We now live in a world where lab-grown meat is a thing that you can buy with money.
Last month, the USDA approved lab-grown meat to be sold to the public. Specifically, lab-grown chicken. Here’s how this works:
Technicians test stem cells from a fertilized chicken egg to check for viability and “agreeability” — factors like taste, texture, resilience, and stamina. Think selective breeding, but at the cellular level.
Next, scientists take the most promising cells and introduce them to a stainless steel vat of nutrient-rich broth that contains everything a growing cell needs to thrive. Within a matter of weeks in the vat, the cells begin to adhere to one another and so begins the process of protein production, also known in the biological world as “growing”.
From here, the “meat” undergoes any number of processes to encourage texture, achieve flavor, and is either pressed into nuggets or sheared into cutlets so that the finished product resembles what we have all come to expect when we happily order a round of “chicken nuggets” or a “chicken breast filet.”
The concept and story of lab-grown meat has been a fascinating spectacle to observe. On queue, no-one really knows what to do with this scientifically synthesized little monster. Predictably, the product is being billed as “safe”, “humane”, “Cruelty-free”, “Slaughter-free”, the universally comforting “Sustainable” (despite the total carbon footprint of the process being far greater than that of livestock production, dang it). Interestingly, I have yet to see lab-grown meat referred to as “delicious”. Also, ethical dilemmas abound. Half of vegetarians polled in the United Kingdom indicated they would avoid lab-grown meat. Can lab-grown meat be certified Halal? Is this stuff Kosher? Can it even be labeled as “meat”? Quick, send in the lawyers!
All joking aside, two-thirds of Americans have indicated that they would at least try lab-grown meat. Certainly, I will give it a try at some point. Depending how you want to look at the synthesization process itself, we’re talking about a concept that is similar to brewing beer — or manufacturing hot dogs. And what could possibly be more American that washing down a hot dog with a glass of beer?
As a farmer, and especially as someone who is in tune with the societal outlooks and perceptions of food production in the United States, this all makes perfect sense to me. Lab-grown meat is not something to be viewed as a threat, or something scary, or even something of a surprise.
The dirty little secret about food production in the United States is that “farming” in a traditional sense does not exist. Rather, a hyper-centralized approach to food production has directly fueled industrialization, which is precisely why meat alternatives and dairy alternatives are gaining traction. Worded as plainly as possible: The industrialization of animal agriculture is exactly why plant-based and alternative diets are gaining popularity. People would rather support scientists in lab coats tending to their great vats of protein, than factory farms.
Certainly, you cannot blame the consumer for switching — a typical ground beef patty may contain meat from over 100 animals. In the American Southwest, livestock feedlots are so massive that they literally create their own weather. During the pandemic, Business Insider released a series of videos celebrating the automation of modern-day swine operations, where hundreds of thousands of pigs are raised, from conception to slaughter, in a completely automated environment with little or no human interaction whatsoever, which is as dystopian as it gets.
A common conversation with our near-daily farmstay tour groups touches on the environmental impact of livestock facilities. Certainly, you’ve heard the argument that cows contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, thus fueling the desire for meat alternatives. Here’s the part we, as farmers, have lost touch with:
A cow, as a grazing herbivore, has existed on this planet for millions of years, and will exist on this planet for millions of years to come. Grass is by far the most effective means of scrubbing carbon from the atmosphere — far more effective than trees, commodity crops, and even more effective than government regulation.
To say that a cow is destructive to the environment is like saying a fish is destructive to the ocean.
Certainly, if we’re taking about how tilapia is “farmed”, the conversation changes. Likewise with livestock. When cows are housed by the thousands in a confined facility where they are fed an unnaturally high-energy diet of corn with sugar and protein supplements, and it is far more economical to discard sick or old animals rather than care for them, again — the conversation changes.
If the sole purpose of a chicken, or a cow, or a pig, is to grow as quickly and efficiently as possible with absolutely no autonomy or individuality, then heck yes — I’ll have the lab-grown chicken with a side of vegetarian.
In related news, U.S. life expectancy just plummeted at a two-year rate not seen since the 1920s. Worldwide, the United States ranks 46th, meaning there are 45 countries with higher life expectancies than us. However you analyze the cause, we are not a healthy nation. We are suffering from mental and physical exhaustion.
As the saying goes, we are what we eat.
— Dan Wegmueller is the owner of Wegmueller Farms and his column appears regularly in the Times. His website is https://www.farmforthought.org.
