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LAB-GROWN FOOD
There are two main types of lab-grown food currently in development: meat and dairy. These are produced either directly from animal cells or via microorganisms through fermentation. The cultivation of food in these ways is sometimes referred to as cellular agriculture.
To make cultivated meat, scientists extract muscle stem cells (called “myosatellite” cells) from an animal and grow them in a medium (a highly processed raw calorie source) to produce muscle tissue in a laboratory setting. Next, the tissue is fed, multiplied, shaped, and structured using bioreactors to become what we might recognize as a burger or meat product.
Meat and dairy provide 18% of the calories that humans consume but their production uses 83% of global farmland and produced 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Industrial agriculture was an enormous contributor to water usage and pollution and it’s also one of the biggest threats to global biodiversity. Because lab-grown food can grow with a high level of efficiency – and without the food production of methane, ammonia, manure, and other waste products – lab-grown food became more sustainable than animal agriculture.
It's sustainability came from breakthroughs in the growth medium used to make lab-grown meat and the innovations in the type of energy used to produce it. Facilities now run on clean energy – like fermentation based Solein from Solar Food – which reduced the production of emission by 60%.
