Each time you sit down to eat a meal with meat products, do you ever take a minute to think about what it took to get this food on your plate? Every year, 70 billion land animals are slaughtered for consumption worldwide. While many organizations and law enforcement across the globe work to ensure the slaughter of animals is done without inflicting pain on the animals, it is nearly impossible to ensure that all slaughterhouses are following these rules. In addition, slaughtering animals in general is an inhumane practice and is done for the sole purpose of feeding us. However, the cultivated meat industry and specifically lab meat is taking the world by storm and may be the end of animal slaughter.

What is lab-cultivated meat?

Lab-grown or cultivated meat uses animal cells to grow meat in a lab as an alternative to slaughter. Labs growing cultivated meat take animal cells from a live, healthy animal in a harmless skin sample. This innovative way of producing meat was originally concocted in the early 2000s but was brought to media attention in 2013 when a cultivated meat patty was tried at a conference in London for a lump sum of money. Later Singapore was the first country to begin sales of cultured meat.

Israel is one of the leaders in the cultivated meat industry. In 2020, the company SuperMeat opened a restaurant in Tel Aviv called “The Chicken” which offered a cultivated chicken burger to see if their customers noticed the difference. Other Israeli companies developing cultivated meat are Aleph Farms and Believer Meats.

Environmental impact

A carnivore diet takes a major toll on one’s carbon footprint. In fact, meat makes up 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Beef is the world’s most detrimental food product in carbon emissions due to methane production which makes up 32% of greenhouse gas emissions.

After the livestock has been slaughtered, there are additional greenhouse gases that go into the atmosphere from the transportation of livestock, processing in factories, and then the packaging of the final product. In total, the entire process, from the initial raising of livestock to the final destination of stocking groceries stores is a constant carbon dump.

Deforestation is also a major problem when it comes to livestock farming. Much of the land livestock is raised on has been deforested for the sole purpose of raising more and more cattle. In addition, the constant grazing of livestock diminishes grassland productivity to the point where grass can no longer grow. Eventually, farmers need to revert to unconventional methods of crop irrigation by using polluting fertilizers so livestock can be raised.

And don’t forget about the extensive water use that goes into farming. It takes 1,799 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. This comes from the keeping of land, cleaning, and drinking requirements of the cattle. Especially in the heat of summer and in bad drought conditions, water use can exceed a considerable amount and massively increase the amount of water needed to grow livestock.

Is lab meat kosher?

There has been much speculation on the increasing popularity of cultivated meat in Israel. Especially for religious Jews and Rabbis who keep kosher, many are questioning the reliability of the industry.

For meat to be kosher, the animal must be in good health, killed a certain way, drained of its blood, and salted. In addition, only certain parts of an animal can be consumed. All these parts of keeping kosher in relation to meat make the discussion of cultivated meat more complicated.

However, back in January of this year, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi David Lau declared that the steak made from Aleph Farms is kosher, marking a monumental decision in the cultivated meat industry. He claimed that because the meat was grown instead of slaughtered, the meat is not actually meat, and can be thought of like a vegetable. Because the meat does not contain milk nor dairy and no blood from an animal, Rabbi David Lau declared it to be parve. Dozens of other rabbis from the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization have also called cultivated meat kosher.

While Rabbi Lau’s ruling is particularly for the meat produced in Aleph Farms, it is still unsure if all cultivated meat can be considered kosher as there needs to be a careful inspection at all cultivated meat companies and they need to be certified to be kosher. In addition, many may argue that it is not kosher as cultivated meat has animal origins as it is derived from animal cells.

Rabbi Genack from the Orthodox Union Kosher Division has questioned the reliability of cultivated meat being kosher as he has said that even microscopic specimens of cells derived from a living animal would not be considered kosher. In order for the meat to be kosher, the cells need to be taken from a kosher slaughtered animal.

Another aspect of the cultivated meat industry is the question of how Orthodox Jews can keep their legitimacy when choosing meals to ensure they don’t sin on Jewish law. Rabbi Yonathan Neril from The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development is an environmental advocate for cultivated meat.

While he believes that in itself lab-grown meat is kosher, it should not be mixed with dairy. According to Neril who tells Green Prophet: “If Jews start eating lab-grown meat with cow’s cheese, then they might come to mistakenly eat cow’s meat with cow’s cheese, which would be a violation of Jewish law.”

