WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Sicilia Libertaria 2-24: ENVIRONMENT FOOD CLIMATE - ON SYNTHETIC MEAT (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

First Singapore, then Israel and the Netherlands, today the United
States and the United Kingdom, these are the states in which it is
currently possible to consume synthetic meat or, as those who produce it
prefer to call it, cultured meat. Synthetic meat is obtained in the
laboratory with a series of steps that include: the collection of stem
cells from an animal by means of a biopsy; the cultivation of the cells
taken on an adequate support, which orients the growth allowing the
acquisition of a three-dimensional structure (obtaining a steak is more
difficult than obtaining a hamburger) and allows the passage of the
culture medium which must favor cellular proliferation and allow the
differentiation of stem cells into muscle and fat cells; the increase in
size of the product inside bioreactors in which growth conditions are
kept under control.

The race to produce synthetic meat has begun and everyone wants to be
the best, the first in the class, the most ethical because, as the Dutch
say at Bistro in vitro (the first restaurant of the future that offers a
conceptual menu where you can see dishes virtual in vitro meat
experiments, created by Dutch artist and philosopher Koert Mensvoort):
"Now that the world population will reach 9 billion in 2050, our current
way of producing and consuming meat is rapidly becoming unsustainable.
Global warming, consumption of energy, animal diseases and predicted
global food shortages are just some of the pressing food-related issues
we will face, and that's before we've even considered the much-debated
issue of animal cruelty and factory farming." . Even in Italy, where the
government has sided against the production and marketing of synthetic
meat, there are experimental centers, such as the Trentino startup Bruno
Cell born in the CIBIO laboratories, the Integrated Biology Center
designed by the University of Trento and the Autonomous Province of
Trento, to explore the potential of biotechnology for human health.
Profit is pressing and there is little room for different types of
assessments which, however, need to be made. Meanwhile, it must be said
that there are still many critical issues in this type of production.
For example, the collection of stem cells from an animal makes the
presence of the latter indispensable. Then the culture medium that has
proven to be the most efficient is fetal bovine serum which is taken
from the blood of the fetus of pregnant cows during slaughter. The
attempt to replace it with exclusively synthetic substances has not yet
given equally valid results and requires the use of dangerous substances
such as anabolic hormones which are banned in Europe for animal
breeding. Furthermore, a slice of meat not only contains muscle cells
and fat (adipose tissue) but also connective tissue, blood and other
tissues whose reproduction in the laboratory would be too complex,
therefore the flavour, color and consistency of synthetic meat differ
from those of farmed meat. and, to minimize the differences, we must
resort to the addition of numerous synthetic substances. Just as the
nutritional value of synthetic meat is not comparable to that of farmed
meat, to overcome the problem in this case too it is necessary to add
synthetic nutritional principles. Furthermore, the substances added as a
culture medium and those to be added to make synthetic meat similar to
cultivated meat can have various negative effects on human health, from
the appearance of allergies to alterations in metabolism to the
development of cancerous cells. Another aspect not to be underestimated
is the fact that, to reduce production costs, the aim is to use
immortalized cells, i.e. cells capable of reproducing indefinitely (and
not just a certain number of times as normally happens), obtained from
tumor cells or genetically modified cells, cells whose consumption is
unknown what could cause. If this were not enough, the production of
synthetic meat currently has an environmental impact and a cost that are
higher, and not by a little, than those of farmed meat.

On the other hand, intensive farming is a problem that needs to be
addressed urgently; their environmental impact, due not only to the
production of greenhouse gases and water consumption but also to
deforestation, the production of GMO foods (soya and corn), the loss of
biodiversity, the development of zoonoses and the spread of antibiotic
resistance , not to mention cruelty to animals, make it a priority. But
imagining that synthetic meat, whose production will be protected by
patents in the hands of the usual suspects, can replace farmed meat is a
fairy tale that no one believes, least of all the producers who are
eager to invest in this new technology precisely because they know that
it will remain a niche product with high costs intended for a
medium-high market segment.

So? So we must first look at the world in which we live, a world in
which the effects of the environmental and climate crisis have become
tangible much earlier than we thought, with the shortage of water
already haunting us and the absolutely incredible temperatures in a
winter that winter it can no longer be called. Then we should realize
the fact that the diet of the vast majority of the inhabitants of the
so-called Western world, not least the Italians, has become absolutely
unsustainable as it is based mainly on the consumption of foods of
animal origin with aberrations in which meat is consumed every day and
even several times a day. Environmental unsustainability which adds to
the risks of a similar diet for human health, predisposition to
cardiovascular diseases and the appearance of tumors to name just a few,
and the absurdity, due to the standardization of breeding techniques and
the food consumed by raised animals, that the taste of different types
of meat is now indistinguishable, one can thus eat pork thinking it is
beef or vice versa. We must also consider the fact that almost a billion
individuals today die of hunger and not because there is not enough
food, given that a third of the food produced is thrown away through
food waste, but because climate change and the forced expropriation of
land implemented by large multinationals in the food sector has made it
impossible to practice agriculture in various areas of the world and
because growing inequalities preclude access to food, even in our
advanced Italy, to an ever-increasing number of people.

In the face of all this, we really want to continue to hide behind the
finger of the technological solution to our problems, yesterday the
green revolution, today synthetic meat and tomorrow who knows what else,
instead of trying to look at the reality in which we are immersed in a
different way and to realize the fact that an unlimited growth in our
demands is not possible because the supposedly ever-increasing
production of consumer goods has produced a series of imbalances such
that, if the trend is not reversed, we risk the destruction of the
planet and its inhabitants. Time is running out and it becomes essential
to start imagining a different economic system and a change in our
lifestyle that will allow us to find solutions truly capable of saving
the world we live in with all its inhabitants.

Brunella Missorici

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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