Our research trip was fascinating, with a spectrum of interesting topics discussed, it seems a shame to inadequately summarise the whole thing.
After talking with Neil Stephens and watching his talk on in-vitro meat, for me, the argument for its development has only become more complex, with many grey areas adding to this. For example- how do you gauge the yuck factor? With food being such a subjective area, it will definitely be influenced by being figuratively and literally a matter of taste. Personally there are many things that contribute to the ickyness, however, I’m only going to focus on one, partly because it’s the one thing/phrase that has stuck in my mind, but also, it’s for just that reason that it’s important. After 3 days of information overload, with such complex interconnected topics, phrases and acronyms can easily be glossed over, even if they are of great importance.
Fetal Bovine Serum
It has been proposed that this month, at a date that seems to be pretty closely guarded, the first in-vitro burger will be eaten. The cells to be formed into a burger, as with most lab-grown animal cells, are currently grown on Fetal Bovine Serum. Possibilities in using a type of algae as a growing medium have been proposed. At present cells are often sensitive to differences between batches of FBS, a transition can be made mixing some of the present serum with the new serum as an intermediary stage. However, if this small transition is sensitive, then the extension to growing on algae seems a bit of a leap.
To obtain ‘FBS’ there is a need for extensively farmed cows, as only a proportion will happen to be pregnant at the time of slaughter. So the current techniques in cell culture don’t seem too harmonious with both the animal welfare/meat alternative side, and environmental concerns with land use, water and gas emissions.
