Talk:In vitro meat/Archive 1

Archive 1

Economy

In vitro meat may be more efficient economically and environmentally

I think this deserve a little bit more explanation. What does "may" mean here ? Do you have some references supporting the fact it might be more interesting from an economical point of view in particular ? User:Anthere

I used "may" throughout the article because very little research has been done in this area, and perhaps this will encourage researchers to look into these areas and change "may" to "is" or "is not". -- Astudent 01:45 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

Apologies, but I think it is not a valid answer. Let me give you an example

currently, 1.3 is put in the "reasons for", right ?

Don't you think we could similarily put in "reasons against" ?

1.3 Economy In vitro meat may be less efficient economically and environmentally

Why not ? We could just as well. We could add it in the article, and perhaps it will encourage researchers to look into the areas and change "may" by it not. Till then, this statement is maybe true, maybe false, and there is nothing supporting it being a "reason for".

What are the arguments for stating it might be environmentally less efficient ?

What are the arguments for stating it might be economically less efficient ?

User:anthere

That is a good point. Maybe we could have sections "Reasons for", "Reasons against", "Other factors" and put "Economy" in "Other factors".

Or we could just repeat "Economy" in both "Reasons for" and "Reasons against".

Feel free to add and edit reasons. -Astudent

Change of title from "in vitro meat" to "artificial meat"

Hi, thanks for your comments.

My opinion is that the term "artificial meat" could make people confused as to whether the meat itself is artificial (ie. chemicals mixed together to make a meat-like substance) or whether the production environment is artificial (ie. test tubes, petri dishes, tanks) but where the meat is still animal tissue.

I also eliminated "lab-grown meat" as the title because this process will eventually move out of the laboratory and into the farm/factory.

"In vitro meat" sounds weird but it is more accurate. In vitro is also used for in vitro fertilization, in vitro organ, in vitro toxicology, in vitro diagnostics etc.

Sorry to be so fussy but I think it's important. What do other people think? -- Astudent 02:07 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

My move was predicated on the desire that wikipedia articles use the same terminology as the world at large, and that "in vitro meat" doesn't meet that standard. We do have a general guideline that says we should call things what they are most commonly known as. Although "in vitro meat" may be a somewhat accurate description, it isn't what the researchers are calling what they are working on.

There is still the problem that the researchers themselves haven't settled on a single name, so picking the "most common" is difficult. There are several good alternatives being used though, including:

• • artificial meat
  • synthetic meat
  • engineered meat
  • artificial tissue
  • synthetic tissue
  • engineered tissue
  • laboratory meat
  • lab-grown meat

A problem with the "tissue" names are that they include tissue being created for medical as well as edible purposes, and that isn't what this article is about. A good question though, is should the two be covered in the same article? If the same process (someday) can create a muscle for both implantion and digestion, then why would we define them differently?

Anyhow, how do the other names above strike you? -º¡º

Thanks for the post.

I have to admit that "in vitro meat" is not used very much, so it shouldn't be the title. Perhaps it can still be included in the body of the article as a possible name.

From a brief Google search, it seems that "laboratory meat" or "lab-grown meat" is used by New Scientist. All of your suggestions are good ones. I would write something like "artificially-grown meat" just to emphasise that the production is artificial but the meat is (almost) natural. Anyway, I think we'll keep "artificial meat" as the name until the researchers agree on something.

You raised a good point about muscle tissue and transplant organs. We can combine the two articles in the (near?) future, but at the moment there's too much difference. -Astudent

We could put a list of all possible names in the article, perhaps at the bottom. And maybe a sentence describing "in vitro" vs "in vivo" would not be out of place as well. After reading (and thinking) more, I'm leaning towards another move, to synthetic meat. Synthetic is the word more precisely used to describe something that is different because of the means of production, and not because the end product is "different"... -º¡º

"Synthetic" is a good word, but unfortunately the original problem of uncommon usage remains. I'll put it in the list, though. -Astudent

