Food for thought: are lab-grown burgers the answer?

Emma Egli

08 August 2013

As a vegetarian of 10 years, when I found out about the first lab-made burger, my initial reaction was, "sign me up, I'll be first in line, tomato ketchup in tow."

I've tried every Quorn, Cauldron, Linda McCartney, mock meat brand you can think of. Some taste like cardboard. But others have had me reaching for the box to double check they are indeed meat-free. So the idea of something as close to the real thing as you can get, but not actually the real thing, sounded appealing.

However, once I read up on this 'frankenburger,' I stopped in my veggie-loving tracks. It turns out that this fake burger was taken from a slaughtered animal. Stem cells were extracted from a cow's muscle and mixed with blood and nutrients to grow and multiply into strands of meat. So it's still technically meat, and animal products were used to make it.

I find myself in an ethical dilemma. The idea of a burger made in a lab just doesn't sit right with me. And I'm not the only one who thinks that. According to a poll conducted by YouGov, 62% of the British public would not eat the artificial meat grown in a lab. And 73% of vegetarians wouldn't touch it either.

But what is it that has us so repulsed by the 'in vitro meat'? The idea of any food, be it plant or animal, grown in a sterile petri dish just seems unnaturally wrong. It's like something out of a science fiction film. Will we soon find ourselves going to the pharmacy to pick up our packs of hamburger patties along with our prescriptions?

On the upside, the reason this $330,000 (£220,000) research experiment came about was to find a solution to the issues of factory farming - as global meat consumption continues to skyrocket.

Millions of cows are killed every year to meet carnivorous consumers' appetites. And around 75% of agricultural land is used to raise them. Not to mention the amount of methane gas that cows regularly belch out - which takes quite a toll on the ozone layer.

So a method of producing meat that doesn't involve killing, land use, and animal burps is hard to argue against.

But these lab-grown burgers are far from commercially viable. And - as Friends of the Earth's Food Campaigner Kirtana Chandrasekaran says - it's vital that we eat less meat to help solve climate change and world hunger.

Emma Egli, Publishing & New Media volunteer

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