To Frankenchicken or not to Frankenchicken, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to eat petri dish pork or test tube chicken…Ok, but seriously have you considered the option of cultured meat? Cultured or in vitro meat uses “tissue-engineering” to grow meat in cell culture. Yes, biotechnology has made it possible to produce a meat product without having to produce the animal.

A Recipe for Tastier Lab Grown Meat

(Yields 10 tons of meat, or 90,000 quarter-pounder burgers):

Ingredients:

20,000 slivers of grown cattle muscle stem cell (each 1 millimeters thick and 2.5 centimeters long)

Beet juice and saffron to flavor and enhance pinkish color

Fat and bone cells adjusted for flavor

Directions:

Grow muscle for 3 months. Douse with bovine fetal serum and antibiotics. Make sure cells replicate 50 times before stalling. Repeat for 50 cycles, taking more cells as needed. In 7 weeks, you should get 10 tonnes of meat from one cell. Increase red colored myoglobin levels to get a more natural color.

This “recipe” is no joke. In fact, a prototype hamburger was made using this process by Mark Post of Maastricht University (Netherlands) in order to demonstrate the environmental benefits of cultured meat. In 2013 a taste test was held in London afterwards which garnered promising results for the future of cultured meat. 4 years later we are already seeing similar products hit the market.

Did you know that all the human cells ever grown in labs throughout in the history of humanity would still not create the volume of meat required to produce one cow?

It’s an expensive process after all, costing tens of thousands in investment to create the millions of cells required. But that cost is coming down significantly and lab grown meat is very soon to being only steps away from your grocery store door. That’s a good thing.

Compared to conventional meat, cultured meat is estimated to use less than:

1% the land

4% the water

50% less energy

And accounts for 4% the greenhouse emissions produced

Those numbers scream long term savings to both the consumer and environment. If the cost of the resource input is less, than a comparably lower priced commodity ensues. The only part we need to subsidize (at least for today), is the cost to produce the cells.

Cultured meat also has added benefits to you as the individual:

Less risk to food borne illness

A healthier meat options as scientists can control the fat and nutritional content of cultured meat

More unadulterated meat protein with less reliance on hormones and antibiotics

Better choice for the environment, making you a more conscious consumer

Now is the time to raise the demand for these new found meats. Our demand for protein in general is at all time high and it is not going away anytime soon. In the future, factory farms will fade away as an antiquated and barbaric system of our industrialized past. Feed lots will become labs generating tastier and healthier meat alternatives. With this newfound knowledge we can repair the damage industrialized farming has caused to ecosystems and communities worldwide. Leaders of the meat industry realize this potential including Donnie Smith, the CEO of Tyson meats, who has invested a considerable amount in plant based protein research.