Since synthetic/artificial meat is most commonly understood to refer to imitation meat products (e.g. textured vegetable protein), how about we move the article back to its original, unambiguous title while the discussion of alternatives continues. Mkweise 08:42 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

I personally like "cultured meat" the best; it conveys both that the meat is artificially grown and that it is in fact meat at the same time. 69.62.157.64 (talk) 05:15, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I've only ever heard this described as Factory Meat--Drgs100 (talk) 12:15, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think cultured meat is the best name as well. In most newspaper articles it is most often referred to as cultured meat by scientists and proponents. However, people are going to search for 'in vitro meat' in Wikipedia as that is what it is most commonly referred to as. "In vitro meat" turns up over a million hits on Google. All the other names, cultured meat included, only turn up a fraction of the references. Unless another name usurps 'in vitro meat' in the mind of the public, I think the title of the article should remain In Vitro Meat. Scienceguy81 (talk) 05:05, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

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At present, scientists are experimentally growing artificial meat in laboratories, but if the process is successful, and the product passes safety and health trials, meat may soon be grown in farms for public consumption

This is unclear. Either the meat is grown in farms and it will be natural meat, either the meat is grown in laboratories, and it will be artificial meat. I doubt *very much* farms will install laboratories, , and hire technicians to grow artificial meat. This in particular as animal cells are quite fragile, and needs a very carefully controlled environment. Plus very strict safety rules. And as far as I know, the day has not come when we call a farm a lab growing cells.

I meant that laboratories are places for experiments, and factories/farms are places for mass-producing the product. Science:Laboratory as Technology:Factory/Farm although sometimes the distinction is not clear cut. -Astudent

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Just for the record, people, the em dashes were in the correct form in the first place. Parenthesis are OK, but inferior in this usage. There are several ways to make an em dash:

• (i) xxx-yyy or xxx - yyy (the minus key) is just plain wrong, it is a completely different character that just haqqens to look adit like an em dash. See what haqqens when I bo a similar sort of violence to the language by swapping the letters "p and "q" and "d" and "b" around? It remains reabadle, but it's ugly and incorrect. A bash is not a hyqhen, still less a minus sign,

• (ii) xxx--yyy or xxx -- yyy (two minus signs) Just as wrong, possibly even uglier. The only time you do this is when you have a steam-driven manual typewriter. It's more common in tthe US than in the rest of the world, apparently, but in neither place is it correct English.

• (iii) xxx—yyy (—) Correct. Professionally printed works always use this symbol, never substitute anything else for it, it's easy to type, and easy to remember. The only problem with — is that some older browesers do not understand it.

• (iv) xxx—yyy (—) Correct. The exact same em dash as in example (iii) above, but coded in a different way, that is more compatible with older browsers. This is hard to remember and awkward to type, but produces the correct result in almost all circumstances. Tannin 08:04 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

Well...as much as I hate to participate in the rampant overuse of parentheses, after having my —es replaced by --s for the second time, it seemed like an acceptable compromise. Mkweise 08:42 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a professional printed work. As I already pointed out to Mkweise, we need to avoid user astonishment with unnecessary markup in the wiki source text. HTML tables are bad enough, entities should be avoided whenever possible. We have thousands of "--"s on Wikipedia. These will all be rendered as nice looking mdashes if the software ever gets upgraded to that purpose. On the other hand, HTML mdashes will have to be converted manually to "--"s to make use of that feature. The disadvantages of having an ugly &— in the source far outweigh the miniscule advantage of having a nicer looking (in some browsers, with some fonts) dash. --Eloquence 08:45 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

While in general I think I agree with you, though I'm pretty ambivalent, why would you think they'd have to be manually converted? -- John Owens 09:00 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

Depends on what you or I mean by manually. At the very least, someone would have to run an SQL query on hundreds of megs of text from the CUR table. Not nice. --Eloquence

Couldn't they be converted "on-demand"? i.e., each time someone edits it, it gets popped in as an -- before presenting them with the editbox --Random|832 06:57, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

Tannin, there is actually one more option you neglected to mention:

• (v) In Windows, ALT-0151 will put the actual '—' character into the wiki text, or you can simply copy-and-paste a rendered &mdash. Not sure whether this works with all browsers on all OSs, though.

