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Meatless "meat" could soon stop being the stuff of science fiction scenarios and finally become a reality. However, to become economically -- and ethically -- viable, the start-ups that have embarked on this food innovation have one major issue to resolve: find a way to produce the food without using bovine fetal serum.
Meatless "meat" could soon stop being the stuff of science fiction scenarios and finally become a reality. However, to become economically -- and ethically -- viable, the start-ups that have embarked on this food innovation have one major issue to resolve: find a way to produce the food without using bovine fetal serum.
The market for fetal bovine serum, often referred to as FBS, is a major category. According to a global report by Straits Research, it is expected to grow by 5.4% annually by 2031, with North America and Asia-Pacific the largest consumers. Taken from the fetus of a nursing cow sent to slaughter, this controversial product is a rich source of nutrients, growth factors and hormones that laboratories use to stimulate cell growth. Fetal bovine serum is used in the development of vaccines and pharmaceuticals, but it also plays a key role in much of the nascent cultured meat industry. And use of this ingredient isn't new: in 2017, a Slate article went behind the scenes of the production and extraction of this controversial product, reporting that millions of calf fetuses are disposed of each year in order to harvest this famous FBS.
Why fetal bovine serum is an issue for lab meat food tech
In the industry of laboratory meat, this essential "activator" for initiating cell production through to the creation of a steak-like texture means that start-ups can't use animal welfare arguments to promote their product. Critics often accuse them of lacking ethics. These food tech companies encounter another pitfall; that of cost. There is a significant environmental cost, since even if the meat is cultivated in a lab, the use of bovine fetal serum means that there remains a necessity to raise cattle, an activity whose impact on the planet has been calculated as high. The meat industry is responsible for 14.5% of the CO2 emissions linked to human activity according to the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization). And then there is also the financial cost. Fetal bovine serum is an expensive product for food tech. Its price of over 1000 dollars per liter means companies would have to sell their product for US$200,000 per pound according to a 2020 analysis out of the University of California. In January 2022, a researcher at the French National Institute for Food Research (Inrae), Jean-François Hocquette, told ETX studio that "companies are currently working to find a more ethical and less expensive solution without bovine fetal serum." In other words, by no longer using this product, food tech could not only make their innovations more acceptable on an ethical level, but also produce meatless meat on a larger scale.
Is FBS-free cultured meat the key to the future?
In the United States, one company has developed lab meat using an alternative. Good Meat, a division of the company Eat Just, uses amino acids, salt and sugar in its recipe. Three years ago, the San Francisco-based food tech company caused a stir when it got the green light from Singapore authorities to distribute its meatless meat. Good Meat advanced even further last January when it received a new authorization, again from the city-state, for its poultry meat developed without serum.
The Californian company is far from being the only one to pursue this direction. London-based Multus Biotechnology plans to make in vitro meat cheaper to produce with a serum-free growth medium called Proliferum M. After raising $2.2 million in 2021, the company raised another $9.5 million earlier this year. A demonstration of investors' confidence in this substitute for stimulating the production of pig or beef cells. In an interview with the specialized media New Protein, the boss Cai Linton specified that the "recipe" does not contain any animal serum, although it does contain animal-derived protein ingredients, which it envisions phasing out in the long term thanks to its development of a process of microbial fermentation.
And this isn't the only such alternative. Other solutions, sometimes quite surprising, have been developed by scientists. This is the case in Israel, on the northern border with Lebanon, where BioBetter has found a way to develop a serum substitute by growing tobacco. The start-up uses the plant to extract growth factors for the cellular development used to produce the cultured meat. The goal is to drastically reduce the cost of producing a cultured burger.
However, the industry will have to find an answer to one more issue before products will start appearing on supermarket shelves: getting the green light from the health authorities to start the commercialization process. In the United States, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) granted it to the company Upside Foods last November, but the road may still be very long in Europe where start-ups must convince the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority).
