Lab-grown meat: The need for Nigeria to be involved, By Obiechina Obba

Lab-grown meat sometimes called cultured meat or cultivated meat is closer to being on our dining tables.

It is meat grown from an animal’s (stem) cells in a laboratory.

Cells come together to form tissues and are the simplest units or form of life. The animal cells are turned into stem cells using a technique called Pluripotency. A few cells in a nutrient medium of amino acids, sugars and other minor food additives, multiply in a petri-dish as they would in a living animal. It is therefore, real meat and it is possible to grow the meat of millions of cattle from one single cow using this technology.

The cells are fed by the nutrient medium as a live cow is fed by the grass it eats and digests. On a large scale, cultured meat is grown in bioreactors.

One of the pioneers of the commercialisation of this technology in US, Good Meat, advertises it as “meat without slaughter, a more humane approach to eating meat.”

Is it safe for human consumption? Yes, say the promoters. The US Food and Drug Administration, FDA, approved Good Meat’s lab-grown chicken in its so-called “No questions” letter on 21 March, 2023.

Another US lab-grown meat company, Upside Foods, got a similar FDA approval in November, 2022. Both companies are only waiting for the US Department of Agriculture’s approval before it is sold in stores and served in restaurants in US.

Good Meat’s lab-grown chicken has been approved and has been on sale to the public in Singapore since 2020.

A problem is that the price is high. A pound of traditionally raised/slaughter-based beef is about $2 as against $17 to produce lab-grown beef in US. The first hamburger using lab-grown meat in London sold for $330,000 in 2013. The price is going down with time, though.

Another disadvantage that lab-grown meat had was that about 20% of the medium used in growing the meat is from Foetal Bovine Serum. It is obtained by slaughtering a pregnant cow and sucking the blood from the foetus. This expensive process is now replaced by Precision Fermentation where genetically modified yeasts are used to create the medium.

Lab-grown meat has equivalent taste and the advantage of being free from animal diseases found in slaughter-based meat. It is also free from antibiotics fed to animals to protect them from infections. Meat lovers will not passively, consume antibiotics when eating lab-grown meat.

Best steaks are possible from the cells used to grow cultured meat and they can be further modified to be higher in vitamins; low in fats and cholesterol in bioreactors.

Land used for ranches will be down by 99%. Livestock farming contribution to greenhouse gases will also come down by up to 96%. This will be possible if energy from solar, hydro and wind power is used in producing the nutrient medium to feed the cells. Animal husbandry contributes 14.5% to annual greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

Religious sentiments against lab-grown meat are so far not a major issue. Moslems, for instance, demand that cattle be slaughtered in a traditional manner to qualify as Halal meat. Some Islamic scholars have therefore, classified cultured meat as being from carcass and not fit for human consumption as Halal meat. Singapore, a predominantly Moslem country, has however, accepted lab-grown meat.

Italy’s Agriculture and Food Sovereignty minister, Francesco Lollobrigida, sponsored a bill to Senate in March, 2023  to ban lab-grown meat. He cited concerns that it will harm small food producers and prescribed a fine of €60,000 for any company producing it.

The European Union has granted BioTech Foods, Nutreco and Mosa Meat, funds worth millions of Euros for research into this technology so; Italy may be on a losing side.

The appeal of this technology is that more people can be fed and millions of animals do not need to be slaughtered yearly to feed man.

It also offers better quality meat products and is eco-friendly.

Vegetarians consider cultured meat as from an animal source and should instead; go for genetically modified plant protein sources, some of which mimick meat in taste.

This technology will also assist African countries like Nigeria with nomadic cattle rearers, as they will end their perennial conflicts with farmers, because much less live animals will be needed.

Nigeria has a National Biotechnology Development Agency, NABDA, and a regulatory body for the technology, National Biosafety Management Agency, NBMA. This technology, with all its advantages cannot, therefore, be said to be beyond her.

Obiechina Obba, a science journalist, writes from Abuja.
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