The Beef on Cultured Meat

“We use real meat cells to grow real meat.”

That’s the whole concept behind biotechnology-meets-culinary arts company, Memphis Meats, which launched last month. The small company is based out of the San Francisco Bay Area, but holds strong ties to Memphis, Tennessee. One of the co-founders, biomedical engineer Will Clem, also owns a chain of barbeque joints out of Memphis, hence the name and culinary inspiration.

In order to mitigate the numerous pitfalls to producing and eating meat, Memphis Meats decided to “farm meat directly” by taking meat tissue cells, say Angus beef, and applying biotechnology techniques to culture them into a tangible slab of steak. The company then hands over the meat to chefs who create the final product. The latest? An Italian meatball almost like Grandma makes. That is, of course, if Grandma had a laboratory in her backyard in lieu of a chicken coop.

As a vegan and a Society and Environment major, I was immediately interested in this alternative to the insidious hell-hole that is the modern meat industry. Although the idea is intriguing and arguably helpful, the concept leaves a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. I initially became a vegan for many reasons, mainly because of my distrust for modern meat production and the impact it has on the way Americans think about food.

Mass meat production relies on factory systems not only to slaughter and process the animals, but to raise them too. The romantic image of herds of cattle grazing the fields tended to by a compassionate farmer are replaced by cramped stalls of hormone-injected animals standing deep in their own waste tended to only when they are too weak to stand. Beef processing plants operate on massive scales, processing thousands of cows per day on essentially an assembly line. The method is disheartening to some, myself included, but it does meet its goal: efficiency.

Call me old-fashioned, but the idea of meat being grown in a petri dish instead of acres of grass is unsettling, not so much for the taste or quality, but for what it says about America’s relationship with food.

America has long been a nation mashed up of countless cultures, yet each brought their own unique food identities and consequently shaped the way America grew and consumed food. There was a time before industrialized agriculture where America had regional cuisine, just as the great food nations like France, Italy, and India. Each region in America grew all types of crops that were each carefully selected and adapted to their environments. When livestock gorged upon these habitats, a distinct flavor was created, and consequently, a distinct food culture.

Beginning in the 1940s, a new approach to agriculture was instituted called the Green Revolution. This “revolution” reimagined American agriculture to be a capitalist machine: chemical fertilizers and pesticides in, high yields out. There was, and still is, a desire to produce as much as possible at virtually any cost.

That’s when meat production turned into a full-fledged factory operation. It is also when processed food rose in popularity, and people began cooking less, buying more food pre-made, and traditional cuisine fell out of view. Americans gained more food because of this, but lost the food identity that was shaped by the various environments of the country. The obsession with technology in food production in order achieve exorbitantly high production levels dominated, and continues to dominate, American food systems. Industrial meat production degrades the rich potential for a truly unique American food culture. Food connects societies on a deeply personal and physical level. What a society eats and how they eat it reflects the values of a culture.

Although Memphis Meats addresses the environmental and ethical impacts of meat production, petri dish meat reinforces industrialized agriculture and the American obsession with more is more when it comes to food. This value creates disconnect between our society and our food, which leads to a host of problems such as poorer health, environmental damage, and economic injustice.

Growing meat in a laboratory comes with a steep price tag (a pound of Memphis Meats beef costs $18,000 to produce) and could put even more farmers out of work—a problem the nation has been facing for decades. With population on the rise and the looming threats of climate change, it is inevitable that our food system sees reform. I can’t help but wondering: wouldn’t it be cheaper, and more palatable, to simply eat less meat?

Cover image: DrHobo, All images under Creative Commons Licensing