Banner by Shirin Kaye

Would You Like Your Burger Medium Rare or Cultured by Microbes?

By Madison Nguyen

Would you like your burger served in a petri-dish? With the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent approval of lab-grown meat (also referred to as cultured animal meat) as safe to consume, we can sooner expect to see cultured meats in our grocery butcher counters. While there is currently no lab-grown meat for sale in the United States, the FDA’s approval foreshadows a surge in similar products hitting the news. With a growing demand for plant-based meat alternatives, could synthetic food be a glimpse into our future? The livestock industry is infamous for its significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the proposal to replace livestock with cultured meat would reduce emissions by 78-96%. Not to mention, with less demand for land to raise livestock, there would be reduced pressure to turn natural habitats into livestock slaughterhouses. Increased wildlife conservation and decreased GHG emissions seem like solutions to some of our major climate change concerns, but is it even possible to achieve such goals? 

To gain deeper insight into this intersection of food and science, I sat down with Dr. Michelle Hays, a lover of yeast and researcher at Stanford University. Dr. Hays studies genetics and natural variation within yeast populations to better understand how genetic conflict can influence coevolution between parasites and hosts. Her expertise, paired with a passion for fermentation and brewing, reveal the complexities and nuanced relationship between climate change and science that breeds innovation at the necessity for solutions. 

Dr. Hays explains that microorganisms have been used all throughout history in the food industry and are still being used to innovate and investigate more optimal ways to produce food. Her experience working with microorganisms provides us with a better understanding of how we can apply such techniques to food science. According to Dr. Hays, there is something “really powerful in working with unicellular systems (tissue cultures, microbes) because the generation time is much faster. Being able to work with individual cells in the laboratory is very powerful at the level of genetics and understanding cellular processes.” In its most reductionist form, the main difference between raising livestock and culturing animal meat is the difference of working with systems in multicellular organisms compared to single-celled organisms. The smaller the system, the fewer resources it needs. Working with individual cells takes up a mere fraction of the space and energy required to raise livestock. With less physical space required, we no longer need to destroy natural habitats for the sake of sustaining our food source. 

The industrialization of food production reminds us that we cannot manipulate nature to our benefit and are rather subjected to it. Dr. Hays studies the importance of natural variation within populations and understands the inherent consequences of mass producing foods through cloning — creating genetically identical copies. Most of the produce that we consume is cloned, like bananas in a supermarket that are both physically and genetically indistinguishable from each other. Dr. Hays points to the necessity of “naturally diverse foods in the mix, such as other subtypes of bananas or grains. That [variety] will give us a little more robustness to change in climate or if there happens to be a spoilage or pathogenic organism that comes through. A naturally robust subset of organisms will help you to buffer against that kind of devastation.” “That kind of devastation” has destroyed acres of crops, causing food shortages, and will become more prevalent with climate change. More barriers to protect our food supply from turbulent environmental changes will give us more time to and potentially shed more light onto how we can save our food production. 

The obvious implied environmental benefits depict a future in which we can enjoy carbon-neutral burgers that did not contribute to the slaughter of animals. We possess the technology and determination to find a solution for this problem. Our ability to manipulate cells to not just make a beef patty, but to regenerate tissue as well, gives us a glimpse into what our technology can allow us to accomplish. This technology will not be effective on normal cells; instead, it requires special cells called stem cells. Stem cells have the ability to differentiate and develop into any cell type, including muscle fibers, fat cells, or skin cells. Researchers are able to raise these cells in immense vessels called bioreactors that nurture stem cell differentiation into the components of a beef patty. The reason that we have been successful in culturing beef patties compared to cuts of meat is because of its structure. Cuts of meat require engineering to create connective tissue that reflects the muscle fiber grain. Ground beef destroys these fibers in the grinding process, so researchers only need to worry about the meat to fat distribution within the patties. These bioreactors have been used for medical research, but with the push to innovate within food science, we are finding ways to use our current technology to achieve more sustainable food production. Yet, I find myself wondering if cultured meat is the end-all cure to climate change and animal cruelty. How much of the food we consume is responsible for the environmental crimes we charge to the livestock industry? And more optimistically, are there other foods making the same strides as cultured meat that we are not aware of? 

The Impossible Burger, which was the original meat replicant alternative, actually relies on microbes to develop and mimic the defining umami flavor of animal meat. Fermenting yeast promotes the production of heme, a key molecule used for oxygen mediation, and the isolation of heme is what gives Impossible Foods the ability to mimic animal meat. Other companies, such as Betterland Milk, have found a way to produce cow’s milk without cows: by using bacteria. It seems that our biotechnological innovations relieve some dependence on livestock for food production. The search for newer, sustainable methods in food science, given the lingering consequences of climate change, pre-dates the introduction of cultured meat. Although the shift in prioritizing plant-based alternatives has occurred only recently, the practices and techniques to do so are years ahead of consumers. Using medical technology to replicate animal tissue for food production may seem a surreal application of scientific innovation, but is it any different than creating cow’s milk from microbes? There is something poetic about the drive to mimic and innovate the replication of meat for the sake of consumption. But in our pursuit of perfection, we fail to see the immense changes in food production and creation that have been occurring alongside cultured meat. Our ability to use our resources to address the challenges in a changing environment has persisted through generations and we have already discovered ways to reduce our food carbon footprint. To make great strides requires a destabilization of how we think about food and an open mind towards the use of microorganisms in food science.