Nov 18 2024 5
Unlike the alternative meat products that are already out there - vegetarian products that imitate meat - cultivated meat is meat. Here’s how it works.
First, scientists take a tiny sample from an animal – or something from an animal, like an egg, a feather, even a cut of actual meat – to harvest a specific type of cell; different companies use different kinds of cells, and the industry as a whole is still figuring out what kinds work best. But the idea is that given the right conditions – the right temperature, the right PH, the right nutrients, the right amount of oxygen and agitation – these cells can grow and replicate outside an animal basically endlessly. This happens in huge vats called bioreactors.
Some companies extrude the mixture into fibrous bundles, others turn it into muscle-like groups; still others 3d-print it into layers to mimic meat’s structure.
No matter the exact process, though, the end product is meat – it’s chicken, beef, tuna, whatever – because these are animal cells…they just grew and replicated outside that animal.
First, scientists take a tiny sample from an animal – or something from an animal, like an egg, a feather, even a cut of actual meat – to harvest a specific type of cell; different companies use different kinds of cells, and the industry as a whole is still figuring out what kinds work best. But the idea is that given the right conditions – the right temperature, the right PH, the right nutrients, the right amount of oxygen and agitation – these cells can grow and replicate outside an animal basically endlessly. This happens in huge vats called bioreactors.
Some companies extrude the mixture into fibrous bundles, others turn it into muscle-like groups; still others 3d-print it into layers to mimic meat’s structure.
No matter the exact process, though, the end product is meat – it’s chicken, beef, tuna, whatever – because these are animal cells…they just grew and replicated outside that animal.
