BOSTON (WPRI) — Imagine eating a hamburger made from real beef — but no one killed a cow to make it.
That may soon become a reality, thanks to researchers at Tufts University.
The science behind the lab-grown meat has been dubbed “cellular agriculture,” and could eventually be the way of the future.
“Cellular agriculture involves essentially creating foods, especially meats and protein-rich foods like meats, without needing the animal itself,” said David Kaplan, the director of Tufts University’s Center for Cellular Agriculture. “Generally, we’re not directly growing a steak in a petri dish … What we’re first doing is growing cells.”
Kaplan said the meat grown in his laboratory is completely edible and safe for human consumption.
“[The meat is] all created without over-processing yet with great taste, nutrition and overall texture,” he said.
Cellular agriculture itself is roughly a decade old. European scientists unveiled the first lab-grown hamburger back in 2013, to the tune of about $300,000. It reportedly took three months to produce a single beef patty.
The goal now is to bring down the cost while cranking up the speed and scale to feed the masses.
Davide Duckevich used to run his family’s Rhode Island-based prosciutto manufacturing business, Daniele, before selling it to a private equity firm five years ago.
Duckevich said Daniele would go through hundreds of millions of pounds of pork each year.
“This is such a natural and obvious thing to do,” he said. “We had to slaughter these animals to make the product. When that movie ‘Babe’ would come on, I would always have to change the channel because it would make me really sad.”
That’s why, when Duckevich first learned of cellular agriculture and that his alma mater was researching the process, he donated $1 million to Tufts University’s study of so-called “cultivated meat.”
Duckevich isn’t the only investor excited about the burgeoning industry. Between 2010 and 2022, private donors have poured more than $3 billion into cell-cultivated meat and seafood research, according to The Good Food Institute.
Right now, cellular agriculture is still an expensive and time-consuming process. Kaplan said it starts with a muscle biopsy, followed by the isolation of cells in a petri dish.
“Once [the cells] grow under small-scale conditions, we can then move them to a bioreactor and scale up the cell mass,” he explained.
Eventually, those cells are placed into a machine called a bioprinter, which replicates them further until it’s transformed, essentially, into meat.
“But at this rate, you’d have one hamburger a year,” he said of the current technology.
Kaplan said he and his students are working tirelessly to try to make the next big break in cellular agriculture.
“In the long run, my vision is that we’re going to create a palate of food the population has never tried,” he said. “We’ll look back on these days [and think], ‘Why were we so limited in what we were eating?'”
While Kaplan remains hopeful that lab-grown meat will end up in everyone’s refrigerators someday, not everyone is convinced.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey have already banned lab-grown meat in their states.
“Take your lab-grown meat elsewhere,” DeSantis said. “We stand with agriculture and we stand with the cattle ranchers.”
That’s not the only hurdle the science is facing.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found last year that few adults are interested in eating cultivated meat, with most finding it weird or worrying that it might not be safe.
“Anybody who is coming out and saying this food is not safe is incorrect. There’s no basis for saying that,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan also shut down the notion that cultivated meat will eliminate jobs.
“We’re going to actually create jobs,” he said.
Good Meat and Upside Foods secured approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) two years ago to produce cultivated chicken.
That chicken was being offered at certain restaurants for a limited time last year, but is no longer available in the United States.
Good Meat is now selling one of its products in Singapore, but it is only 3% animal cells and is primarily made up of filler ingredients like soy and wheat.
Figuring out how to make enough cultivated meat from 100% animal cells has proven tricky for scientists.
“The problem is scaling it, commercializing it and making it mainstream,” Duckevich said. “Even though you can make it [right now], it’s very expensive to do.”
Duckevich remains hopeful that cultivated meat will eventually become the norm, though he knows the journey there won’t be simple or speedy.
“This personal journey of mine will hopefully come to a conclusion once I can finally eat my first slice of ‘cell agri’ prosciutto, and hopefully that will be in my lifetime,” he said.
It’s too soon to say when lab-grown meat will be available to the masses in the United States. But Upside Foods is hosting a pop-up tasting event in Miami later this week, just days before DeSantis’ ban officially goes into effect.