Mkweise 22:15 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

One more - there's a set of "insert character" links on the edit page, one of which inserts "—". However, this is totally not the place for it. Darekun (talk) 09:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

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Uhh, regarding the title "In vitro meat" .. please think of the connotations: "in vitro fertilization" -- "in vitro meat". This is not a nice mental picture. --Eloquence

In vitro just means "outside the living body and in an artificial environment". "In vitro fertilization" is by far the most popular use of the term, but not the only one. There's in vitro toxicology (very important for non-animal testing of cosmetics and chemicals) and others. -Astudent

or just in vitro culture, which plant breeders use a lot now as a technique. It was used in particular to restore some species which were widely diseased by virus (the whole plant was contaminated by some virus, except for a couple of location such as anthere and pollen grain, virus free. The antheres holding the pollen were in vitro cultured and some plants were able to regenerate without any contamination, from the anthere/pollen ). This was definitly a very important success in plant breeding, and gave in vitro culture an important credential. Ant

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"Backing off KF's change: Soylent Green and the Shmoos are related fictional foods, but not examples of in-vitro meat."

--> Could you explain this? --KF 14:09 18 May 2003 (UTC)

Soylent Green was recycled human flesh. The Shmoos were artificial animals designed to provide meat, eggs, milk, all at once: a bit like Larry Niven's Bandersnatchi. Both are linked from here as other examples of "other fictional weird meat-type foods".

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The claim that tissue culture "...does not directly involve animals except for the initial removal of cells," is deceptive, as it typically requires 10-20% fetal calf or (veal) calf serum in the medium. Don't be fooled by the figure of 10-20%, either, as the amount of medium is usually 100-fold greater than the amount of cells in a dish or flask. The medium is changed every 1-3 days. Whoever wrote that should read a few papers from the primary literature involving cell culture before making such a bogus claim. I switched culture conditions to the other column where they belong.

To put it more succinctly:

1) "In vitro" does not mean that animals are not used. Animals are routinely vivisected to provide reagents used in such procedures, such as antibodies. 2) The source of the cells is insignificant relative to the source of medium supplements as an animal welfare concern. 3) The elimination of animals as experimental/technological subjects in no way implies that they are not still intensively exploited as mere tools.

I do cell and tissue culture every day, and I am disgusted by dishonest and/or ignorant people who falsely portray it as "non-animal" and "alternative." It is neither--none of the experiments I do on cultured cells can be done on whole animals. Moving the exploitation of animals off-site is a purely esthetic matter--ethically speaking, it is a false choice, or even an inferior one, since I have no idea how the pregnant cows and veal calves from whom I eventually get serum are treated. When I work with the animals myself, at least I can be sure that they are treated humanely.

-John

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Can someone please elaborate on this sentence in procedure: A matrix of collagen is seeded with muscle cells, which are then bathed in a nutritious solution and induced to divide.

I'd really like to understand what kind of solution that is and how u induce a cell to divide (and later, how do u stop it to divide) - thanks. User:Mjanich

The solution contains (as a major and essential component) fetal bovine serum, which is serum from a cow fetus (foetus). AFAIK there is no totally "synthetic" growth medium for this kind of meat, as the exact conditions haven't been comprehensively described yet. All the speculation regarding reduced environmental impact is based on the assumption that a totally "synthetic" growth medium can be produced with less environmental harm than the bovine equivalent. The current state of the art would be thousands if not millions of times more wasteful than the current biological system (cattle and grass or grains).

I'd also like to point out that the "exemption" from growth hormones and antibiotics is misleading, as almost all the hormones involved would be added from an external source, and the addition of antibiotics is practically required to reduce the disastrous effects of accidental contamination in a tissue culture which hasn't got its own immune system. This "exemption" basically means that ingredients which were once unnecessary has become an essential part of the meat-production process.

