Meat without cows and pigs
Petra Kluger, project manager at the University of Applied Chemistry in Reutlingen, with a piece of artificial meat. Photo: Bernd Weißbrod/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Eat meat without killing animals? Petra Kluger wants to achieve this with her team at the university in Reutlingen. A 3D printer spits out the “meat”. I’m sorry, what?
Jannis Wollschlaeger goes to the butcher twice a week at 6 a.m., right after the slaughter. On Mondays he’s interested in beef, on Thursdays it’s pork.
“I can still get it warm,” says the doctoral student at Reutlingen University, Faculty of Applied Chemistry. The 27-year-old rushes to the laboratory, where he meticulously chops up the fat-free muscle meat at 37 degrees, provides it with nutrients and places it in a container in the incubator. The goal: to get adult stem cells to multiply in order to breed meat. At the very end of the complicated process, a 3D printer helps to print a “mini steak”. The product is edible, but doesn’t taste like much, says Wollschlaeger.
There is still a long way to go before the product is really edible
According to Wollschlaeger’s boss and project manager, Petra Kluger, there is still a long way to go before the product is really edible. “Thanks to the research on the subject, side sausages or fillings for ravioli and dumplings with the artificial meat will be conceivable in a few years.” Cultured meat helps people get enough food, but also reduces greenhouse gas emissions and saves water and land. “One can definitely say that animal suffering could be drastically reduced in this way,” says Kluger, Vice President Research at Reutlingen University.
From their point of view, the meat from the 3D printer has a lot of potential. The idea is not new, but not enough research is being done in this country, says Kluger. “The topic is not on the agenda in Germany. We’ve already missed so many technologies, but we could still get involved with this one.”
In 2013, the first in vitro burger made from bovine stem cells was presented by Mark Post and his team at Maastricht University. In January 2016, the US start-up Memphis Meats presented the first in vitro meatball.
Even if the production of in-vitro meat is possible, there is still no method to produce in-vitro meat on a large scale, according to a study by the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. This is mainly due to the fact that the components of a production process for in-vitro meat still have to be researched further. The USA, the Netherlands, Japan and Israel are at the forefront. It is mainly research projects at universities, non-profit non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or start-ups funded by NGOs and investors who want to further develop in vitro meat and bring it to market.
“Have to get to the root of the problem”
From the point of view of the Federation for Environmental Protection and Nature Conservation (BUND), it is not appropriate to simply solve the problems in industrial factory farming with another method. “We have to get to the root of the problem: our excessive meat consumption. Compared to plant-based production, laboratory meat also definitely performs worse in terms of energy and resource requirements,” said State Managing Director Martin Bachhofer. Today it is easier than ever to eat a mostly or exclusively plant-based healthy diet. However, this is not a plea for the complete abolition of livestock farming. “It depends on the way and on the scale: In the future we will still need “real” animals that stand on the pasture and thus preserve species-rich habitats in the grassland. This grassland is also important as a CO2 sink for climate protection,” said Bachhofer.
A joint project between Reutlingen University and the University of Hohenheim is being funded by the Swiss Avina Foundation. It investigates ways to advance production on an industrial scale. According to Kluger, funds are scarce. “I don’t understand why there is so little funding for this topic. We are at the very beginning of a new technology that doesn’t want to destroy agriculture, but wants to offer a complementary alternative, because there are more and more people in the world,” says Kluger. More than half of the vegetarian products produced worldwide are fed to animals. If these two countries ceased to be wheat producers because of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, the question arises as to whether it is ethically justifiable to feed scarce grain to animals.
According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), 35 countries in Africa alone import wheat and other things from Russia or Ukraine. Experts warn that the war in Ukraine will permanently increase the price of raw materials such as gas, oil and wheat.