Abstract
Background: Cultured meat forms part of the emerging field of cellular agriculture. Still an early stage field it seeks to deliver products traditionally made through livestock rearing in novel forms that require no, or significantly reduced, animal involvement. Key examples include cultured meat, milk, egg white and leather. Here, we focus upon cultured meat and its technical, socio-political and regulatory challenges and opportunities. Scope and approach: The paper reports the thinking of an interdisciplinary team, all of whom have been active in the field for a number of years. It draws heavily upon the published literature, as well as our own professional experience. This includes ongoing laboratory work to produce cultured meat and over seventy interviews with experts in the area conducted in the social science work. Key findings and conclusions: Cultured meat is a promising, but early stage, technology with key technical challenges including cell source, culture media, mimicking the in-vivo myogenesis environment, animal-derived and synthetic materials, and bioprocessing for commercial-scale production. Analysis of the social context has too readily been reduced to ethics and consumer acceptance, and whilst these are key issues, the importance of the political and institutional forms a cultured meat industry might take must also be recognised, and how ambiguities shape any emergent regulatory system.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 155-166 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Trends in Food Science and Technology |
Volume | 78 |
Early online date | 27 Apr 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 31 Aug 2018 |
Funding
Neil Stephens' work was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [ RES-349-25-0001 ], the Seventh Framework Programme [ 288971 ], a Wellcome Trust small grant [ WT096541MA ], a Centre for Society and Genomics Visiting Scholarship ( 15/5/11-15/7/11 ), and a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship [ WT208198/Z/17/Z ]. Lucy Di Silvio and Abigail Glencross' work was funded by New Harvest [ 001 ]. Alex Sexton's work was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/J500057/1 ]. We thank the editors and peer reviewers for their comments.
Keywords
- Cellular agriculture
- Clean meat
- Cultured meat
- In vitro meat
- Regulation
- Society
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Biotechnology
- Food Science