In 1964, British science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wrote a brief story titled ‘The Food of the Gods’, set in a world the place any form of meals, together with meat, may very well be created utilizing expertise. Little greater than half a century later, the concept of human-engineered meat is now not one thing out of speculative fiction.
On July 1, California-based meals expertise startup Upside Foods partnered with a Michelin-starred restaurant, Bar Crenn in San Francisco, to serve cultivated hen to diners for the primary time.
This got here shut on the heels of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granting approval final month to Upside Foods and one other model, Good Meat, to begin producing and promoting hen made in a lab. Meanwhile, Australian cell-based meat firm Vow Food has simply made a bid to the Food Standards Australian New Zealand (FSANZ) to promote lab-grown quail.
Expected to develop right into a $1.99 billion trade by 2035, cultivated meat, additionally known as cultured or lab-grown meat, will not be precisely new science. The expertise behind this has already been used for many years in the pharmaceutical trade, a significant facet of most cancers analysis, vaccine growth, drug screening and virology. “We always have viable solutions to be able to create alternative protein solutions that go beyond animals. It was about aligning the technology to this particular goal,” says Bengaluru-based chef-entrepreneur Manu Chandra. “I think one needs to look at it through a prism of long-term sustainability rather than an instant trend that starts and then fades away.”
Over 100 gamers globally
Though the variety of startups and ventures in the cultivated meat house has gone as much as over 100 globally, it has taken off to a sluggish begin in India. But trade gamers imagine this development will change with extra funding and consciousness. “Even if we are not primary consumers of this product, there will be worldwide demand. We can look at it as a biotechnology-based economic growth driver and as a way of feeding the world,” says Bharath Bakaraju of Phyx44 Private Limited, a Bengaluru-based firm that’s engaged on creating milk via precision fermentation. “We have proved to be very good at biotechnology. Over 50% of the world’s vaccines are produced here.”
N. Madhusudhana Rao, CEO of Atal Incubation Centre, CCMB, Hyderabad, the place the nation’s first analysis on cell-based meat was performed in 2019, agrees that the nation has the expertise wanted to leap on the cultivated meat bandwagon. “We are competent to do it if there is sufficient support,” he says, including that it’s required with the regular rise in demand for meat in India.
The international demand for poultry alone is projected to extend 850% by 2040, in accordance with Good Food Institute (GFI), a non-profit assume tank and worldwide community of organisations working to speed up different protein innovation. Building future meals methods that can guarantee an enough provide of this protein is due to this fact crucial, says Radhika Ramesh, coverage specialist, GFI India. “That is where smart protein comes in,” she says.
Bengaluru-based nutritionist Anju Sood too thinks it’s a good suggestion. Most Indian meals are unbalanced, starch-heavy and lack sufficient protein, so having higher, cleaner protein choices in the market is a optimistic factor, she says. The solely factor Sood worries about is whether or not cultivated meat shall be accepted by the Indian client. “Let it come to the market first, and then we will see.”
Sustainably produced
Cultivated meat is made by extracting a small pattern of cells from an animal and permitting these cells to develop and proliferate in a bioreactor, a closed vessel that provides a sterile, nutrient-dense surroundings.
The imaginative and prescient of proponents of this expertise is of rows of bioreactors, which require far much less land and water, and provide clear, sustainably produced, cruelty-free meat. “Animal cell cultures are very self-regulating. They will not grow well or at all, in some cases, if there is any contaminant. This lends well to quality control,” says Shubhankar Takle, co-founder of MyoWorks Private Limited, a Mumbai-based organisation that’s engaged on making scaffolds (progress medium) for cultivated meat out of mycelium, the filamentous, vegetative a part of a fungus.
Cost and acceptance
Not surprisingly, there continues to be scepticism round lab-grown meat, a few of it very justified. “It is a very good development. But will they be able to scale it? And will there be market acceptance?” asks Shashi Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Akshayakalpa Organic, a farmer entrepreneurship initiative primarily based in Bengaluru. “People have a lot of doubts. If there is no market acceptance, this will die.”
There are additionally some sensible issues, which can want time, additional analysis, and some breakthroughs earlier than cultivated meat can go mainstream. For starters, regardless of having come down significantly in value because it was first unveiled in 2013, it’s nonetheless costlier than common meat as a result of it’s made utilizing strategies derived from the biopharmaceutical trade. “I don’t think price parity will be a problem down the line,” says Subramani Ramachandrappa of Fermbox Bio, an artificial biology firm targeted on sustainable manufacturing of other biomaterials to interchange animal-derived or forest-derived merchandise. “Ten years ago, the cost of producing a pound of cultivated meat was about $1,50,000, now it is about $1,000.”
Energy maths
There can also be the truth that cultivated meat isn’t essentially higher for the surroundings since it’s a extremely energy-consuming course of, probably producing carbon dioxide, which persists even longer in the ambiance than the methane generated by cattle. “We cannot follow a global trend without understanding context, our resources and strengths, and our landscapes,” says Sameer Shisodia, CEO of Rainmatter Foundation, a Bengaluru-based non-profit. Instead, he suggests conventional agricultural practices, choosing free-range grazing and built-in farming methods. “The net energy maths for that is better.”
Ramachandrappa, alternatively, believes that diversifying protein sources is the one means we can proceed to feed ourselves, contemplating we’re anticipated to change into 10 billion folks by 2050. “Biotechnology can help us democratise food for the world,” he says, echoing the opinion shared by Mukunda Goswami, Principal Scientist in the Genetics and Biotechnology Division at ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education.
“Lab-grown protein has the potential to meet the demand of our burgeoning population. Where else will we get all this extra food from? We have to give the consumer this option too,” says Goswami, who’s at present researching a global mission on cultivated seafood, the primary of its variety in India.
preeti.zachariah@thehindu.co.in
