"The Human Health Effects of Cultivated Meat: Food Safety"
In a 1932 article in "Popular Mechanics" entitled "Fifty Years Hence,"
Winston Churchill predicted that we would one day escape the absurdity,
the inefficiency of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast
or wing by growing just the parts we need.
Indeed, growing meat straight from muscle cells could reduce
greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 96%,
lower water use as much as 96%, and lower land use by as much as 99%.
If we are to avoid dangerous climate change by the middle of the century,
global meat consumption simply cannot continue to rise at the current rate.
And there's certainly been initiatives like Meatless Mondays to try to get people to
cut down, but so far they do not appear to be contributing in any significant way
to the translation of the idea of eating less meat into the mainstream.
So, in light of peoples' continued desire to eat meat, it seems
the problems associated with consumption are unlikely
to be fully resolved by changing peoples' attitudes.
So instead, maybe we should try changing the product.
From an environmental standpoint, it seems like a slam dunk.
From an animal welfare standpoint, it could get rid of factory farms and
slaughterhouses for good, and I wouldn't have to stumble
across articles like this in the scientific literature.
I mean, what more do you need to know about modern animal agriculture than
the fact so-called "ag-gag" laws have been proposed and passed across the
country, banning undercover photos inside such operations to keep us all in the dark.
Okay, but what about the human health implications of cultivated meat?
I mean, I get the animal welfare, environment, food security benefit,
but what about the potential for cultivated meat
to have health and safety benefits to individual consumers? Nutritionally,
the most important advantage is being able to swap out the type of fat,
since right now they're just growing straight muscle tissue,
so you could marble it with something less harmful than animal fat,
though of course, you're still stuck with the animal protein.
In terms of health, the biggest, clearest advantage is food safety,
reducing the risk of food-borne pathogens.
There's been a six-fold increase in food poisoning over the last few decades.
We're talking tens of millions sickened annually by infected food
in the United States alone, including hundreds of thousands
of hospitalizations and thousands of annual deaths,
and contaminated meats in animal products are the most common cause.
When the cultivated meat industry calls its products "clean meat,"
that's not just a nod to clean energy.
Food poisoning pathogens like E. coli, Campylobacter, and Salmonella
are fecal bacteria. They are a result of fecal contamination.
They're intestinal bugs, and so you don't have to worry about them
if you're making meat without the intestines.
Yes, there are all sorts of methods to remove visible fecal contamination
in slaughterhouses these days, and even experimental imaging
technologies designed to detect more diluted fecal contaminations.
But we're still left at the retail level with about 10% of chicken
contaminated with Salmonella, 40% of retail chicken contaminated
with Campylobacter, and most poultry and about half of retail ground beef
and pork chops contaminated with E. coli, an indicator of fecal residue.
But you don't have to cook the crap out of cultivated meat,
because there isn't any crap to begin with.