What a startup’s woolly mammoth meatball tells us about the future of meat
Context- Australian startup Vow, on Tuesday (March 28), lifted the glass cloche on a meatball made of lab-grown cultured meat using the genetic sequence from the long-extinct woolly mammoth, the AP reported. The mammoth meatball, sized slightly smaller than a volleyball, was unveiled at a museum in Amsterdam.
(Credits- Indian Express)
While this will be a one-off creation, perhaps garner publicity for the food-tech company, founder Tim Noakesmith told the AP that through the mammoth meatball, the company hoped to start a conversation around global meat consumption.
How was the woolly mammoth meatball made?
- Cultivated meat— also called cultured or cell-based meat — is made from animal cells but livestock does not need to be killed in order to produce it. Notably, it is different from plant-based meat substitutes in that it actually uses animal DNA to recreate in a lab the taste and texture of meat.
- Plant-based substitutes, on the other hand, try and mimic the taste and texture of meat using other plant-based alternatives.
- The aim was to create the mammoth muscle protein from available DNA. Prof Wolvetang’s team, University of Queensland, took the DNA sequence for mammoth myoglobin, a key muscle protein in giving the meat its flavour, and filled in any gaps using the DNA of the African elephant, the closest living relative of the extinct woolly mammoth.
- The prepared DNA sequence was then placed in myoblast (embryonic precursor to muscle cells) stem cells from a sheep, which soon replicated in the right lab conditions to grow to the nearly 20 billion cells subsequently used by the company to create the mammoth meatball.
- “It was ridiculously easy and fast,” Prof Wolvetang told The Guardian. “We did this in a couple of weeks.”
Can this meatball be eaten?
- The mammoth meatball has not been tasted by anyone, even its creators. Nor does Vow plan to put it into commercial production. Instead, the idea has been to use the meatball to start a much-needed conversation.
- “We wanted to get people excited about the future of food being different to potentially what we had before. That there are things that are unique and better than the meats that we’re necessarily eating now, and we thought the mammoth would be a conversation starter and get people excited about this new future,” Noakesmith told the
What is the meat industry’s role in climate change?
- Multiple studies have pointed out the massive impact that the global meat industry has on the environment. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), global meat consumption has increased significantly in recent decades, with per capita consumption almost doubling since the early 1960s.
- This means that roughly 14.5 per cent of global emissions of greenhouse gases are attributable to livestock farming. This includes not just carbon dioxide but also methane and nitrous oxide, which scientists say have a climate warming potential of anywhere between 25 times and 300 times higher than that of carbon dioxide.
- Most greenhouse gas emissions from plant-based foods are lower than those linked to animal-based foods.
Is cultivated meat the solution?
- Experts say that if cultivated/cultured meat is widely adopted, it could vastly reduce the environmental impact of global meat production in the future.
- This is because cultivated meat uses much less land and water than livestock, and produces no methane emissions. The industry can run on energy produced purely from renewable sources.
- While the woolly mammoth meatball is, as was planned, an unconventional idea, most of the industry has been focussing on commonly consumed meats.
- However, there is a long way to go before cultivated meat becomes mainstream across the world. Currently, Singapore is the only country to have approved cell-based meat for consumption. Vow hopes to enter the market later this year, with its quail-based meat product.
- More than getting regulatory approvals, for cultivated meat to really take off, there has to be a massive, global-scale behavioral and cultural change.
Conclusion- Projects such as Vow’s woolly mammoth meatball help draw attention and start conversations on the possibilities of cultivated meat. It will open up new conversations about cultivated meat’s extraordinary potential to produce more sustainable foods.
Syllabus- GS-3; Science and Tech
Source- Indian Express