Neril insists that Jews mixing cultivated meat with normally derived cheese can fray on the principle of marit ayin, which is when the action of an observant Jew may seem unkosher when in actuality it is.

This term is coined by the judgment of others’ skepticism; the Jew is technically adhering to the law. However, Rabbi Neril added, “If lab-grown meat and lab-grown cheese replace animal meat and animal cheese in mainstream consumption, then it could be that over time, it would no longer be a problem in Jewish law to eat the lab-grown meat and lab-grown cheese together.”

Earth or Tradition?

Unfortunately what this means for the kosher community is one’s own personal opinion. With the current emergencies that face our climate, it is important to consider the environmental benefits of choosing cultivated meat. The environmental advantage of cultivated meat is enormous and can massively decrease global greenhouse gases. In addition, kosher law requires slaughter, which is devastating in itself.

The final decision is still in the hands of Jews, which reflects the ideals of modernity. Is it time we update the traditional laws of Judaism and put what’s facing us in the climate first in line? Are Orthodox Jews willing to sacrifice what’s traditional for the sake of our planet?

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Leonardo DiCaprio, known in his movie roles for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Titanic –– and for dating Bar Refaeli – has invested in not one but two alternative meat companies, Aleph Farms, based in Israel, and Mosa Meat from the Netherlands. Unlike the Impossible Burger and the OSI Group which creates alternative protein from peas, which is tasty, but hard to digest, Aleph and Mosa create meat in a lab using original cells from a real animal.

The idea is to create real meat that tastes like meat, not a plant-based substitute. But lab meat is exactly like meat, removing the suffering and methane gas production, oh and antibiotic use, so the argument goes. 

“One of the most impactful ways to combat the climate crisis is to transform our food system. Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms offer new ways to satisfy the world’s demand for beef, while solving some of the most pressing issues of current industrial beef production. I’m very pleased to join them as an advisor and investor, as they prepare to introduce cultivated beef to consumers,” said DiCaprio.

It’s common for celebrities to invest in startups, especially Israeli ones. Leonardo is in the footsteps of other Hollywood actors like Ashton Kutcher. 

Both Mosa and Aleph have demonstrated the ability to grow beef directly from animal cells, with the unveiling of the first cultivated hamburger by Mosa Meat in 2013 and the first cultivated steak and ribeye by Aleph Farms in 2018 and 2021 respectively. The meat made still costs a mini fortune but new investments will help the companies scale production and cut back costs.

Some of us have turned vegan or vegeaware or at least participate in Meatless Mondays. Eating meat –– until we find a better solution to satisfy meat eaters –– is here to stay. New innovations might help alleviate climate problems, as well as a growing interest to return back to the land, hunt one’s own meat, and eat less or whole animal meat eating. 

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Aleph Farms and its research partner at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, have successfully cultivated the world’s first slaughter-free ribeye steak, using three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting technology and natural building blocks of meat – real cow cells, without genetic engineering and immortalization.

Aleph now has the ability to produce any type of steak and plans to expand its portfolio of quality meat products.

Unlike 3D printing technology, Aleph Farms’ 3D bioprinting technology is the printing of actual living cells that are then incubated to grow, differentiate, and interact, in order to acquire the texture and qualities of a real steak.

A proprietary system, similar to the vascularization that occurs naturally in tissues, enables the perfusion of nutrients across the thicker tissue and grants the steak with the similar shape and structure of its native form as found in livestock before and during cooking.

Are steak growers on Mars out to lunch?

“This breakthrough reflects an artistic expression of the scientific expertise of our team,” said Didier Toubia, Co-Founder and CEO of Aleph Farms. “Additional meat designs will drive a larger impact in the mid and long term. This milestone for me marks a major leap in fulfilling our vision of leading a global food system transition toward a more sustainable, equitable and secure world.”

The cultivated ribeye steak is a thicker cut than the company’s first product – a thin-cut steak. It incorporates muscle and fat similar to its slaughtered counterpart and boasts the same organoleptic attributes of a delicious tender, juicy ribeye steak you’d buy from the butcher.

“With the realization of this milestone, we have broken the barriers to introducing new levels of variety into the cultivated meat cuts we can now produce.

“As we look into the future of 3D bioprinting, the opportunities are endless,” says Technion Professor Shulamit Levenberg, Aleph’s Co-Founder, Chief Scientific Advisor and a major brainpower behind the company’s IP. Levenberg is considered a global leader in tissue engineering and has amassed over two decades of research in the field at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States and at the Technion, in Israel. Levenberg is also the former Dean of the Biomedical Engineering Faculty at the Technion.

