Is Lab-Grown Meat an Environmental and Health Revolution, or a New Step Toward the Abyss?

The Guardian newspaper reported that the US government had cleared the way for Americans to be able to eat lab-grown meat. The authorities deemed a meat product derived from animal cells to be safe for human consumption.

The newspaper pointed out that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will authorize a California company called Upside Foods to take living cells from chickens and then grow them in a controlled laboratory environment to produce a meat product that doesn’t involve the actual slaughter of any animals.

The FDA said it was ready to approve the sale of other lab-grown meat, stating that it was “engaged in discussions with multiple firms” to do the same, including companies that want to grow seafood from the cells of marine life.

 

Controversial Decision

Cultured meat, also known by other names, including cultured meat, is obtained by taking cells from live animals, then cultivating these cells and making them grow in the laboratory for a period of time.

There is no better gift for environmental conservation activists who reject the waste of environmental resources by the animal industry than the idea of laboratory-grown meat. However, the path is not as clear as it should be for this meat, especially with the medical controversy surrounding it.

Cultivated meat is also known by other names, including “cultured meat,” and there are those who call it “processed meat.” It is obtained by taking cells from live animals, then cultivating these cells and making them grow in the laboratory for a period of time.

This technology, which pertains to all types of meat, including poultry, as well as fish, is very new, and it only started nine years ago.

A report by the News Medical website, which specializes in scientific and medical news, indicates that this meat may be tomorrow’s food, and it has many advantages, the first of which is related to environmental resources. Thanks to its manufacture in laboratories, it does not need the same resources that regular meat depletes, including grazing land, fodder, and water.

 

Benefits Vs. Challenges

There is a health aspect as well, as this meat is beneficial to the body because of the decrease in infectious germs in it compared to natural meat, which is harmful to a number of people, especially intestinal germs and germs that are transmitted during slaughter and preservation, as well as being free of hormones that are injected into livestock, poultry and fish for the purpose of rapid ripening.

Thanks to the intervention of a specialized hand in its manufacture, this meat has a balanced nutritional value, unlike red meat, which is not recommended in excess. In this context, the percentage of harmful fats can be controlled and replaced with other beneficial fats such as omega-3, and vitamins such as vitamin B12 can be added to it.

However, there are other challenges associated with this meat, according to the Bloomberg report, including the high cost of fetal cow serum, which is used as an intermediate in the process of breeding beef, as well as its contradiction with what vegetarians raise about the necessity of not slaughtering animals, since this serum is taken from the animal after it is slaughtered.

Also, these meats do not provide the morphological diversity that natural meats provide, including the preferred forms of grilling, and they were also unable to provide the same taste. But the two biggest challenges are its high cost and, secondly, the ambiguity that accompanies its long-term health impact on humans, and there are fears that culturing meat may lead to the generation of defective cells that may provide an environment for some types of cancer.

Credit: Jordan Speer/Bloomberg

 

Is it Halal?

According to the study entitled Cultured Meat in Islamic Perspective, the researchers indicated that for the Islamic community, the crucial question is whether cultured meat is halal, meaning compliant with Islamic laws.

The halal status of cultured meat can be resolved by identifying the source cell and culture medium used in culturing the meat. The research claims that halal cultured meat can be obtained if the stem cell is extracted from a halal slaughtered animal, and no blood or serum is used in the process. The impact of this innovation will give positive results in the environment and sustain the livestock industry.

The company JUST Inc. which raised $267 million in 2021, is currently targeting consumers of the Muslim faith, as it announced in August 2021 its plans to build a subsidiary in Qatar. While it has consulted with Muslim scholars, it has yet to get approval for this new type of meat. “It’s a really important issue, maybe even more important, especially with our project in Qatar,” said Josh Tetrick, the company’s CEO. He added: “But we don’t have the approval yet.”

The company started selling lab-grown chicken nuggets in Singapore and, in December 2021, got permission to offer the same kind of chicken breast there.

In the event that the concerned authorities in Islamic countries do not approve this meat cultured in laboratories, it will be out of scope for the followers of the Islamic religion, which is the second largest religion in the world and has approximately two billion followers.

Indeed, this is what happened when Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Islamic organization in Indonesia, issued a statement in September 2021 in which it indicated that cells taken from live animals and then manufactured in bioreactors fall under the category of slaughtered animals that are not legally impure and are forbidden to be eaten.

This fatwa issued in Indonesia, the country with the largest number of Muslims in the world, can encourage authorities in other countries to issue similar decisions.

While in Pakistan, which is the second largest country in terms of the Muslim population, Sharia scholars led by Islamic law expert Muhammad Taqi Usmani issued a statement last year stating that processed meat is only permissible if the original cells are taken from animals slaughtered according to Islamic law.