Would you eat test tube meat?

Meat is grown in labs to offset the rising need as the world's population increase. Image by Thinkstock

If eating insects doesn’t sound like a suitable protein supplement for a slab of cattle, perhaps laboratory-grown meat – or in vitro meat – will suit better, claim two Dutch scientists.

The Wageningen University professors argue that meat grown in enormous test tubes, or bioreactors, can provide an ever more prosperous world with a plentiful, environmentally friendly and humane source of protein.

The need for a meat alternative is often viewed through a humane viewpoint but bioethicist Cor van der Weele and bioprocessing engineer Johannes Tramper claim in the latest Trends in Biotechnology journal that a “protein transition” would decrease greenhouse gasses, water and land use by 90 per cent in Europe.

Envisaging a future where small villages are all equipped with 20,000 litre processing tanks to allow muscle stem cells from pigs, cows, chicken, fish and any other animal to grow and reproduce, the system would allow for production of meat-based products to meet growing demand.

The system proposed by the authors would be capable of producing 28 tonnes of meat a year and could feed more than 2,500 people.

Two significant factors still hinder the mainstream production of the in vitro meat – somewhat disparagingly referred to as “frankenmeat” among critics -: the cost and the taste.

In 2008, it cost just under US $1 million to produce a piece of in vitro beef weighed 250 grams.

The world’s first lab-grown burger, engineered by scientists and served to London food critics last August, cost $325,000.

One company using a smaller scale of the production process proposed by the Dutch scientists is Modern Meadow, whose steak chips currently cost just under $110 to produce.

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These costs will decrease as production rises. The second large problem, as evidenced with the mixed reviews from critics at the launch of the first in vitro hamburger in 2013, is the taste.

"Although the potential advantages of cultured meat are clear, they do not guarantee that people will want to eat it," van der Weele and Tramper wrote.

Alternate food products aren’t anything new. Using a formula developed at the University of Missouri, Beyond Meat takes plant protein from soy and peas and applies heating, cooling and pressure to realign it so that its structure resembles meat tissue. The company's fake chicken strips are in 4,000 stores across the United States and have fooled people in blind taste tests.

Hampton Creek Foods has received US$30 million in funding for its business model, which revolves around a plant-based substitute for eggs. Its first product, a vegan mayonnaise called Just Mayo, hit stores in California last September. And after a $2 million crowdfunding campaign Rosa Labs recently began mass-producing Soylent, a drink supplement aimed at meeting all the human body's nutritional needs.

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