Looks like only available in one restaurant for now, but it’s a start.
“For one thing, cultivated meat is not vegan or vegetarian.” -> I know some vegans who would disagree with that, on the grounds that no animal cruelty or slaughter is involved. I suspect there will be a fair bit of debate on this as cultivated meat becomes more widespread. I would guess just like we’ve already got “I’m a vegetarian who eats fish” we’ll end up with “I’m a vegan who does/doesn’t eat cultivated meat.”
You might want to cross-post this to https://beehaw.org/c/food too.
As far as I read recently, currently the liquid to provide the cells with nutrition is gathered from slaughtering cattle. I couldn’t find the link, will keep looking, but if anyone has information to the contrary, I’d be happy. I love the idea of meat-taste without animal cruelty and I think it is the way we have to go if we as a species want to survive.
EDIT: https://gemeinsam-gegen-die-tierindustrie.org/en/clean-meat-the-solution-to-the-problems/
In any case, it is important to bear in mind that the production process regularly relies on fresh muscle tissue and continuously on growth serum.
The growth serum is usually obtained from the heart of a calf embryo, for which the calves and sometimes the mother cow are slaughtered.9b Some companies state that they have replaced the calf serum with an algae nutrient solution.10 It also remains to be seen whether this alternative will prevail.
As the domain name already suggests (“Together against animal industries”), this article seems heavily biased, however. If tissue of a calf embryo is required for the serum, that’s not a calf, but an embryo, which is slaughtered. Just like abortion is not murder.
Nevertheless, I hope the mentioned algea nutrition solution will prove a viable alternative.
https://upsidefoods.com/blog/animal-component-free-upsides-cell-feed-breakthrough-levels-up-the-future-of-cultivated-meat
This is apparently from one of the companys that Works on cultivated meat.According to them, they got the animal cell free nutrition working. And use it for their production.
Since its from the company directly, You should take it with just as much of a grain of salt as the other article.
But, they have a very convincing argument:
The bovine cells are the most expensive part of the production, and using them for production purposes would be prohibitly expensive.
As cynical as that take is, to me thats the best argument that animal cell free meat will be the rule instead of an exception for cultured meat.
