Is Lab Grown Meat Vegan?

Veganism is all about reducing the harm we
cause to sentient beings to the best of our ability.

This is why we don’t eat animal products.
It’s impossible to take the body

part or secretion of a living being without
exploitation and pain. Or is it?

If meat and other animal products could
be made without harming animals,

would there finally be such a thing as vegan meat?

Hi it's Emily from Bite Size Vegan
and welcome to another vegan nugget.

When it comes to lab grown meat,
there are vegans on both sides of the debate.

With the potential for massive reductions in the environmental impact of animal agriculture

and an end to the suffering and death
of trillions of animals every year,

why wouldn’t every vegan be championing
the cause for test tube meat?

Well like most topics I set out to cover,
cultured meat production is far more complicated

than it may first appear. We’re going to
cover some of the pros and cons of cellular

agriculture and why it's a hot button within
the vegan community.

As always, I’ll be barely scratching the
surface and will provide links to citations,

further resources, and a full bibliography
on the blog post for this video

linked in the description.

The concept of growing and maintaining muscle
outside of the body is not new.

Starting in 1912, biologist Alexis Carrel kept cells from
an embryonic chicken heart beating in a nutrient

bath in his laboratory for more than 20 years.
In 1931, Winston Churchill wrote in a predictive

essay optimistically entitled Fifty Years
Hence that, “We shall escape the absurdity

of growing a whole chicken in order to eat
the breast or wing, by growing these parts

separately under a suitable medium.”

Over the decades from NASA-backed fish fillets
made of goldfish cells to the 2013 taste test

of the first ever lab-grown burger, the cultured
meat, well, culture, continues to grow.

[See a brief but thorough timeline in the
‘In-Vitro Meat” section of this essay]

The advantages of this method of meat creation
are obvious. Despite the efforts, hopes and

dreams of vegans and activists alike, the
global demand for meat is on the rise

with India and China leading the charge.

With animal agriculture contributing as much
as 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions,

using a third of the earth’s fresh water,
up to 45 percent of the Earth’s land, causing

91 percent of Amazon rainforest destruction
and serving as a leading cause of species

extinction, ocean dead zones, and habitat
destruction, the environmental implications

alone could be staggering.

A 2011 study concluded that, “cultured meat
involves approximately 7–45% lower energy use...

78–96% lower GHG emissions, 99%
lower land use, and 82–96% lower water use

depending on the product compared.” While
these numbers sound promising, the study was

largely criticized for basing its numbers
on a not-yet-proven method of cultured meat growth.

While still theoretical, a 2014 study accounting for

other potential production methods found
that energy use for cultured meat actually

exceeded current levels for beef production,
but had significantly lower greenhouse gas

emissions and land usage and was only higher
than poultry in water usage.

The reality is that the actual environmental
impact of cultured meat remains unknown because

it’s still in such an experimental phase.
The ground meat grown for 2013’s seminal

burger was a relatively simple creation of
pure protein. It lacked any of the fat and

blood that give meat its flavor or the firmness
of once-active muscle tissue. In order to

create meat products of more substance, the
muscle, which is what meat is after all, has

to be exercised and provided with artificial
blood flow, oxygen, digestion and nutrition.

Some scientists speculate that this increased
energy demand may negate any reduction in

land usage and agricultural input.

Basically, when it comes to the environmental
benefits, it’s still too early to know.

So what about the other main benefit:
an end to the suffering and death

of trillions of beings every year?

Here is where cultured meat has the potential
to shine. Maybe. Eventually. There are several

significant hurdles to overcome before
lab-grown meat can be called anything near

"cruelty and animal-free.” The major issues on the
ethics end are establishing self-renewing

stem cells and finding plant-based materials
for the growth medium and scaffolding.

To understand what that means, I’ll give
a very simplified version of in-vitro meat

production. Initially, cells are taken via
biopsy from a living animal and deposited

into a growth medium where they proliferate
and grow. Eventually, in order to produce

meat products with more structure
than the ground patty,

they will need a form of scaffolding
to hold their shape.

The first ethical issues arise when considering
the long-term viability of the initial harvested

cells. Professor Mark Post, the man behind
the famous taste-tested burger, has said that,

“the most efficient way of taking the process
forward would still involve slaughter,”

with a “limited herd of donor animals”
kept for stock. Others in the movement envision

the establishment of a self-renewing stem
cell line, meaning only an initial biopsy

would be required at which point the cell
line would replicate indefinitely.

Yet another concern is that, given humanity’s
love of the new, different and exotic, we

may start breeding specialty animals for cell
harvesting, which would still require the

confinement and reproductive
control of sentient beings.

As a side-note, Post’s famous burger was
made with egg powder to enhance the taste,

introducing another level of animal suffering.
This is by no means, however, a necessary practice.

The second major ethical issue and one that
isn’t widely addressed in most of the news

reports on cultured meat, is the growth medium
into which the cells are deposited.

At the moment, the most widely used medium is bovine
fetal serum. Fetal serum from an array of

animals is commonly employed in a wide range
of experiments, including those for tampons,

which I covered in my
“Are Tampons Vegan?” video.