-Jimworm

Fetal bovine serum is neither included in all examples that have been produced, nor necessary. Take a look at Edelman's paper posted on the New Harvest website (pdf), which details that some experiments were more successful without fetal bovine serum. "Benjaminson and others succeeded in using a serum-free medium made from maitake mushroom extract that achieved higher rates of growth than fetal bovine serum." --Gloriamarie (talk) 23:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Fiction section

I remember a science-fiction short story set in the future, where vat-meat has become the norm, about a congressional investigation into a company that (it is dramatically revealed at the end of the story) has just introduced cultured human meat, with the person speaking spelling out the no longer familiar word, "C-A-N-N-I-B-A-L-I-S-M". Does anyone remember the name and/or author of this story? --Clement Cherlin 23:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

That'd be Arthur C. Clarke.  :) — Xaonon (Talk) 06:56, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

soylent green is people? 69.140.35.147 (talk) 01:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Defining In Vitro

This article uses the term 'in vitro' almost every sentence with it in italics (hinting that in vitro is a phrase/common term). It may be worthwhile to explain that 'in vitro' is latin for, or at least link to the article in vitro. I don't want to make this change if the meaning is different to the page in vitro...should I change it? ny156uk 20:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Possible bias?

Although I'm personally for in-vitro meat, it does seem like Wikipedia should try to be as unbiased as possible; and this article definitely seems to have a pro-in-vitro bias. Take a look at the "arguments in favor" and "arguments against" sections. Almost all the "against" bullets are accompanied by a counter-argument:

On the other hand, some may prefer the consumption of in vitro meat to the slaughter of live animals, and it may be argued that the current industrial meat production infrastructure is "unnatural" and puts a bigger strain on the planet's natural resources than does growing meat cells artificially. Moreover, a range of highly processed non-meat food products, such as textured vegetable protein, has been available to many Western consumers for decades.

However, like any food product, in vitro meat would be required to pass through many safety and health trials before it could be sold. Also, this question is one of the main focuses of scientists working on in vitro meat, and they aim to produce healthier meat than conventional meat, most notably by reducing its fat content and controlling nutrients. For example, most meats are high in saturated fat, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems. With in vitro meat, saturated fat might be replaced by Omega 3, which is more healthful.

Both of these are under the "arguments against" heading.

Does someone want to look into this? I'm not too up on editing Wikipedia; I know there are certain rules you have to abide by, and I don't want to inadvertantly break any...

69.62.157.64 (talk) 05:13, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. While vat meat is an intriguing technology, it does nobody good to have a biased encyclopedia article. I've tagged the benefits section as needing better references and NPOV, since the previously existing references did not make claims as strong (and in the present tense) as the article. It is important to distinguish the hopes/possibilities from the current reality, and there is no way to get a credible reference that a non-existent product is healthier. It "may" or "could" or perhaps even "will be" (if you are clairvoyant) healthier, but at the moment, it is no healthier and none of the references make that claim. Jacobleonardking (talk) 00:49, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

"produce healthier meat than conventional meat, most notably by reducing its fat content" and: "With in vitro meat, saturated fat might be replaced by Omega 3, which is more healthful."

Neither of these throwaway comments have any place in this article, and should at the very least be referenced. They can't be, of course, because they aren't true. Animal fat, saturated or otherwise, is perfectly healthful and something we've evolved with for thousands of years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.222.84.121 (talk) 17:08, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

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The Liver Problem

I just saw the Discovery Channel special "Hot Planet", in which a gourmet chef sniffs a lump of artificial meat and declares that it has a liver smell to it. I won't add that because I'm not sure it qualifies as a "reliable source"... but it does point out a huge problem with this whole scheme.

