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Scientists from the University of Missouri, the University of Maryland and the Animal Bioscience and Biotechnology Laboratory, US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service have published an article in Nature outlining a method for "generating skeletal muscle efficiently from porcine induced pluripotent stem cells (piPSC) in vitro thereby providing a versatile platform for applications ranging from regenerative biology to the ex vivo cultivation of meat". The research used a porcine stem cell line to generate muscular tissue instead of cells taken directly from a pig:
"What the paper describes is research designed to generate muscle from a newly established pig stem-cell line, rather that from primary cells taken directly from a pig," co-author Dr. Nicholas Genovese, a stem-cell biologist (and vegetarian), told Digital Trends. "This entailed understanding the biology of relatively uncharacterized and recently-derived porcine induced pluripotent stem cell lines. What conditions support cell growth, survival and differentiation? These are all questions I had to figure out in the lab before the cells could be turned into muscle."
Also at GlobalMeatNews.
Enhanced Development of Skeletal Myotubes from Porcine Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (open, DOI: 10.1038/srep41833) (DX)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday February 18 2017, @08:39AM
Less complicated forms of meat like ground beef/pork will be the first to be commercialized. Actual differentiated cuts of meat and those with bone in them will come later. If the technique takes off and starts replacing the livestock industry, we'll see research into creating premium cuts that include marbling or mimic the grass/shrimp/whatever-fed taste.
The quality of lab-grown ground meat products can't be determined yet, but there's reasons to hope. Rather than throwing mystery components in, with the lab-grown meat you can be confident that only muscle, fat, and blood cells are used. No bits of bone, beak, eyeballs, or whatever. The world's first lab-grown burger didn't even contain the desired fat cells or blood (beetroot juice was used to color it). Lean ground meat like 93% meat/7% fat are sold at a premium in supermarkets, and will be the easiest to replicate.
The saline solution acts partially as a preservative. Lab-grown meat has the potential to be grown much closer to consumers because you could stick a factory much closer to or within cities than where you could put a slaughterhouse. Less distance and less travel time could mean less need for a saline solution.
Lab-grown meat is going to face a lot of scientific, regulatory, and marketing hurdles, and I wouldn't expect the average consumer to eat anything like this regularly within the next 20 years. However, there will be additional pressure to make it happen given the suspected environmental and cost benefits.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @12:35PM
On the other hand, vegetarian meat-substitutes with heme are already on the market and taste pretty damn good.
https://www.cnet.com/news/the-veggie-burger-that-bleeds-like-real-meat/ [cnet.com]
http://beyondmeat.com/ [beyondmeat.com]
https://www.impossiblefoods.com/ [impossiblefoods.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @03:08PM
Which is fine as long as you don't want to suffer from nutrient deficiency. Humans evolved to eat meat as a part of our diets and removing the meat from our diets results in health problems. There's a reason why vegetarians and vegans don't live as long as people who eat a sensible meat based diet.
There's also a reason why vegetarians and vegans have to use a strawman diet in order to claim that the diets are healthier. There are no health problems associated with getting 10 or 20% of your calories from quality cuts of meat. The health problems from meat are mostly when that number gets to be 70 or 80% of junk meat.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @07:58PM
There's a reason why vegetarians and vegans don't live as long as people who eat a sensible meat based diet.
And what reason would that be?
Or is it no reason at all, since vegetarians live 6-9 years longer than everybody else. [nydailynews.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @10:46PM
Maybe those who know, consciously or unconsciously, that they are about to die choose to eat meat.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 18 2017, @12:56PM
Like shit!
Growing mushrooms is so much less environ damaging (and cheaper, at least today) - feed cellulose (grasses - hay, straw, bran), get natural proteins, minerals, vitamins
And I bet taste much better than the artificial pork, certainly they look much better [mushacademy.com].
This letting aside the magic in some mushrooms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 18 2017, @04:19PM
There is an increasing demand for chicken, beef, pork, etc. as hundreds of millions more people enter the middle class around the world. They are demanding it and getting it. Now you have a technology that could deliver better tasting quality meat (or worse, but I already explained how it can be better) while using 1-2 orders of magnitude less water, energy, and land.
There is a place for mushrooms, insects, Heme/impossible meat, etc. That place is probably space. Here on Earth, we still have enough resources for the moment to satisfy the growing demand for meat. But if we could do it with just a fraction of the environmental impact and at a lower cost palatable to industry, that would be preferred.
And I bet that scientists will put out a lab-grown pork that tastes better than some pork products out on the market today which are eaten by millions. You say people should switch to mushrooms. Others are even trying to grow their own mealworms. But people are still eating millions of pounds of questionable Taco Bell meat, pink slime burgers, bodily horror chicken nuggets, mystery sausage, and fish sticks in their mouth. Every day. Replacing those items with lab grown alternatives could have significant benefits.
