Soon, some American restaurants will add artificial chicken to their menu. After Singapore, the United States on Wednesday became the second country in the world to allow artificial meat on plates. Two companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, have been given the green light to market lab-grown chicken meat.
1. How does artificial meat work?
The manufacture of artificial chicken meat consists of extracting cells from an animal or fertilized chicken eggs, and growing them in bioreactors, a kind of large pressure cookers. In Europe, they do not exceed 20,000 litres. The cells multiply until they are transformed into muscle fibers and fats.
For this, they need energy, like a real animal: they must be fed with proteins, fats, sugar, minerals and vitamins. All in a liquid "medium": there must be water, maintained at a temperature between 37 and 39 degrees, because the objective is to reproduce the inside of a uterus. But you have to go faster than nature: this mode of cultivation therefore requires growth accelerators.
The result? Forget the beautiful chicken fillet. It gives rather dough, a kind of mousse to make sausages, for example. Mosa Meat in the Netherlands, the most advanced company on cellular beef, aims to make minced for burgers. The experts we interviewed refuse to talk about "meat".
2. Is it as good from a taste and nutritional point of view as natural meat?
Great uncertainties remain about the nutritional benefits of "in vitro" meat. "We are far from a real muscle, which mixes fibers, blood vessels, nerves ... However, it is this complexity that gives meat its nutritional properties, in particular the presence of heme iron, vitamin B12, various fatty acids," explains Jean-François Hocquette, physiologist and specialist in animal products at INRAE (National Institute for Agricultural Research). And "we are even further away from meat, which combines muscle complexity and maturation."
It is currently impossible to verify the nutritional quality of products derived from "cultured muscle cells", according to several studies (Frontiers in Nutrition and Meat Science, 2023). Manufactured in insufficient quantities, these foods cannot be evaluated.
As for their taste, it would be similar to that of a natural meat: the starred French chef Dominique Crenn placed an order with Upside Foods for her restaurant in San Francisco, in the wake of the announcement of the authorization. And celebrity chef Jose Andrés is expected to get the first batch of the Good Meat company, which will be served in one of its restaurants in the capital Washington.
"When I first tasted Upside's chicken, I immediately saw its potential as the future of food. From the texture to the aroma to the way it cooks, Upside chicken is simply delicious and I'm thrilled for everyone to experience it. However, "the flavor and tenderness of meat come from the maturation process," says Jean-François Hocquette. And for now, in vitro meat products are "low in myoglobin, therefore iron, and must be seasoned with many ingredients to get closer to the taste of meat."
3. How to assess its impacts on health?
The risks to human health remain unknown. In an article in Le Monde published in February, sixty scientists warn about the premature marketing of synthetic meat, while the data and evaluations are too weak. "Potential hazards can be chemical (antibiotics, heavy metals), physical (foreign bodies), microbiological (bacteria), allergens, or genetic," they say.
Another obstacle to health assessments is that companies in the sector lack transparency about their results, for fear of commercial competition. "How will cells react in larger bioreactors? How to maintain a sanitized environment in an industrial complex, without using antibiotics? There are still many questions that manufacturers do not wish to answer to protect their recipe, says Senator Olivier Rietmann, co-rapporteur of a fact-finding mission on cellular foods. Industrialists have not been able to explain the nuance between hormone and growth accelerator, for example. »
Following an expert appraisal in 2022, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) has identified about fifty points of vigilance: the composition of the culture medium or the genetic stability of the cells are among the grey areas.
4. How is it good for the environment?
A key argument for companies in the sector, the benefits for the environment are not yet consensus. Synthetic meat has undeniable advantages: there would no longer be a need to slaughter animals, which would also reduce the carbon footprint of livestock, as well as the area of agricultural land, in favor of forests, for example.
Regarding greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, the balance sheet is much less glorious. Two studies, published in 2011 and 2015, conclude that in vitro meat culture is even more energy-intensive than poultry or pig farming, due to the heating of incubators. However, its overall warming power would remain lower than that of beef farming, as ruminants contribute significantly to global warming by emitting methane.
But in 2019, a third study undermined this rhetoric: to function and maintain water at high temperatures, incubators need fossil energy, which itself emits CO². However, CO² is more persistent in the atmosphere than methane. In the long term, artificial cultivation could therefore have a warming effect equivalent to, or even greater than, that generated by beef production.
5. Could we ever eat lab-grown meat in France?
Maybe, but not until 2026. No company has applied for authorisation for the European market, and even if one of them did so this year, the European Commission's validation process would take about three years. "Companies are not ready for the European market because the legislation is stricter," explains Olivier Rietmann. Hormones are banned in the diet, unlike in the United States.
In Europe, the marketing of this product will be governed by the "Novelfood" legislation, because in vitro meat is considered a new food, says Jean-François Hocquette. Its safety must first be proven, including for the material used (plastics, etc.) and the culture medium.
The France therefore has no decision-making power: if the EU allows cellular food on our plates, no Member State can oppose it. At the conclusion of their fact-finding mission, the senators issued an unfavourable opinion on the principle, while recommending investing in research "to find out what we are talking about when the France will be consulted by the European Commission", continues Olivier Rietmann. And not to miss the train: "If the authorization is given, it will be better to eat European products, or even French. "