A normal animal muscle doesn't exist alone, but relies on a circulatory loop with a liver for continual detoxification and metabolic support. Take the liver out of an animal, and it must die. Sure, the muscle can be detoxified by flushing it with a large amount of solution, in which case you do the liver's work by throwing away large amounts of nutrients except for whatever you can salvage and recycle, but this isn't very economical. Hence the liver smell? I can't say whether the smell itself is from a buildup of odd chemicals or because the muscle in vitro retains some amount of a liver-ish differentiation state. In the end I think you could have any number of odd, unhealthy constituents that are present neither in normal meat nor properly functioning liver. Wnt (talk) 07:42, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

As with any new technology, things get better over time. We don't use the same type of telephone Alexander Graham Bell did these days.--Gloriamarie (talk) 20:19, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Hooey "arguments"

The 'arguments in favor' section states, "In vitro meat may be cleaner and less prone to disease than animals, provided that donor cells are not contaminated. With relatively simple isolation procedures, economically damaging culls could also be avoided. The in vitro meat would also be free from the growth hormones and antibiotics that are fed to many animals in intensive factory farming."

Note however that most real cell culture is done with antibiotics (it is possible but very difficult to do without them), and fetal calf serum is routinely present as a potential source of new viruses at any time. Artificial meat has no immune system! For reference, look up how the popular SV40 virus was named... as the 40th virus to be isolated from cell cultures for vaccine work. The difference is that vaccines are highly purified from all other components of a culture, including viruses, whereas the fake meat is taken without extensive processing or one presumes even so much as an autoclave step.

The statement that in vitro meat would be free from growth hormones is even less plausible, because no technological advance envisionable at this time allows cells to grow and form structure without some exposure to hormones - as provided in calf serum or in some more controlled administration. Artificial meat has no pituitary gland... no glands at all. What are the health effects of eating meat without normal hormonal regulation?

I think that this article will need some rather severe pruning to bring it down to what can be sourced, and in the process the "arguments for", "arguments against" structure should be abandoned. Wnt (talk) 17:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I've added citations for all that you dispute above. What you're saying here would need sources as well (of which I haven't found any).--Gloriamarie (talk) 20:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the official policy of Wikipedia is for what is considered a valid reference, but I wouldn't consider any of the references in the "arguments for" section to be credible sources for the points that are being cited. It seems that the "arguments for" and "arguments against" sections are presenting highly speculative opinions as facts. Millifolium (talk) 03:45, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that the "arguments in favor" and "arguments against" sections are highly biased and provide little or no useful information. I have outlined my criticisms of these sections below. I propose that these sections be removed entirely. I'll give people some time to respond before I do this.

HEALTH In-vitro meat would require growth hormones to be added (Edelman et al. 2005). This is to be expected, it isn't producing its own hormones, and therefore the hormones need to be added. None of the patent descriptions or peer reviewed papers that I have looked at say that this technology doesn't use antibiotics. This is also to be expected, as Wnt points out above, the cultured meat does not have its own immune system to fight off infection without antibiotics being used.

There is no reason to assume that in-vitro meat would be cleaner and less prone to disease and bacteria contamination than meat garnered from livestock. The speculation of some random journalist does not constitute a fact. Large scale production of in-vitro meat has never been attempted, so any comment on the relative risk of contamination is entirely speculative, and should not be presented as fact. If I was to speculate, I would point out that maintaining sterile conditions in a lab requires a lot of work, while most livestock remains very healthy on its own if it is subjected to proper animal husbandry. (Yes, a lot of livestock are subjected to conditions that make them less healthy, but that is a separate discussion. My point is that not only CAN livestock be raised that way, but that SOME of it IS raised that way, quite successfully. If in-vitro meat production became the mainstream, there would certainly be a lot of people cutting corners with that as well, to try to make it cheaper.)

The vast majority of the bones, viscera, and skin of animals slaughtered for meat are used by a variety of different industries. It is not wasted. On the other hand, any laboratory production generates a large amount of waste. This comment is mere speculation by a journalist that has no understanding of agricultural production, nor of laboratories.

It is possible that "designer meat" could be produced in-vitro, with the desired balance of fatty acids. However, this can also be done with conventional meat production, by selection of the appropriate species/breed, and the appropriate feeding regime for that animal.

