A-Infos (en) Sicilia Libertaria 2-24: ENVIRONMENT FOOD CLIMATE - ON SYNTHETIC MEAT (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

First Singapore, then Israel and the Netherlands, today the United 
States and the United Kingdom, these are the states in which it is 
currently possible to consume synthetic meat or, as those who produce it 
prefer to call it, cultured meat. Synthetic meat is obtained in the 
laboratory with a series of steps that include: the collection of stem 
cells from an animal by means of a biopsy; the cultivation of the cells 
taken on an adequate support, which orients the growth allowing the 
acquisition of a three-dimensional structure (obtaining a steak is more 
difficult than obtaining a hamburger) and allows the passage of the 
culture medium which must favor cellular proliferation and allow the 
differentiation of stem cells into muscle and fat cells; the increase in 
size of the product inside bioreactors in which growth conditions are 
kept under control.

The race to produce synthetic meat has begun and everyone wants to be 
the best, the first in the class, the most ethical because, as the Dutch 
say at Bistro in vitro (the first restaurant of the future that offers a 
conceptual menu where you can see dishes virtual in vitro meat 
experiments, created by Dutch artist and philosopher Koert Mensvoort): 
"Now that the world population will reach 9 billion in 2050, our current 
way of producing and consuming meat is rapidly becoming unsustainable. 
Global warming, consumption of energy, animal diseases and predicted 
global food shortages are just some of the pressing food-related issues 
we will face, and that's before we've even considered the much-debated 
issue of animal cruelty and factory farming." . Even in Italy, where the 
government has sided against the production and marketing of synthetic 
meat, there are experimental centers, such as the Trentino startup Bruno 
Cell born in the CIBIO laboratories, the Integrated Biology Center 
designed by the University of Trento and the Autonomous Province of 
Trento, to explore the potential of biotechnology for human health. 
Profit is pressing and there is little room for different types of 
assessments which, however, need to be made. Meanwhile, it must be said 
that there are still many critical issues in this type of production. 
For example, the collection of stem cells from an animal makes the 
presence of the latter indispensable. Then the culture medium that has 
proven to be the most efficient is fetal bovine serum which is taken 
from the blood of the fetus of pregnant cows during slaughter. The 
attempt to replace it with exclusively synthetic substances has not yet 
given equally valid results and requires the use of dangerous substances 
such as anabolic hormones which are banned in Europe for animal 
breeding. Furthermore, a slice of meat not only contains muscle cells 
and fat (adipose tissue) but also connective tissue, blood and other 
tissues whose reproduction in the laboratory would be too complex, 
therefore the flavour, color and consistency of synthetic meat differ 
from those of farmed meat. and, to minimize the differences, we must 
resort to the addition of numerous synthetic substances. Just as the 
nutritional value of synthetic meat is not comparable to that of farmed 
meat, to overcome the problem in this case too it is necessary to add 
synthetic nutritional principles. Furthermore, the substances added as a 
culture medium and those to be added to make synthetic meat similar to 
cultivated meat can have various negative effects on human health, from 
the appearance of allergies to alterations in metabolism to the 
development of cancerous cells. Another aspect not to be underestimated 
is the fact that, to reduce production costs, the aim is to use 
immortalized cells, i.e. cells capable of reproducing indefinitely (and 
not just a certain number of times as normally happens), obtained from 
tumor cells or genetically modified cells, cells whose consumption is 
unknown what could cause. If this were not enough, the production of 
synthetic meat currently has an environmental impact and a cost that are 
higher, and not by a little, than those of farmed meat.

On the other hand, intensive farming is a problem that needs to be 
addressed urgently; their environmental impact, due not only to the 
production of greenhouse gases and water consumption but also to 
deforestation, the production of GMO foods (soya and corn), the loss of 
biodiversity, the development of zoonoses and the spread of antibiotic 
resistance , not to mention cruelty to animals, make it a priority. But 
imagining that synthetic meat, whose production will be protected by 
patents in the hands of the usual suspects, can replace farmed meat is a 
fairy tale that no one believes, least of all the producers who are 
eager to invest in this new technology precisely because they know that 
it will remain a niche product with high costs intended for a 
medium-high market segment.

So? So we must first look at the world in which we live, a world in 
which the effects of the environmental and climate crisis have become 
tangible much earlier than we thought, with the shortage of water 
already haunting us and the absolutely incredible temperatures in a 
winter that winter it can no longer be called. Then we should realize 
the fact that the diet of the vast majority of the inhabitants of the 
so-called Western world, not least the Italians, has become absolutely 
unsustainable as it is based mainly on the consumption of foods of 
animal origin with aberrations in which meat is consumed every day and 
even several times a day. Environmental unsustainability which adds to 
the risks of a similar diet for human health, predisposition to 
cardiovascular diseases and the appearance of tumors to name just a few, 
and the absurdity, due to the standardization of breeding techniques and 
the food consumed by raised animals, that the taste of different types 
of meat is now indistinguishable, one can thus eat pork thinking it is 
beef or vice versa. We must also consider the fact that almost a billion 
individuals today die of hunger and not because there is not enough 
food, given that a third of the food produced is thrown away through 
food waste, but because climate change and the forced expropriation of 
land implemented by large multinationals in the food sector has made it 
impossible to practice agriculture in various areas of the world and 
because growing inequalities preclude access to food, even in our 
advanced Italy, to an ever-increasing number of people.

In the face of all this, we really want to continue to hide behind the 
finger of the technological solution to our problems, yesterday the 
green revolution, today synthetic meat and tomorrow who knows what else, 
instead of trying to look at the reality in which we are immersed in a 
different way and to realize the fact that an unlimited growth in our 
demands is not possible because the supposedly ever-increasing 
production of consumer goods has produced a series of imbalances such 
that, if the trend is not reversed, we risk the destruction of the 
planet and its inhabitants. Time is running out and it becomes essential 
to start imagining a different economic system and a change in our 
lifestyle that will allow us to find solutions truly capable of saving 
the world we live in with all its inhabitants.

Brunella Missorici

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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