CULTURED MEAT

                             Cultured Meat

This is our second topic,cultured meat. The name is similar with tissue culture. Nowadays tissue culture is not a new word,cultured meat becomes a new technology by using tissue from animals to make meat. We gonna to explain what is the cultured meat and the benefit.

Cultured meat is meat produced by in vitro cultivation of animal cells, instead of from slaughtered animals. It is a form of cellular agriculture. Cultured meat is produced using many of the same tissue engineering techniques traditionally used in regenerative medicine. The concept of cultured meat was popularized by Jason Matheny in the early 2000s after co-authoring a seminal paper on cultured meat production and creating New Harvest, the world's first non-profit organization dedicated to supporting in vitro meat research.

In 2013, Mark Post, a professor at Maastricht University, was the first to showcase a proof-of-concept for cultured meat by creating the first burger patty grown directly from cells. Since then, several cultured meat prototypes have gained media attention. However, because of limited dedicated research activities, cultured meat has not yet been commercialized. Mosa Meat, the company co-founded by Dr. Post, has indicated that they may bring cultured meat to the market by 2021. Because cultured meat is not yet commercially available, it has yet to be seen whether consumers will accept cultured meat as meat.

The benefit from cultured meat :
1. Space. The Daily Express reports that in the UK, 85% of the total land footprint “is associated with animal products, with the land footprint of commercial lab-grown meat being 99% lower than for normal animal husbandry”. So, culture meat can help reduce the use of the space.

2.Second benefit is sustainability. In America, consumers eat 26 billion pounds (13 million tons) of beef each year. Worldwide, livestock “may be responsible for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions”. Culture meat may be possible solution for global warming and climate change, and should theoretically lead to a reduction in deforestation for livestock purposes.

3.The third benefit is health. Doing away with slaughterhouses could reduce the risk of food-borne illnesses, as well as diseases transmitted between live animals and humans. In addition, lab-grown meat could easily supplemented with vitamins and minerals that are not found in natural meat.

CONS

1, OBESITY
If lab-grown meat proves to be cheaper and easier to mass-produce than traditional meat, “researchers believe it could encourage overconsumption, which could, in turn, increase obesity and related issues”, Faunalytics says.

2, TASTE
Lab-grown meat could theoretically contain no fat, and would also contain no bones, which may compromise the taste to some consumers, Future For All suggests.

However, at present, little is known about the potential flavours of lab-grown meat compared to livestock-based products.

3, TRUST

In a survey undertaken by The Conversation, the site found that people often have a “perception that [lab-grown meat] is unnatural”, which “may be similar to people’s concerns about genetically modified (GM) foods – some of those who oppose GM foods are moral absolutists who would not be influenced by any argument in favour”.

4, JOB LOSSES

Many farming bodies are “understandably against this potential threat to their livelihood - and there's some way to go to convincing some food lovers we spoke to,” Sky News says.

“There’s a very real danger that those at the bottom of the business pyramid find themselves excluded from the marketplace, if the world does embrace new, more 'ethical' meat products,” Twisted says. “Balancing the need for development in our farming practises with maintaining peoples’ livelihoods promises to be a difficult tightrope to walk over the coming years.”