ENVIRONMENT "the environmental damage should still be lessened" - this is entirely speculative. Again, the opinion of some random journalist that has no understanding of agricultural production or laboratories does not constitute a fact. There are many ways in which large scale in-vitro meat production could have a huge environmental impact. Yes, with careful attention to detail and use of appropriate technologies this impact could be reduced. But it is difficult to see how this environmental impact could ever be as low as a free-range animal produced on marginal agricultural land and sold locally. Of course, not all livestock is produced that way, but again that is a separate discussion.

SPACE FOOD This is a valid point, but is already mentioned under history. It doesn't seem like it requires an entire "arguments for" section.

INCREASE IN CONSUMER CHOICE The benefit of being able to eat lion meat does not seem to be an advantage worth mentioning.

REDUCTIONS IN COST OF PRODUCTION In fact, the In-Vitro Meat Consortium (which is definitely biased in favor of in-vitro meat) has estimated that, even assuming massive reductions in the cost of production of in-vitro meat, it is still going to cost twice as much as conventional meat.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST This section also seems pretty weak. The "Differences from traditionally produced meat" and "Artificiality" sections seem to be the same thing, and the "Quality, safety, health" section spends more time discussing potential benefits of in-vitro meat. This section is probably so weak because most of the potential problems with in-vitro meat are listed in the "arguments for" section.

REFERENCES CITED

Edelman, P. D, D. C. McFarland, V. A. Mironov, and J. G. Matheny. 2005.In vitro-cultured meat production. Tissue Engineering 11(5-6): 659-662.

Preliminary Economics Study of Cultured Meat, eXmoor Pharma Concepts, 2008. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Millifolium (talk • contribs) 19:33, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Millifolium (talk) 19:33, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I would be against any removal of either of these sections as has been done today until further discussion takes place. Fetal calf serum does not have to be used, and a mushroom alternative has been found in experiments to be more successful than bovine serum; other scientists have had success without serum at all, as you can read on that same page. You may not think that the journalists in these articles are telling the truth, but 1.) in many cases, those journalists are not speaking on their own behalf but quoting scientists, and 2.) on Wikipedia, articles from The New York Times and other such newspapers and magazines are considered reliable sources. You can of course provide alternate reliable sources if you have found any. There is reason to believe that it's cleaner for the purposes of this article because it has been written that it is so in reliable sources; many scientists apparently think it would be easier to keep a lab sterile than a slaughterhouse and are quoted as such in most of the articles on in vitro meat that I've found. Most livestock are produced through factory farming methods, so it is that process that in vitro meat would likely replace, not animal husbandry, which has nothing to do with factory farming or with how most meat is currently produced. The person quoted as saying that there would be less waste is Jason Matheny, who is a researcher at Johns Hopkins and Oxford and through his collaborations with those currently working on in vitro meat might be familiar with how much waste might be involved in the laboratory work, and since he has a background in agricultural economics, may have an understanding of agricultural production.--Gloriamarie (talk) 02:16, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Twice the cost of production? One must actually read a source before changing it. The In Vitro Meat consortium study found that "that producing cultured meat, even after it’s ramped up to an industrial scale, would be nearly twice as expensive as unsubsidized chicken." However, it found that cultured beef would be cheaper than traditional meat. See pg. 7 of the study. http://www.new-harvest.org/img/files/culturedmeatecon.pdf But I agree, these numbers are largely conjectural. I am going to edit the wiki to reflect what is actually in the report.~scienceguy81 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scienceguy81 (talk • contribs) 17:19, 3 April 2010 (UTC) Also, the estimates are concerning European meat production, which is probably more expensive than production in the US, NZ or Brasil. (That would actually make cultured meat more expensive when compared with other cheaper countries like the US). Also, there are a few price estimates (depending on the production process used for cultured meat) for cultured chicken/beef so it's not actually twice as expensive for chicken-- it's between 80%-300% more expensive (which is both more and less than was previously stated in the wiki.) ~Scienceguy91 Scienceguy81 (talk) 17:27, 3 April 2010 (UTC)