The race to
make fake meat just got interesting. Two scientists on opposite sides of the
world both claim to be on the verge of serving up the first lab-grown hamburger
– and saving the planet in the process. The new reality is so close, you can
almost taste it
 |
This is a disruptive technology. ‘I think the meat industry will be an adversary,
and maybe a dangerous one,’ Mark Post says. Photograph: Liz McBurney for
the Guardian
|
As mission
statements go, it takes some beating. Scrawled on a whiteboard are the words:
"We will change how the Earth looks from space!" It surpasses
"Don't be evil" (the motto of Google, just down the road), and in
terms of hubris it trumps even that of Facebook (also just round the corner):
"Move fast and break things!"
In this
anonymous laboratory on a low-rise industrial estate in Menlo Park, 40km south
of San Francisco, there is a whiff of revolution in the air. There is a whiff
of madness, too, but after a few hours in the company of the man leading this
intriguing Silicon Valley startup, one begins to wonder if it is the rest of
the world that is insane.
Professor
Patrick Brown could easily be taken for a deranged visionary. He is intense,
driven and unfazed by critics and rivals. This 57-year-old ultra-lean,
sandal-wearing, marathon-running vegan wants to stop the world eating meat. Not
through persuasion or coercion, but by offering us carnivores something better
for the same price or less.
The fake
meat business has been around for decades, of course, but it has never really
taken off. That is because the products out there, usually based on some sort
of reconstituted soy or fungal gloop, taste as disgusting as they look. They
are usually expensive as well.
But the
meat-fakers say they are on the verge of a breakthrough, that there is a real
possibility that a new era of fake meat – nutritious, cheap and
indistinguishable from the real thing, made either of synthesised animal tissue
or derived from plant material – may be upon us.
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'I have zero interest in making a new food for vegans,’ says molecular biologist
Patrick Brown. ‘I’m making a food for people who want meat.' Photograph:
Winni Wintermeyer
|
Brown, a
specialist in the genetics of cancer, is a tenured Stanford University molecular biologist, a member of the National Academy and the founder of a non-profit academic publisher. For two years, he has been working on creating
synthesised meat and dairy products. "I have zero interest in making a new
food just for vegans," Brown says. "I am making a food for people who
are comfortable eating meat and who want to continue eating meat. I want to
reduce the human footprint on this planet by 50%."
What Brown
is talking about is a revolution that will remake our relationship with our
planet, and with our fellow animals.
Eating meat
is bad for the environment, of that there is no doubt. And the moral arguments
against killing animals are compelling. Humans currently slaughter about 1,600 mammals and birds every second for food – that is half a trillion lives a year,
plus trillions more fish, crustaceans and molluscs. The total biomass of all
the world's livestock is almost exactly twice that of humanity itself. And
while crops that feed people cover just 4% of the Earth's usable surface (land
that is not covered by ice or water, or is bare rock), animal pastureland
accounts for a full 30%. Our meat, in other words, weighs twice as much as we
do and takes seven times as much land to grow.
But it is
animal suffering that usually turns people vegetarian. Meat farming is, say its
critics, an obsolete technology that produces a nutrient-dense food in just
about the most inefficient (and cruel) way imaginable. The problem – the big problem
– is that, when given a choice, most of us like to eat meat regardless. It may
be inefficient, dirty and cruel, but there is no denying that cooked animal
flesh tastes good.
The idea of
synthetic meat has been around for a long time. In 1932, Winston Churchill
stated, "Fifty years hence, 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." But fake meat, aka schmeat or
in-vitro meat, is one of those ideas that, like lunar colonies, fusion power
and flying cars, has yet to cross the threshold between fantasy and reality.
That is
because flesh is hard to fake. Meat, essentially muscle tissue (unless you're
talking about offal), is a complex material. A steak, for instance, consists of
tens of thousands of muscle fibres, blood vessels, nerves, layers of fat and
connective tissue, gristle and perhaps bone. A slab of sirloin is a chunk of
incredibly complex machinery, and it is this complexity that is giving the
fakers a headache.
The
hundreds of chemicals in meat give it its flavour, and its flavour and texture
changes depending on how it is cooked. The globular muscle protein myoglobin,
for instance, gives raw meat its characteristic pink colour and oxidises when
cooked to become a brownish grey.
Fresh raw
meat is almost tasteless. But when heated, the myoglobin changes colour and a
series of changes, called Maillard reactions, combine amino acids (the building
blocks of proteins) with sugars to give cooked meat its distinctive, tangy
flavour. Biting into a chicken thigh involves not merely the ingestion of
protein (easy to synthesise), but a complex interplay of aromas, textures and
tastes. Synthesising all this in a lab is no easy task.
