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 type of meals, together with meat, may very well be created utilizing expertise. Little greater than half a century later, the thought of human-engineered meat is 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 rooster 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 rooster 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, isn’t precisely new science. The expertise behind this has already been used for many years in the pharmaceutical trade, an important side of most cancers analysis, vaccine improvement, 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 area has gone as much as over 100 globally, it has taken off to a gradual begin in India. But trade gamers consider 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 by way of 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 carried out 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 suppose tank and worldwide community of organisations working to speed up various protein innovation. Building future meals techniques that can guarantee an enough provide of this protein is subsequently essential, 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 constructive factor, she says. The solely factor Sood worries about is whether or not cultivated meat might be accepted by the Indian shopper. “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 setting.
The imaginative and prescient of proponents of this expertise is of rows of bioreactors, which require far much less land and water, and supply 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 (development 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 based mostly in Bengaluru. “People have a lot of doubts. If there is no market acceptance, this will die.”
There are additionally some sensible issues, which is able to want time, additional analysis, and some breakthroughs earlier than cultivated meat can go mainstream. For starters, regardless of having come down significantly in worth 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 centered on sustainable manufacturing of different biomaterials to switch 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 be the truth that cultivated meat isn’t essentially higher for the setting since it’s a extremely energy-consuming course of, doubtlessly producing carbon dioxide, which persists even longer in the ambiance than the methane generated by livestock. “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 techniques. “The net energy maths for that is better.”
Ramachandrappa, alternatively, believes that diversifying protein sources is the one manner we can proceed to feed ourselves, contemplating we’re anticipated to grow to be 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 the moment researching a global mission on cultivated seafood, the primary of its form in India.
preeti.zachariah@thehindu.co.in
