Biotechnological and Technical Challenges Related to Cultured Meat Production

Abstract

The constant growth of the population has pushed researchers to find novel protein sources. A possible solution to this problem has been found in cellular agriculture, specifically in the production of cultured meat. In the following review, the key steps for the production of in vitro meat are identified, as well as the most important challenges. The main biological and technical approaches are taken into account and discussed, such as the choice of animal, animal-free alternatives to fetal bovine serum (FBS), cell biomaterial interactions, and the implementation of scalable and sustainable biofabrication and culturing systems. In the light of the findings, as promising as cultured meat production is, most of the discussed challenges are in an initial stage. Hence, research must overcome these challenges to ensure efficient large-scale production.

The Moral Pitfalls of Cultivated meat: Complementing Utilitarian Perspective with eco-republican Justice Approach

“…After a mother cow has been slaughtered and gutted, her uterus, which contains the fetus, is removed. Only fetuses older than three months are used, otherwise the heart is too small to perforate (Lanzoni et al, 2022 ).…”

“…If, for example, in order to facilitate and accelerate cell extraction, the animals were forced to be in a reduced space and in conditions of overcrowding, then a moral problem would arise, as their territorial autonomy and freedom to interact with other individuals would not be respected. As Donaldson and Kymlicka pointed out ( 2011 ), animals should have the political right to enjoy the sovereignty of their communities and territories.…”

3D Porous Edible Scaffolds from Rye Secalin for Cell-Based Pork Fat Tissue Culturing

“…However, the drawback of traditional particulate-leaching is the poor permeability of randomly stacked particles that inhibit diffusion of polymer solution into internal pores, thus inducing a film-forming phenomenon, leading to limited scaffold thickness (typically within 3 mm) and structural inhomogeneity. 14 Commercial available sugar cubes featured by their rapid dissolution in the aqueous phase possess highly interconnected channels for solution permeation, which are desirable templates for fabricating porous polymer scaffolds with high porosity and pore interconnectivity. To date, such template-leaching approach was mainly used to fabricate synthetic polymeric scaffolds, such as polydimethylsiloxane and poly(3-hydroxybutyrate), for wearable devices or sensors and tissue engineering, where the toxic organic solvents were included and not suitable for preparing edible scaffolds.…”

Cradle to production gate life cycle assessment of cultured meat growth media: A comparison of Essential 8™ and Beefy-9

“…This can introduce unknown factors which can affect animal cell proliferation and differentiation. The utilization of growth media containing animal-based components would also largely be contradictory to the "spirit" of the cultured meat products, especially in terms of the technology addressing the issue of animal welfare in conventional meat production system (Lanzoni et al, 2022). In contrast, defined media is chemically defined with set concentrations of proteins, amino acids, sugars, vitamins, minerals, salts, among other constituents.…”