One
approach is to manipulate plant material to create a meat-facsimile; this is
what Brown is doing. The trouble is, I am not allowed to tell you very much
about it. Before being shown around his lab, I have to sign non-disclosure
agreements.
"Look,
I don't want to come across as a jerk," says Brown, a serious man who
seems genuinely terrified that his project may yet be undone, "but I don't
want things appearing in the media that will stop this happening."
When Brown
appeared at a major science conference in Vancouver earlier this year, he gave
away few details, save to say that the meat industry is "a sitting
duck". And he's right. There is seriously big money hovering around Sand Hill Foods, the provisional name of Brown's startup.
The other
approach is to grow actual meat in a factory, animal muscle tissue sans the
animal itself, and this is being pioneered in Europe.
"What
are we going to call it? Well, we thought long and hard, and came to the
conclusion we should simply call it meat," says Dr Mark Post, an affable
54-year-old Dutchman. When we meet at the University of Maastricht, there is no
NDA to sign, no secrecy and a lot of self-doubt. Like Brown, Post is motivated
by concern for the environment, but the two scientists could not be more
different. For a start, the Dutchman is a meat-loving amateur chef. Then there
is his admission: "This may not succeed… My family think I am crazy."
At that
Canadian conference, Brown was critical of Post's methodology, dismissing it as
too expensive and complex to work. The two scientists gave a joint
presentation, but there was clearly no love lost between them. The Dutchman
concedes his American rival may win the race to produce the world's first
viable synthesised meat – but suggests he might have trouble selling his idea.
"He is
a genius," Post tells me, "but he has a personality issue. He is very
defensive. He is much smarter than I am, but he is not going to get this across
to the public. He needs a PR adviser."
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‘What are we going to call it?’ says scientist Mark Post.‘We thought long
and hard, and came up with "meat".' Photograph: Judith Jockel
|
Post is
following up on about a decade's worth of work to try to culture living muscle
tissue in the lab. Back in the early noughties, Nasa sponsored a scientist
called Morris Benjaminson to see if it was possible to grow real meat in a test
tube. The idea was to find a way to feed astronauts on long space flights.
Benjaminson got as far as growing a small fish fillet. "Did you taste
it?" I asked him. "No way," was his not entirely reassuring
response. The project ground to a halt.
Since then,
the baton has been taken up by a series of Dutch teams, thanks to a €2m grant
from the government. The animal rights group Peta has offered $1m to the first
group that produces a convincing animal-free burger.
Post's
small team has secured private venture capital funding as well. He won't tell
me who the funder is, save to say "he" isn't British, that I've
certainly heard of him and that "he does not like to be associated with
failure". At the Vancouver conference, Post made headlines with his claim
that Heston Blumenthal would be asked to cook the world's first synthetic
hamburger this autumn, at a London hotel.
So how do
you grow meat in a vat?
As a
recipe, it is unusual, hard to follow and at first glance somewhat
unappetising. But if its creator is right, in a few decades our descendants
will be puzzled – indeed horrified – that we ever did it any other way.
First, you
take a cow, pig or indeed just about any animal. Up to now, this animal will
have led a charmed life, with several acres of grazing at its disposal, the
finest winter feed and no abuse.
Then you
kill it. The creation of in-vitro meat does require the slaughter of animals,
but the point is that, in theory, a single specimen could provide the seed
material for hundreds of tonnes of meat. Only a tiny fraction of the farm
animals alive today would be needed to supply the entire human race.
The next
stage is to extract a sliver of muscle tissue and transfer this blob of red
matter to a petri dish. Then you use a mixture of chemistry and manual
manipulation to tease apart the cells on the dish. What you are looking for are
skeletal muscle satellite cells – stem cells – all-purpose repair modules that
are there to create new tissue in case of damage. It is satellite cells in your
muscles that swing into action should you injure yourself in the gym or have a
nasty fall – dividing, then dividing again in rapid succession to create new
muscle.
When you
have a few thousand of these satellite cells, you place them in a warm broth,
consisting of a mixture of 100 or so synthetic nutrients together with serum
extracted from cow foetuses. "That will have to change in the final product,"
Post says (an admission that, in yuck terms, "foetal serum" is up
there with quivering blobs of flesh). Then you wait for nature to take its
course.
After a few
days, your microscopic ball of cells has divided into a thin sheet of muscle
tissue big enough to cover the bottom of a flask. At this stage the dividing
cells need to be checked for genetic stability. It may be possible to tweak the
growing tissue to produce, say, a surfeit of healthy polyunsaturated fatty
acids. Fake meat could be a health food, Post says.