The harvesting of bovine fetal serum is far
from transparent. One study reached out to

388 harvesting entities with only 4% responding
with any kind of methodology data.

Five sources explicitly declared
their harvesting methods to be confidential.

Of those that did respond, the typical procedure
for fetal serum harvesting was “by cardiac puncture"

meaning a needle directly into
the beating heart of the fetal cow. They specify

that, “Fetuses should be at least 3 months
old; otherwise the heart is too small for

puncture.” The general process is as follows:

“At the time of slaughter, the cow is found
to be pregnant during evisceration (removal

of the internal organs in the thorax and abdomen
during processing of the slaughtered cow)

… The calf is removed quickly from the uterus
[and] a cardiac puncture is performed by inserting

a needle between the ribs directly into the
heart of the unanaesthesised fetus and blood

is extracted.” This bleeding process can
take up to 35 minutes to complete while the

calf remains alive. Afterwards, “the fetus
is processed for animal feed and extraction

of specific substances like fats and proteins,
among other things.”

The study continued with a detailed debate
as to whether the fetal cows can feel this

procedure and their possible slow death from
anoxia, meaning lack of oxygen, from placental

separation, and estimated that between 1 and
2 million fetuses are harvested annually for serum.

All in all, fetal serum from any animal is
not, by any stretch of the imagination, cruelty-free.

The good news is that the champions of the
cultured meat movement seem to be invested

in finding plant-based medium alternatives with both algae and mushrooms providing promising options.

Fetal serum’s drawbacks don’t
stop at the ethical line. There are scientific

concerns as batches vary considerably in their
composition. It also poses the threat of pathogen

introduction, is not environmentally friendly
and is cost-prohibitive. Dr. Neil Stephens

of Cardiff University states that: “Everyone
in the field acknowledges this as a problem

… It currently undermines a lot of the arguments
that people put forward in support of in vitro meat."

This leads into two of the additional pros
of cultured meat, both revolving around human

health. Though I personally believe that health
is the last worry when it comes to producing

a possible alternative to mass animal slaughter,
it’s worth noting that the composition of

cultured meat can be altered to provide superior
nutritional benefits. The level of fat and

type of fat can be selectively controlled.
The threat of food contamination and spread

of pathogens would also be greatly reduced,
as cultured meat would not involve all the

biohazards of traditional slaughter.
So if scientists are able to create a self-replicating

cell line, thus eliminating the enslavement
and potential slaughter of animals, and find

a suitable plant-based growth-medium and scaffolding,
thus eliminating the cruelty of fetal serum

and other animal byproducts, what objections
remain against going after this concept in full force?

Two of the largest are cost and what’s best
described as “the ick factor.” Surveys

involving every range of dietary practice
seem to indicate that the majority of people

are put off by the concept of lab-grown meat.
Interestingly enough, those people with the

highest rates of meat consumption appear to
be the most sensitive to disgust.

Of course cultured meat proponents emphasize
that “lab-grown” is a bit of a misnomer.

While in the testing stages, the meat is grown
in laboratories. However, were it to go to

commercial production, it would be made in
factories just like all of our packaged food

items, and some could argue, would be more
natural than other chemical concoctions the

public readily consumes. [see blog for an illustration
of potential production methods].

Also, given what all we inject into our food
animals from hormones to antibiotics, to our

outright manipulation of their genes, one
could ask just how natural “standard”

animal products really are.

While cultured meat doesn’t require the
use of GMO’s, it’s possible that genetically

modifying cells may allow them to reproduce
faster and thus prove more economical.

Speaking of cost, Mark Post’s initial burger
in 2013 cost approximately ￡250,000

(over $350,000) to produce. However, by 2015, Post
stated that the cost is now down to ￡8.00.

As with any new technology, the initial cost
investments will be steep, but Post and others

in the movement see cultured meat eventually
attaining a competitive price to traditional

products, though most likely not for at least
another decade.

The vegan community is most dramatically torn
on either side of this issue. Some feel that

any product derived from an animal remains
a form of exploitation. Others believe that

with the insurmountable fight against the
ongoing animal holocaust and more non-vegans

being born every day, we need to search for
practical and viable solutions to replace

humanity’s rising demand for meat.

The vegans on the pro-cultured meat side I’ve
come across through my research say their

motivation is putting the animals’ interests
above all else. They believe it’s unrealistic

to expect humanity on a global scale to cease
or even reduce their consumption of animals.

Thus, providing an alternative that not only
looks and tastes like but actually is meat

could be, with the proper harvesting method
and growth medium, the most immediate path

to animal liberation currently available.
With the concurrent rise of research into

milk and egg-producing yeast and cell-culture-grown
leather and other animal byproducts, could

it be that the laboratory and not the picket
line will be the ultimate genesis of a vegan world?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this hot
debate in the comments below. If you’d like

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Now go live vegan, put the animals first,
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I know I didn't have much time, I like tacked it on
at the end there, but there are people

who have made yeast that produces the milk of a cow.

And yeast that produces egg whites without a chicken.

That's molecularly identical.

From yeast.

You've got the milk yeast...and the egg yeast.

Maybe we can make a meat yeast?

Probably not.