Last week, an Australian “cultured meat” company called Vow made headlines with a meatball made from the flesh of a wooly mammoth—or something very much like it. Combining the technologies of lab-based cell culture and “de-extinction,” Vow scientists grew muscle proteins based on DNA sequences from the long-dead proboscideans.
an Australian “cultured meat” company called Vow made headlines with a meatball made from the flesh of a wooly mammoth—or something very much like it. Combining the technologies of lab-based cell culture and “de-extinction,” Vow scientists grew muscle proteins based on DNA sequences from the long-dead proboscideans.
The meatball was not intended for human consumption, but Vow hoped the gimmick would highlight the lighter environmental footprint of lab-grown meats, using the mammoth as a “a symbol of diversity loss and a symbol of climate change”. The meatball also hinted at a possible new variety and playfulness in meat consumption.
But is lab-grown meat really likely to put mammoths, dodos and other exotica on the menu? Taking into account the safety and economic hurdles the industry will have to clear, the result seems more likely to follow the pattern of genetically modified crops: less diversity, and unforeseen social and environmental effects.
As Queensland scientist Ernst Wolvetang, who helped to engineer the mammoth-ball, acknowledged:
“We haven’t seen this protein for thousands of years, so we have no idea how our immune system would react when we eat it.”
Wolvetang thinks any such problems could quickly be solved. But even for lab-grown meat that uses conventional livestock such as beef or chicken, the health and safety risks are far from understood.
Existing concerns include the use of growth hormones in cultured meat, the potential for new or unexpected allergens, the way lines of cultured cells change their shape and function over time, the likelihood of microbial contamination, and uncertainty around the nutrient content.