After a
week there are enough cells to cover 10 flasks. Then, with extreme care, you
wrap these little slivers of unformed muscle around Velcro "anchors"
and, in a touch of pure Mary Shelley, you give them a jolt of electricity.
"This is very good," Post says. "They actually start to contract
spontaneously."
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The creation of in-vitro meat does require the slaughter of animals, but in
theory a single specimen could provide the seed material for hundreds
of tonnes of meat. Photograph: Liz McBurney for the Guardian
|
Currently,
this technology can produce small strips of muscle, a couple of centimetres
long and a few millimetres thick. The process is time-consuming and labour
intensive – and harvesting enough of these beef mini-fillets to squash into a
hamburger patty (several hundred will be needed) will cost in the region of
£200,000.
It is at
this stage that Blumenthal and his griddle pan will come in. "Yes, it's a
publicity stunt – of course it is," Post admits. "It's proof of
concept, nothing more." If all goes well, a Famous Veggie – the identity
of whom is unclear, but Post perks up when I suggest Gwyneth Paltrow – will
stand in front of the cameras and take a big bite out of the £200,000
beefburger. The idea is that, once Post has demonstrated to the world that his
stem-cell technique works, the money will come pouring in.
To make
bigger chunks of meat, Post will need to make synthetic fat ("actually
quite easy") and grow the fillets on some sort of biodegradable scaffold,
"fed" with nutrients pumped through artificial polysaccharide
"veins". Otherwise the centre of the fillet will become gangrenous
and die.
The
technique is viable for any species.
"Could
you make fake panda?"
"Sure."
"What
about human?"
"Don't
go there."
Eventually,
Post envisages a future where huge quantities of high-quality meat are gown in
vats, incorporating not only muscle fibres but layers of real fat and even
synthetic bone. "In 25 years," he says, "real meat will come in
a packet labelled, 'An animal has suffered in the production of this product'
and it will carry a big eco tax. I think in 50-60 years it may be forbidden to
grow meat from livestock."
This will
happen only if consumers can be weaned off the real thing. The yuck factor will
play a part, but all the evidence is that, as far as consumers are concerned,
price, taste and safety – in roughly that order – determine their bulk-food
purchases. Few people enquire too carefully how their regular meat was
produced, after all. The market for ethically-reared free-range meat is, in
global terms, tiny. In terms of yuckiness, real meat is at the top of the
scale.
Few
outsiders have tasted fake animal products. Back in Menlo Park, Brown lets me
try one. He is collaborating with a number of well-known, non-vegetarian chefs
to get the taste, texture and mouth feel just right. After all, Brown has not
eaten anything made from an animal for decades.
I am not
allowed to say what I tried, nor which chef helped create it, and certainly not
what it tasted like. But I can say this: I would have had no idea it wasn't
"real". Quorn this is not.
In the US,
half of the total market for meat is in processed products – minced and ground
beef, reconstituted chicken, sausages and so on – and the proportion in Europe
is only slightly lower. Both Post and Brown say that they will start with
processed "meat" and, as the technology matures, work up from there
to fillets of steak, chicken breasts and so on.
What about
religious concerns? Could Jews and Muslims eat fake pork and Hindus fake beef?
Surprisingly, the answer seems to be a qualified yes. Post has had discussions with
imams and rabbis, and they have said that, as long as there are sufficient
steps between source and product, the "meat" will be kosher or halal.
"I never expected that," he says.
This is a
disruptive technology – one that threatens to overturn a powerful and
established order. The global meat industry, which is populated by some very
ruthless people, is going to fight this hard. "I think the meat industry
will be an adversary, and maybe a dangerous one," Post says.
In his
recent book, The Better Angels Of Our Nature (Allen Lane, £30), the Harvard
psychologist Steven Pinker predicts that meat-eating may be the final frontier
in what he calls the "rights revolution": the extraordinary decline
in human violence and cruelty seen in the past 300 years.
Pinker
argues that the brutal reality of "meat hunger" (it is the eating of
cooked meat that gave humans our huge brains, as cooking unleashes a torrent of
nutrients otherwise indigestible in the raw form) will mean that the
"vegetarian revolution" may never arrive.
But if that
meat hunger can be sated at a reasonable cost, with something indistinguishable
from the real deal, then one of the greatest revolutions in human history may
be upon us.
If Brown
and Post are successful, the global meat industry may find itself in the same
position as the makers of fax machines and typewriters were a generation ago,
rendered obsolete by a new and better technology. In which case the world
really will look different from space. And whoever wins the race to produce the
first viable alternative for a foodstuff that has been part of human life for
200,000 years had better watch their backs.
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