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A team of scientists at the University of Vermont believe meat lovers will soon reach for a substitute for their beef, chicken and pork that’s made in a lab. The UVM team is developing cell-cultivated chicken, though they expect it will take a while to get federal approval and land on consumers’ plates.
UVM researchers Rachael Floreani and Irfan Tahir served as keynote speakers for Tech Jam, an annual job fair that connects local technology companies with prospective workers. They described their process of producing a meat alternative from the cellular material of animals that people like to eat.
Floreani has founded a company called Burlington Bio to get technology out of the university and into the hands of consumers. Her goal is to change the entire food system, possibly reducing the cost of food, she said.
“The largest aim of my work is educating the highly driven innovators of the next generation.,” Floreani, a UVM associate professor and head of its bioengineering lab, said to the Tech Jam attendees gathered in October in the atrium of Hula, a start-up incubator space on the Burlington waterfront. Floreani launched the startup company Burlington Bio to further her work outside the university.
Tahir, a doctoral student and fellow in Floreani’s lab, is a practicing vegan who stopped eating eggs and meat in 2017. Concerned about the distress of animals during slaughtering at factory farms, he said, he wanted to use his interest in the study of tissue to ease their suffering. That’s what brought him to Floreani’s work on cell cultivation.
“Cultivating lab-grown meat is energy intensive, but our food system needs another sustainable alternative,” Tahir told the Tech Jam audience.
People are eating more meat, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. The amount of red meat and poultry consumed per capita increased from 224.8 pounds in 2021 to 226.8 pounds in 2022, the department reported. This year, estimated federal data shows that meat consumption is on track to dip slightly.
Meat production contributes significantly to greenhouse gases, and 99.9% of meat produced in the United States comes from factory farms, Tahir said.
If you can stop eating meat, you are not necessarily the target audience for lab-grown meat, Tahir said. Cultured meat is for people who love meat and don’t want to give it up.
In their lab, the researchers remove cells from host tissue, a cow or chicken, and use them to create materials that replicate or mimic the properties of that cow or chicken. They cultivate that sample to grow outside of the animal’s body, which takes three weeks to two months.
The resulting edible product looks like the original meat and has nutritional value, Floreani said. Those cellular building blocks, known as scaffolds, make the material taste more like meat.
Floreani and Tahir use whey protein to help grow the scaffold, capturing nutrients that would be discarded in milk byproducts and keeping them out of the waste stream. Scaffolding provies a “familiar home” for cells to develop muscle and fat, Floreani explained.
Their current lab-grown meat is in a “cell slurry,” which is repackaged into sausages and nuggets.
They need funding, and larger investors put pressure on startups for a fast return on equity, which is difficult for a small biotechnoloty firm like Floreani’s.
They also need more talent in the field of cell cultivation. And they are wary of bigger food producers monopolizing the field, looking to get into the non-meat market to improve their corporate image in the areas of climate change and sustainability.
To consumers who turn up their noses at lab-grown meat, the scientists ask them to examine their view of climate change and choices they make to reduce their environmental impact. Maybe they drive an electric vehicle, installed solar panels on their homes or diligently recycle. Those consumers need to consider the industrial sources of their meat and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions they contribute, Tahir said.
“Cellular agriculture will not change the world. Climate change will change the world,” Tahir said. “It is up to us to use any weapon in our arsenal against climate change, including investing in cellular agriculture.”