Scientific American Reports

December 2006

Future Feast

By Jim Kling

As for animal protein, Morris A. Benjaminson has a dream: producing it without the animal. Benjaminson, a biology professor at the Touro College School of Health Sciences and president of Zymotech Enterprises in Bay Shore, N.Y., hopes to turn stem cells into meat. While working on a system to grow edible mushrooms from human waste for long-duration space missions, he recalls that "it occurred to me that not all astronauts will want to be vegetarians" (to say nothing of eating those mushrooms). A chicken coop in the cargo bay was obviously out of the question, so he came up with another idea: growing animal skeletal muscle tissue—a fillet or steak, in other words—in small chambers.

Benjaminson and his team have extracted stem cells from fish embryos and used them to grow muscle cells by stimulating them electrically, mechanically, hormonally and nutritionally. With enough tinkering and funding, Benjaminson thinks that soon he will be able to grow something that has the consistency and taste of filet mignon. So far he has worked mainly with fish muscle cells and has had some limited success in producing a tiny mass of tissue that looks, smells and cooks like a fish fillet. He believes that such a technique could mass-produce boneless chicken breasts for a fraction of the cost of a commercial chicken farm, without the salmonella and other harmful organisms that can exist on supermarket poultry.

Benjaminson is not the only one working in the field. Dutch researchers at Utrecht University are using pig stem cells to produce vat-grown pork. They hope to create minced meat that could be used in burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next couple of years.

Jason Matheny, a University of Maryland doctoral student who directs the nonprofit group New Harvest, envisions "meat sheets" composed of layers of animal muscle and fat cells. He believes that using inexpensive nutrients from plant or fungal sources could drive the price of vat-grown meat down to as little as $1 a pound. It could even be improved through the addition of omega-3 fatty acids and other heart-healthy ingredients.

Will vat-grown meat produce philosophical conundrums? Many vegetarians adopt the lifestyle for health reasons, but others do so because they object to exploitation of animals for food. "No animal is harmed here. This stuff is pretty much as guilt-free as you can get," says Jack William Bell, a Seattle software engineer and part-time futurist. He points out that the technology could give rise to unexpected culinary choices. "Endangered species might no longer be taboo," Bell suggests. "What if we used cultures from endangered or even extinct species? Would it be okay to have Siberian tiger on a stick? Spotted owl nuggets? You could have that bowl of panda stew in good conscience!"