Would you eat 3D printed meat?
Imagine for a second that you feel hungry, it’s getting late and you can’t be bothered to cook anything, you walk up to the device next to the refrigerator in your kitchen say the word “beef burger, medium rare” and in 2 mins a perfect burger appears. What you are imagining is a world where we could print our food, we click a button and a machine prints up our favourite meal, layer upon delicious layer. Some people find the idea mind bending and disgusting at best, others find the idea that we would someday eat something that a machine builds for us in front of our eyes, terrifying.
But why? we eat vegetables every day that are modified to make sure they look and taste perfect enough to be considered for purchase, we fill our bodies with chemicals on a daily basis via foods and beverages and we simply do not question it. So if you could define the exact molecular makeup of your food, know exactly the nutritional value and even map the nutrient of that food to our own specific needs then why wouldn’t you try it?
Printing meat of the future
Start-up company Modern Meadow is leading the technology in 3D bioprinting technology, Co-founder Andras Forgacs has long been a critic of the wasteful resources of intensive farming practices and calls hamburgers “an environmental train wreck”
How to print meat -
A biopsy is taken from an animal to harvest stem cells, the wonderful thing about stem cells is that they quickly replicate themselves. When the cells have multiplied to sufficient numbers they are placed into a bio cartridge, much like an ink cartridge but filled with thousands of living cells.
The printer works by a process called additive manufacturing, using tiny precise inkjet nozzles that disperse droplets of living cells called bio ink, the machine builds up the structure layer by layer into moulds made from agarose. After a few days the bio ink naturally fuses together to form living tissue. The supporting agarose moulds are removed and the newly created tissue placed into a bioreactor where a low frequency pulse allows muscle fibers to naturally mature and grow.
Prof Gabor Forgacs, of the University of Missouri says of a practice "We are printing live material - [the] cells are alive when we are printing them. Far more challenging than making an earring or a chocolate bar”
For and against printed meat
The look - Printed meat in its early stages might simply resemble mince or elongated sausages, but as with vegetarian fake meats the look of the meat will over time become more and more like the real thing.
The taste - Perhaps is it the taste that people feel would be different, it is true that muscle tissue will be a complex thing to grow and could affect the taste. Many meat lovers show a tendency towards eating meat from cattle raised on grain rather than grass fed, so does the animals diet add to its flavour. Another rather more sinister reason is the lack of the slaughter process as biochemicals released during the animals stress could also change the flavour of its flesh on the palette.
The cost - At first you would expect that printed meat will be very expensive, in fact to produce a hamburger using the method right now costs £200,000 so it will only be the elite that could eat this food. We will read of Beyonce and Jayzee getting their first meat printer and then as the media hype dies away, meat printers will slowly begin to appear in local appliance stores.
Availability - As the popularity amongst the elite ebbs then the general population will likely see an increase in availability. Although production on an industrial scale might take much longer.
Health - The environment the meat is grown in will be highly sterile and so won’t be subjected to any contamination, such as e coli. In fact it is highly likely that food poisoning from printed meat will be impossible.
Feeding the poor - One argument for printed meat is as a solution for world hunger, this is a protein that can be grown in a small environment without having to fed, housed or care for it.
Green credentials - The meat industry produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trains, planes combined in the world.