Cultured beef: from small biopsy to substantial quantity

Abstract

Cultured meat is an emerging technology with the potential to solve huge challenges related to the environmental, ethical, and health implications of conventional meat production. Establishing the basic science of cultured meat has been the primary focus of the last decade but it is now feasible that cultured meat products will enter the market within the next 3 to 4 years. This proximity to market introduction demands an evaluation of aspects of the cultured meat production process that have not yet been outlined or discussed in significant detail. For example, one technological approach for the production of cultured meat uses adult muscle stem cells, the limited proliferative capacity of which necessitates repeated collection of tissue samples via biopsies of living donor animals. The selection of donor animals and the details of biopsy processes must be optimized, as this is a key bottleneck in the cultured meat production process. The number of stem cells harvested from a biopsy, together with their proliferative capacity, determines a ‘multiplicity factor’ achieved by a cultured meat production process, thus dictating the reduction in number of animals required to produce a given quantity of meat. This article considers potential scenarios for these critical upstream steps, focusing on the production of cultured beef as an example. Considerations related to donor selection and details of the biopsy process are discussed in detail. The practicalities of various scenarios for cultured beef production, the health of donor animals, and regulatory issues associated with the safety of cultured meat for consumers are also considered. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Cultivating Multidisciplinarity: Manufacturing and Sensing Challenges in Cultured Meat Production

“…Excellent reviews describing in detail different cell sources and procedures used in CM research were recently published by Post et al [ 33 ], Zhang et al [ 34 ], Melzener et al [ 35 ], Bryant [ 36 ] and others.…”

“…The proposed general methodology [ 35 , 37 ] for the production of CA-generated meat, i.e., CM is summarized in Figure 1 .…”

Can Cultured Meat Be an Alternative to Farm Animal Production for a Sustainable and Healthier Lifestyle?

“…In addition, the suffering caused by collecting stem cells from animals is negligible compared to that of animals in the conventional meat industry. Stem cell collection is performed under local or complete anesthesia, it does not take more than a few minutes and involves the use of a biopsy syringe and presents a low risk of long-term complications ( 77 ). According to Hopkins and Dacey ( 78 ) in vitro meat has the potential to reduce animal suffering considerably.…”

Evolution of the Soil-Based Agriculture and Food System to Biologically-Based Indoor Systems

“…Using culturing methods, the adult stem cell (called satellite cells), in the presence of relatively high serum concentrations, divide leading to multiplying populations. Tissue engineering methods are then used to differentiate these expanded cells into muscle and fat tissue, which lead to generation of a cultured meat product closely resembling conventional meat [72]. Figure 14 illustrates, in broad terms, the process based on the starting point of obtaining adult muscle stem cells from an animals or pluripotent stem cells from an embryo [73].…”