Aleph Farms’ zealous plans to diversify its offering align with its mission to create a global platform for local production, leveraging a highly scalable technology to create culinary experiences that can be adapted for the different food cultures around the world.

With the advent of synthetic milk or meat- or animal-free products cultivated in the lab, or alternatives to honey grown in an engineered bee stomach (another Israeli invention) –– some people think all this “progress” in the lab is really people out to lunch. Read our story about engineered honey for some alternative points of view to animal substitutes and our farming story on high tech hydroponic solutions that also may be out to lunch. The big solution may be simpler – regenerative agriculture. That what Woody Harrelson says, cow farts and all. 

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Israeli non-profit Modern Agriculture Foundation (MAF) is developing lab-grown chicken meat that doesn’t require the rearing and slaughtering of birds.  Since 2014, they’ve been researching mass production of cultured chicken meat from a single bird cell.  If they succeed, we could soon be asking, Which came first, the chicken…or the chicken?

Chicken is the world’s second favorite meat product after pork, with an estimated 23 million chickens killed daily just to feed Americans. The United Nations estimates that by 2050 world population will exceed 9.6 billion. That’s two billion more mouths to feed, and increasingly, they’ll be meat-eaters. How is the food industry gearing up for demand?

In 2013, Green Prophet reported on the first lab-grown beef, an experiment undertaken by Maastricht University which culminated in a hamburger patty that cost roughly $325,000 to create. We questioned the viability of “victimless meat“: will consumer commitment to food with a lower carbon footprint overcome the “ick” factor of meat born in a petri dish?  Considerable investment will be needed to scale up to commercial manufacture, so for now production of synthetic meat (or shmeat, or tubesteak) is now limited to research labs.

Did you know that ranching and livestock rearing now take up 30% of earth’s surface? Meat production causes negative environmental impacts ranging from soil erosion to deforestation with significant losses in biodiversity.

A report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization found that current levels of meat production contributes up to 22 percent of the 36 billion tons of “CO2-equivalent” greenhouse gases (GHG) generated globally every year. Scientific American put that into perspective, calculating that producing half a pound of hamburger releases as much GHG into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles. The industry is also a voracious consumer of water (4,325 liters of water is required to produce 1 kg of chicken meat, according to the British Institute of Mechanical Engineers ).

“Earth cannot take it. It’s not a prediction or speculation. It’s truth. There’s not enough land on the planet to raise the animals. We are raising 70 billion land animals at the moment. We won’t have space for another 70 billion,” MAF cofounder and biologist Shir Friedman told Mirror Online.

Cultivated meat sidesteps animal cruelty and flock-shared disease such as Avian and Swine flu.

Chickens bred for meat are typically raised in highly efficient (and controversially cruel) intensive factory farms which accelerate the birds’ growth to market weight in six to seven weeks, a rate three times faster than in the mid-1900’s.

Use of growth hormones in poultry is illegal in the US and many other countries, but the animals are fed high calorie feeds to quicken weight gain, which cause all manner of medical problems to the birds including immobility. Proponents of cultivated meat will point out that the fried thigh you are about to tuck into may have been pressed to a feces-packed floor for the few months of its owner’s life, featherless and covered with sores.

Cultured meat is made from stem cells harvested from live animals. The cells are fed with a nutrient cocktail that enables them to grow into muscle tissue, which must be mechanically stimulated in order to develop properly. It is 100% meat, and involves no genetic engineering.

Tissue specialist Amit Gefen (pictured below) from Tel Aviv University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering is heading up the MAF study which aims to have devise a lab-cultured chicken meat recipe by January 2016, identifying all associated technologies, resources, and costs.  The goal is to one day produce in factories on a commercial scale, which would require between seven and 45 percent less energy, 90% less fresh water and 99% less land, and would result in 80 to 90% less GHG emissions than the traditional chicken meat industry.

“If 2.5 billion people join us in eating only cultured meat by 2050, we get all those resources back. It’s truly a magic solution,” says Friedman.

Hebrew University Prof. Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, says that if the process becomes economically feasible, “the ecological and ethical considerations would make cultured meat irresistible. Cultured meat is one of the most important revolutions in the history of food and in the history of humankind itself.”

MAF is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization founded in March last year. The project is privately funded.

Lead image of a chicken from Shutterstock, all others from MAF Facebook page.

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