Beyond the Slaughterhouse: A look at a new industry working to produce real meat without killing animals
Millions of people are sickened and hundreds die from salmonella and E.Coli poisoning every year in the US, so while some consumers may have questions about the safety of the new meat, it is likely to be far safer than traditional meat, and that’s because it is, indeed, 'clean'.
KAREN DAWN: ‘Last year in Berkeley, The Good Food Conference buzzed about the incredibly meat-like Beyond and Impossible Burgers that were just hitting the market. That Berkeley buzz became a Wall Street cacophony a few months later in May 2019, when Beyond Meat went public and became the “biggest popping U.S. IPO” in almost two decades. This year, the buzz at the conference was about cell-grown meat. Or cultured meat. Or clean meat. Or even micro-brewed meat…
This brave new industry is still figuring out what the new meat should be called. Last year, the favored term was “clean meat,” a nod mostly to its environmental benefits. That term also addresses health issues: When billions of animals are raised in their own feces on factory farms and then slaughtered at rates of more than 1,000 per hour (with a much higher rate for chickens) the pathogen spread can be deadly. Millions of people are sickened and hundreds die from salmonella and E.Coli poisoning every year in the United States, so while some consumers may have questions about the safety of the new meat, it is likely to be far safer than traditional meat, and that’s because it is, indeed, “clean.”
Market research done by the Good Food Institute, however, has shown that consumers also like the terms “cultivated” or “cultured” meat. Josh Tetrick, of JUST Inc., thinks that the term used will matter because it will impact whether or not people—at least those from his hometown in Alabama—are willing to buy the product… Tetrick doesn’t want the new meat to have a prefix. Just as his smartphone is now just his phone, he expects that in the not-too-distant future, meat grown from cells will just be called meat.
That’s one of the reasons JUST is working on cell-grown rather than plant-based meat, even after having extraordinary success with plant-based JUST Mayo and plant-based liquid eggs that went into Walmart during the week of the conference. Tetrick wants meat that does not come from killing to be the only meat on store shelves in a decade or so, and thinks that is most likely to happen if it is just called meat. And he says our best bet for that is if it’s grown from animal cells. In his words, “The highest probability for getting conventional meat off is to put cultured on”.’ SOURCE…
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