniques traditionally used in regenerative medicine. The concept of cultured meat was popularized by Jason Matheny in the early 2000s.

  • The meat is produced by in vitro cell culture of animal cells, instead of from slaughtered animals. It is a form of cellular agriculture.


How is Cultured Meat made?

  • Material used: The stem cells of animals are used as the building blocks of muscle and other organs. Once enough muscle fibers have grown, the result is a meat that resembles any other meat.

    • The cells that are taken are called “myosatellite” cells, which are the stem cells of muscles. 

      • The function of these stem cells within the animal is to create new muscle tissue when the muscle is injured.

  • Medium used: The cells are placed in a medium containing nutrients and naturally-occurring growth factors, and allowed to proliferate just as they would inside an animal.

    • The cells are placed in petri dishes with amino acids and carbohydrates to help the muscle cells multiply and grow.They proliferate until we get trillions of cells from a small sample. 

    • This growth takes place in a bioreactor, which looks similar to the bioreactors that beer and yoghurt are fermented in.

  • Myotubes: When we want the cells to differentiate into muscle cells, we simply stop feeding them growth factors, and they differentiate on their own. 

    • The muscle cells naturally merge to form “myotubes” (a primitive muscle fibre that is no longer than 0.3mm long).

    • The myotubes are then placed in a gel that is 99% water, which helps the cells form the shape of muscle fibres. 

    • The muscle cells’ innate tendency to contract causes them to start putting on bulk, growing into a small strand of muscle tissue.

Is Cultured Meat Vegetarian?

  • By definition, a vegan diet does not include consuming meat or any form of animal products. For this reason, lab-grown meat would not be considered vegan because the ingredients needed to produce the synthetic meat are all derived from animals.

How is it Different from Plant-based Meat?

  • The plant-based meat is made from plant sources such as soy or pea protein, while cultured meat is grown directly from cells in a laboratory. 

  • Both have the same objective: to offer alternatives to traditional meat products that could feed a lot more people, reduce the threat of zoonotic diseases, and mitigate the environmental impact of meat consumption.

  • In terms of cellular structure, cultured meat is the same as conventional meat — except that cultured meat does not come directly from animals.

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