Lab-grown trees?

And the lab-grown plant-based revolution is not limited to food or fabrics, either. Researchers at MIT in America have grown structures of wood-like plants in their laboratories—’growing a table’ as the future of forestry and construction materials.

That’s a long way off yet, but the research is heading that way. And it may end the massive environmental impact of forestry.

Fake blood?

No, not the stuff you get in a joke shop for Halloween. The lab-grown movement is also active in human blood developments—and that’s good news for people who love animals.

As ‘lab-grown’ or ‘lab-created’ becomes more accepted in other areas, the more likely it is that society will welcome lab-grown meat and dairy products.

Human blood cells were first made ‘in vitro’ and injected back into the donor during an operation in 2011.

In 2017, human blood stem cells were grown in the lab for an NHS trial. The benefit is that, if a sick person’s blood stem cells can be grown, they don’t need to look for a match through bone marrow donation. It could save thousands of lives a year.

Bristol-based researchers in the UK have used CRISPR gene-editing technology working with the NHS to get closer to the ultimate goal of producing ‘lab-grown red blood cells’ especially for patients with rare blood requirements.

Is ‘fake’ blood natural?

There ethical questions here around the ideal of ‘naturalness’. Gene-editing technology has been questioned for its potential uses in making animals in agriculture more pliant and pain-free.

Yet these developments in science are pushing further the boundaries of how lab-created or lab-grown products can reduce pain and suffering for humans. Why not for animals, too, if it means removing animals from intensive agriculture?

Dog and bone

Lab-grown technologies also have the potential to achieve the 3Rs, the holy grail of medical research campaigning: improving human health at the same time as reducing or ending animal models of experimentation and vivisection.

For example, researchers at the University of Sheffield have developed a technology using lab-grown mini-scaffolding capable of growing human tissue and bone.

It could revolutionise testing by producing ‘bone on a chip’ resources, and so reduce the need for testing on animals—perhaps, we hope, altogether.

This technology is already underway in commercial applications. In the US, this is led by Altis (creating lab-grown guts!) and in Germany by bi/ond (for organoid medical testing). 

Again, this could change the world, not least with lab-grown organs bringing an end to the transplant crisis—and sparing pigs from ‘donating’ their hearts to humans, too.

Meat the future?

But of course, where the biggest news has been in the past decade is around lab-grown alternatives to animal products.

Organizations such as the Good Food Institute are leading the way in investing in companies who create meat from plants and cultivating meat from cells.

Perhaps the biggest development in the last 12 months was the news of the first lab-grown meat to go on sale in Singapore last December.

The ‘chicken bites’, produced by the US company Eat Just, passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency.

And just this week, Nestlé announced that it is exploring emerging technologies for cultured meat. The food giant reported that it is working with several external partners and start-ups, including Future Meat Technologies Ltd, ‘to explore the potential of cultured-meat components that do not compromise on taste or sustainability’.

This changes everything

Over time, it could change everything for animals. Daily, around 130 million chickens are slaughtered for their meat.

It’s been estimated that lab-grown meat and dairy could see the end of animal-derived food sectors, such as the American ‘beef’ industry, by 2030.

This will be driven largely by cost. According to the group Rethink X: “The cost of proteins will be five times cheaper by 2030 and 10 times cheaper by 2035 than existing animal proteins, before ultimately approaching the cost of sugar.”

And it’s not only cost. Lab-grown products will be “superior in every key attribute—more nutritious, healthier, better tasting, and more convenient, with almost unimaginable variety. By 2030, modern food products will be higher quality and cost less than half as much to produce as the animal-derived products they replace.”