HYDERABAD: The futuristic lab-grown meat, grown with a bunch of animal cells, is now being touted as the one-stop solution to three problems — that of pollution, animal cruelty and antibiotic resistance. This fast growing technology, literally grows the animal tissue in lab in controlled conditions without the bones or organs, making the entire process cruelty free and pollution free suggest researchers.
“This is a disruptive technology that can solve a major global problem of greenhouse gas, ‘Methane’, 70% of which is contributed by the animal meat industry,” observed Union Minister Maneka Gandhi at the CCMB conference on ‘Future of Protein Summit’. Methane, a major by-product of mass scale animal rearing, with both food and excreta of cattle adding to the methane released in the air. It is not just methane that adds to the hidden environmental cost added Maneka.
“To rear a cow in its lifetime we need over 60,000 litres of water, if we eliminate the need to rear live animals we can save so much water, so much of grazing land, so much of grains,” she said, and added, “To make a kg of meat you need 11 kgs of grain.”
Though the summit promoted ‘meat’, it had a strong support from vegans, with even Humane Society of India signing an MOU with CCMB to look into the research possibilities of clean meat. The idea, vegans said, is to have a cruelty-free meat consumption option for the meat-eaters.
“When we tell people to turn vegetarian or take mock meat, there is always a complaint that it’s not really meat in terms of texture and taste. So we want to give them something that is closer to meat,” said Sandhya Sriram, an entrepreneur in the area of producing clean-meat in seafood. Entrepreneurs like her are working with stem cells of animals, seafood in her case and multiplying them to create the exact meat of seafood.
This, however, would not be breathing, living and devoid of bones or organs, but serves purpose of meat for the consumers. “The way the industry is rearing animals is firstly very unhygienic as the animals are cramped in small spaces and fed antibiotics.
They are then slaughtered unscientifically leading to a toxic release in them, which enters our food chain,” said Pravallika, a vegan. Such a meat is neither nutritious nor healthy and eaten just for the purpose of taste and texture.