If you are going to be eating mushrooms and a vegan diet, there is no downside in others replacing livestock with lab grown meat, because you won't be eating it anyway. Right?
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(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday February 19 2017, @04:49AM
> [...] using 1-2 orders of magnitude less water, energy, and land [...]
According to one estimate, a pig can gain 1 kg of weight by eating 4 kg of grain:
The efficiency with which various animals convert grain into protein varies widely. With cattle in feedlots, it takes roughly 7 kilograms of grain to produce a 1-kilogram gain in live weight. For pork, the figure is close to 4 kilograms of grain per kilogram of weight gain, for poultry it is just over 2, and for herbivorous species of farmed fish (such as carp, tilapia, and catfish), it is less than 2. As the market shifts production to the more grain-efficient products, it raises the productivity of both land and water.
-- https://web.archive.org/web/20120920003538/http://www.earth-policy.org/books/pb2/pb2ch9_ss4 [archive.org]
I apprehend that with a tissue culture there will be no unused organs--all the flesh grown will be consumable. However I doubt there is a possibility for tenfold greater efficiency, let alone 100-fold.
A Forbes columnist had a response to the estimates I quoted above. Instead of harvesting crops to feed to animals, he advocates having livestock graze:
Around where I live in Portugal pigs forage for acorns (yes, from the same oak trees that give us cork) or are fed on swill, goats and sheep graze on fields that would support no form of arable farming at all (they can just about, sometimes, support low levels of almond, olive or carob growing). Much beef cattle in the UK is grass fed with perhaps hay or silage in the winters.
-- https://web.archive.org/web/20120915063548/http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/09/03/it-does-not-take-7-kg-of-grain-to-make-1-kg-of-beef-be-very-careful-with-your-statistics/ [archive.org]
These tissue cultures will need a culture medium; without the benefit of a digestive system, they will not be able to consume cellulosic material. Whatever is fed to them could instead nourish people directly (although, like an elemental diet in a hospital it may not be palatable). My default assumption is that the medium would be prepared from soybeans or maize, which can be made into eaten directly by people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_diet [wikipedia.org]
Mushrooms, in contrast, can be grown in sawdust or manure.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:24AM
I said water, energy, and land. As in the production can be done in a building covering 1% of the land area that would be required for raising cattle. Much less energy because you can have meat grown closer to where people live, requiring less distance to ship. Low greenhouse gas emissions because there are no cattle FARTS.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2011-06-21-lab-grown-meat-would-cut-emissions-and-save-energy [ox.ac.uk]
alt: https://phys.org/news/2011-06-lab-grown-meat-emissions-energy.html [phys.org]
study: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es200130u [acs.org]
For the water use figure, consider that it takes a certain amount of water to grow your 7 kilograms of grain, and then more water for the live cattle. Compare to a smaller amount for just the cultured meat. And certain crops used for cattle might require more water than others:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-05-26/why-they-grow-thirsty-alfalfa-in-parched-california [bloomberg.com]
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/05/11/cows-not-almonds-are-biggest-water-users/ [takepart.com]
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(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:58AM
I said water, energy, and land. As in the production can be done in a building covering 1% of the land area that would be required for raising cattle.
Later you noted that growing grains or alfalfa uses water. It also uses land--much more land, I would assume, than do feed lots.
> Low greenhouse gas emissions because there are no cattle FARTS.
Unless I'm mistaken, the bacteria that produce all that methane are the same bacteria that permit cattle to digest cellulose. We don't, AFAIK, have a practical industrial method of doing so (perhaps the same bacteria could be grown in a bioreactor, and the methane put to good use?).
Lacking a digestive system, cultured meat will need an industrially produced nutrient broth. There will also have to be replacements for the immune, respiratory, and excretory systems.
> http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es200130u [acs.org]
"Cyanobacteria hydrolysate was assumed to be used as the nutrient and energy source," they write in their abstract. I didn't view the full article, but I wonder how much of the predicted saving in land and water is due to that assumption. Cyanobacteria can grow in sea water, so it could be said that no land or fresh water is needed for its cultivation. The species Nostoc commune, which can grow in the ocean (or, I'm guessing, fresh water), is eaten by people.
http://lkcnhm.nus.edu.sg/dna/organisms/details/645 [nus.edu.sg]
http://cuzcoeats.com/an-edible-bacteria-called-llullucha-finds-place-in-cuzcos-cuisine/ [cuzcoeats.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostoc_commune#Uses [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday February 19 2017, @10:54PM
article about using hydrolysed cyanobacteria to grow yeast:
http://biotechnologyforbiofuels.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1754-6834-7-64 [biomedcentral.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:47AM
Almost. Everything is right except a vegan diet.
(well, you see, I could get nobody to agree with me that pork is a damn tasty vegetable)
Yes, I won't touch chicken nuggets and the like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday February 18 2017, @04:19PM
As well, I'm starting to think my mealworm farm is a good, homegrown alternative to fake pork.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---