McFadden, C. (2024, January 26). Study slashes lab-grown meat cost, engineers bovine muscle stem cells. Interesting Engineering. https://interestingengineering.com/science/cheaper-lab-grown-meat-production

 

Researchers, at Tufts University’s Center for Cellular Agriculture (TUCCA), have developed a new way to enhance cellular growth for agriculture. This new technology could largely reduce the cost of lab-grown meat. The researchers used bovine muscle stem cells to produce fibroblast growth factor (FGF), which causes the growth of skeletal muscle cells found in meat. Without expensive external growth factors the costs to produce lab-grown meat are significantly reduced and could become commercially available. While this technique is not perfect, it shows promise for reducing meat costs and moving away from regular meat.

This article gives me lots of hope for the future and the meat production industry. With this new technology refined, meat production will be significantly cheaper and will help the economy. With these reduced costs, it will become commercially available. I also suspect that if lab-grown meat becomes commercially available, their sales will be very strong as it is an easy way for customers to identify what meat is good for the environment, lab-grown, and they can feel like they are making a difference. Furthermore, lab-grown meat is much less harmful to the environment, there’s no cows farting, which means that with more lab-grown meat and less natural meat, the environment will greatly benefit.