Friday, August 31, 2012

Irresistible pro's of synthetic meat and finding the con's?

In January 2011 I wrote an article "In vitro meat - is it progress or optimization?" I made careful prediction that if there continues to be a desire to optimize meat production then synthetic meat is inevitably land on our table!

In vitro meat is closer than you think.

The 16th August 2012, the Wired Science wrote about an American firm, Modern Meadows, being backed by the Thiel Foundation in their plans to print meat and sell it.

Image: Viewzone

Synthetic meat for human consumption is coming! Assuming it will be as good quality as the one cut from animals that have had a farm life, for better and worse, what are the arguments for taking on this new technology?

Modern Meadows own sales pitch is saying a lot and hard to argue against. Yes, meat production is very wasteful and unsustainable today! Yes, there is a lot of pollution and logistics involved! Yes, there are diseases that can transmit from animals to humans without proper monitoring! Yes, there are very severe animal health and welfare issues that should continuously be reviewed and improved on. Yes, many will certainly give in to the compelling argument: "no animal was harmed in this process!"

In addition to that, presenting it as 3D printing, makes it much more digestible for us already. Printing organs, tools, toys, and candy is an old futuristic dream coming true. We can already experience the benefit of having a custom tool printing for our needs. Who not meat then?

I am sure there will be problems with eating synthetic meat that we have not yet thought of. New diseases, or absence of exposure to diseases may produce new modern diseases. Patent wars on cell lines and technology. Monopoly of production and markets as seen for corn, etc. But I believe this technology will be received with open arms by many. Some sceptics (possibly rightly so) will insist on eating "real meat" for different reasons, but if somebody will buy the new food product - it will be sold. As it is sold, with years, we will get used to the thought and more will give in. Especially when the price is becoming competitive.

This means agriculture as we know it today may become a technology of the past.

My suggestion: prepare your questions now for synthetic meat and ask how this will change how we live.

Friday, January 21, 2011

In vitro meat - is it progress or optimization?

Lots have been written about in vitro meat (meat cells artificially grown for the purpose of food consumption). Mostly the debate orbit the same topics as other new technologies entering our home: Is it safe? Would I use it? Do we need it? Will it be the answer to our problems (growing population, disease, global warming)? If it is good business, is there any way it is humanly possible to avoid it if you do not want it?

I would like to review this new technology from the standpoint of veterinary science and my personal opinion.

I think everyone can understand that we have gone through many steps in livestock production through the previous hundreds of years. And with the industrial revolution the intensity of the production has increased. And it keeps increasing, though problems increase with higher densities of animals, designed foods for maximal growth, animals outgrowing their environment and their carrying capacity, infertility, more diseases to them and us, and so on. But why would a herd owner take on all those pains if a less industrialized production would lessen the headaches and improve the health (and often quality of the product)?

Jared Diamonds gives a decent explanation to this in his book Collapse: optimize or perish. When in the business, and liking your job, you often have to invest to survive, at the same time increasing your dependence on having to continue. Since meat and milk prices have not followed the rest of the economic development, the farmer gets the same, while expenses increase - roughly said. The popular way of dealing with this is by optimizing in facilities and machinery to reduce the increasing production costs. It actually makes sense if you imagine yourself as the farmer desiring not to see his family investments and life work go down the drain.

But optimization has the dark side of not considering the animals as much more than a simple asset eventually. Output is all that matters when it comes down to regulations, quotas, and expenses. But problems with the animals (infertility, diseases, mortalities or culling due to unsatisfactory production, motoric disorders, behavioural disorders, stress and the list goes on) also lead to expenses either through treatment or losses through poorer performing animals. It is a ugly dilemma that does not seem to be turning around any time in sight.

Some farmers try to break free of this maelstrom. Ecological and organic farming is one example.

But imagine how farming would look like if you want to keep optimizing your meat production! What if you could optimize it so far you could get rid of the animals, the large buildings, manure problems, diseases, army of staff... what would it look like? In vitro meat would not be a bad guess!

But wouldn't we object? I don't think so. Some, off course. There will always be some who have a taste for quality and nutrition. But the average consumer in the supermarket has tasted lower and lower quality meat over the last decades, no. And the skill of knowing what is good meat is long lost in the generation shift.

Thus, the question remains. Do you want to eat substitute meat? Not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is good for the industry. Unless you believe more industrial food needs to "save" a growing population (rather than distribute it fairly - to me a contradiction in terms), then I would call in vitro meat, the next thing in livestock optimization - goodbye animals. That said - it may still have many important roles in the future. Tissue growth will be medically incredibly important. And even food grown in a petri dish may have its purpose if we decide to reach for the stars or mine the depths of the oceans.

I think the final remark to this should be a quote from a dark vision of the future, the movie Judge Dredd: