Imagine a world where you don’t go to a butcher, but instead walk into a lab to get a sirloin steak for your family’s gathering.

In hopes of creating a more sustainable source of food, scientists have embarked on research to recreate animal proteins to construct various types of meats. This has led to many successes, as well as many problems, in the industry. Lab-grown meats have not been as widely publicized as plant-based meat alternatives such as Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat, but, free from media attention, Memphis Meats has been at work.

“Our process is ‘essential’ because it focuses on efficiency, simplicity, and quality while eliminating any unnecessary steps. We don’t need to raise and process animals or use massive amounts of land and water. We make meat in the purest sense of the word: simple ingredients, clean conditions, minimal impact,” states Memphis Meats on its website.

Founded in 2015, Memphis Meats is one of many companies that seek to redefine how meat is harvested and aims to “redefine our food system for good.” It is the leading cell-based meat provider and researchers and have been funded by investors, such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, in hopes of devising an alternative to the natural production and slaughter of livestock.

Memphis Meats aims to dismantle the large-scale industry required to cultivate meats, from the cost of maintaining proper environments for animals to the massive amounts of land needed to host such animals. The goal is to create a cruelty-free and simple way of meat construction with the benefits of the consumer in mind.

Growing meat in the lab starts with a selection of stem cells that can adequately regenerate to allow the cells to grow into fibers and then into muscle tissue. This is essential if the meat is to expand and provide enough protein to be eaten on its own. The process of cell selection, the prioritization of certain cells to be passed on, assures that the particular cells are suitable for consumption while being benefited by the superior cells that allow for the best texture and flavor.

After the selection of cells, the lab feeds and cultivates the meat with carefully selected micronutrients. Humans and animals need micronutrients to survive, as do the cells that are sampled from hosts. These micronutrients are implanted into the cells to provide the necessary energy to support cell growth. Cells are then placed in a “cultivator” that allows the tissue to form. The tissue that is formed is reportedly identical to that of a living, breathing animal that was bred and raised in nature.

Once the meat construction is completed, which can take from 4-6 weeks, according to Memphis Meats, it is then harvested, packaged and ultimately cooked.

Lab-grown meat seeks to challenge the ethics and sustainability of naturally raised animals for the purpose of consumption. Labs are hypothetically cruelty-free and sustainable, resourcewise and economically, for consumers as well as the planet.

Ranchers who make efforts to grow their meat with sustainable practices, however, have differing opinions on the ethics of lab-grown meat.

Lab-grown meat seeks to challenge the ethics and sustainability of naturally raised animals for the purpose of consumption.

Stemple Creek Ranch is located in the lush, rolling hills of Marin County. Hoards of cattle roam free as they are “100% grass fed and grass finished.”

“The purpose is we want to raise super high-quality, ultra-premium grass-finished beef and lamb for Bay Area consumers. Also, to supply healthy quality meats that are fully healthy. We want quality, transparency and to offer our meat to local people that will enjoy and appreciate them, confident that (the meats) are what we say they are,” said Poncia.

Its transparency is what seems to drive the intimate relationship between Stemple Creek Ranch and its clients.

Stemple Creek takes pride in the genes of its Angus beef cattle.

“We try to find the Angus genetics that best tenderness the best marbling and the highest quality for the table.” Poncia said.

While Stemple Creek Ranch does not directly manipulate individual cells like lab-grown meat, they still prioritize certain traits that are deemed suitable through their strict genetic guidelines. But this interest in the vaguely scientific quality of growing meat might be the only similarity between Stemple Creek and Memphis Meats.

To Poncia, lab-grown meat is nonsensical.

“I would much prefer Mother Nature grow something naturally than to have something grown in a laboratory that I don’t even know who is doing it or how it’s doing it or why it’s happening. It just doesn’t make sense to me,” Poncia said. “Why would you buy something made in a laboratory when you have all these awesome high quality choices that are fully transparent right here in the Bay Area?”

Poncia went so far as to say that reliance on “fast foods” will lead to the “end of the world” and that the consumer should be able to put a face to who is raising the meat and visit where the meat source is living and breathing.

Mother Nature is a recurrent theme when opening a dialogue about lab-grown meat. Many researchers are seeking to create what the natural order has been regulating and modifying over the course of billions of years.

Poncia and other ranchers might be happy to hear, however, that even a researcher of alternative meat are skeptical of the possibility of wide-scale consumption. Ricardo San Martin, research director of the Alternative Meats X-Lab at the UC Berkeley Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, noted that the universal adoption of artificial meats “will never happen.”

San Martin does not currently pursue the physical research of lab-grown meat, but instead investigates the viability of alternative sources of meats, whether it be plant-based or cell-cultivated meat through meticulous calculations. He proposes that outcomes are hindered by three factors: biosafety/cost, limitation of fermentation and narrative.

“Biosafety is that the narrative says that you can grow these cells like you grow your beer in your backyard. It’s false because these are mammalian cells and are prone to viral infections,” San Martin said.

The pharmaceutical industry has been working to produce medicine to protect the human body against viruses for 40 years and the product has to be contained, with risk of contamination and decay. San Martin fears that this will be the same fate that will befall the lab-grown product because the cells that are grown could potentially be contaminated by similar viruses.

The problem is that the substance the pharmaceutical companies are working with is not biomass, or organic material that is sourced from plant and animal material, yet is still susceptible to viruses. San Martin juxtaposes the lab-grown meat industry with the pharmaceutical as he asserts that these problems are not severe because pharmaceutical companies make expensive medicine, which can be compared to the potential cost of lab-cultivated meat.

The hypersensitivity of something that is produced in a lab can be detrimental to the manufacturing and distribution of meat. San Martin also worries that the cost is too high to manufacture and distribute the meat as the cost to make a single lab-cultivated chicken nugget can be about $50.

Aside from the cost of meat construction production and research, fermentation is said to be a viable measure. Fermentation is the process of suspending cells that become packed together in hopes of creating a dense structure that can be harvested as meat. San Martin suggests that there are limitations to how effective this process can be at producing something that is substantially on-par with naturally raised meats.

“Our meat is totally densely packed and you look at a fermenter and see that the cells are floating in there, in a large space of water or another solution,” San Martin said. “So what you have to do is pack them as close as possible to get something similar, like a paste of meat cells, but the problem is when you start packing them up there’s something called viscosity that builds up exponentially.”

Viscosity can result in a number of problems for the success of meat. When the wrong viscosity is built up, the meat can lose oxygen and the outcome will be for the worse. Another problem is scaffolding, which is the formation of cell growth from a base. The base needs to be sufficient in providing adequate nutrients while also being molecularly similar to what is being targeted for growth. San Martin states that it “is a grey area that no one knows how they are going to do that.”

Nature has turned up in this dialogue once more, now mentioned again by San Martin. He points out that “nature, over a billion years, optimized your muscles,” in an argument against the plausibility of lab-grown meat.

This is the dialogue that has been played out, according to San Martin. The dialogue that lab-grown meat can change the world is skewed and will not be universally accepted.

“It’s a black box. The narrative is that we are going to save the planet. That narrative may work on adoption rates for a cell phone or a vaccine for the coronavirus,” San Martin said. “Adoption rates, tomorrow we would all be using it tomorrow. Here, we are talking about food, and food is culture, it is meaning. It is something that gives us our dimension of who we are.”

The adoption rates, the rate at which an ideology or object is accepted and put to use by a given people, of this new way of eating will likely be high in a progressive demographic, but what about the other areas that don’t have access to advanced technologies and rely on the fruits of the land? This is a question posed by San Martin.

He mentions that there is the cultural and traditional linkage between people and their food. To integrate a new practice into a culture that has been doing something for generations seems to be out of reach, according to San Martin, who adds that this contradicts the universal adoption rates big companies boast to the media.

“It’s really a narrative that plays well for investors because you are going to conquer the world but its a narrative that is totally misleading when it comes to what would really happen.”

Food is experience, culture, tradition and life. Alternative meat production is on the rise and everyone has the right to their own plate.

Contact Daniel Orona at [email protected].