A new agricultural revolution: meat made in a laboratory
In 1931 Winston Churchill was asked by The Strand Magazine to imagine the world 50 years hence. “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately,” he wrote. Churchill might have got his timing wrong, but a future where the meat on our plates has been cultured rather than butchered is finally coming into view.
A new wave of alternative meat start-ups in California, Europe and Israel is intent on disrupting the $1trn global meat industry. Today 77% of farmland worldwide is dedicated to raising and feeding livestock. Mike Selden of Finless Foods, a fishmeat-replacement start-up, envisions the day when meat production moves off the farm and into gigantic “1,000-litre bioreactors” that churn out new batches of cell-cultured products. It would be, as Jessica Glenza in The Guardian puts it, “like a brewery for meat”.
If it bleeds, it leads
Meat alternatives are hardly new. Quorn, a British invention, dates back to the 1980s. Seitan, a protein-rich wheat gluten product that has recently become popular online, has roots in sixth-century China. Tofu, made from coagulated soy milk, is more ancient still.
Yet in recent years new technology, changing eating habits and sheer market exuberance have turbocharged
