They started with a $300,000 burger made from animal cells and no animals

In 2050 meat demand will increase by 70%, a demand rate that our planet can’t presently sustain using current agriculture methods. We simply don’t have the resources to produce meat at that supply.

But what if there was a way to create meat that meets that demand rate that uses 99% less land, 96% less water and produces 96% less greenhouse gas.

There is. Mosa Meat.

They’re making real meat, but not using animals. Instead, they’re doing it through cellular agriculture; Mosa Meat is able to culture stem cell samples into muscle tissue.

Their product is healthier, more environmentally friendly and is better for animal welfare.

How Mosa Meat’s burger is healthier:

• They’re able to avoid animal-borne diseases like E-coli
• The meat is made in a clean environment free of bacteria and chemicals
• Producing meat from a molecular level allows manufacturers to customize products to be healthier; e.g. meat with less saturated fats.
• cultured meat is produced free of antibiotics

World’s first clean meat burger

Mosa Meats ensures their meat products are produced in a clean and sterile environment, unlike slaughterhouses. And since it’s made from a molecular level, it’s easier to monitor what goes into the products and potentially, in the future, have more customizable meat products.

Their Burger is also a lot greener.

Cows and livestock release methane — a greenhouse gas 23X more catastrophic than carbon. They also consume a TON of resources. In order to make 1 kg of beef, you need approximately 2,500 gallons of water, 12 pounds of grain, 35 pounds of soil.

Mosa meat’s burger (which is real meat) uses a fraction of those resources and does not produce any methane. Granted, the cultured meat factories will need energy, but they will release carbon which is significantly better than methane.

Other issues Mosa Meats addresses are biodiversity loss and deforestation. It’s estimated that 33% of the earth’s land is used to raise livestock (this doesn’t include the land used to grow food for them) — a lot of this land is created through deforestation. Each day alone 80 000 acres of rainforest are cleared for livestock. Every day 135 species of plants and insects are lost due to deforestation. This is a big problem.

And at this rate, we’ll literally have nothing left on our planet. That’s why we need to stop wrecking the earth to grow meat when we could produce the same meat using 99% less land in a lab.

• There are so many environmental benefits of culturing meat instead of slaughtering animals. It’s our first step to stopping climate change and fixing what we’ve screwed up.

Mosa Meat also uses no animals to produce its meat

No animals used = no animals being killed = no animals suffering. Simple.

Once cultured meat truly hits the market (it hasn’t yet), hopefully, we can retire the 70 billion animals being killed each year.

An in-vitro hamburger that was grown inside a lab (real meat!)

Animal welfare is obviously a huge deal. Factory farming is unethical and dirty. There needs to be an end to it. But also, stopping factory farming additionally means not needing to feed 70+ billion animals a year. Right now, 25% of the earth’s land is used to grow food for livestock. If we end factory farming and animal suffering, we no longer need to feed livestock, therefore we can use that land to feed humans.

Today, too many people are starving. 795 million people to be exact. 2 billion by 2050. We have to stop feeding the cows and start feeding the people.

Steps to producing their meat

1. a myosatellite stem cell sample
2. place on medium (serum + growth factors); cells proliferate in bioreactor tank
3. Cells naturally form myoblasts (muscle cells)
4. turn into myotubes (when growth factors are removed)
5. Myotube placed around a gel handle, where the myotubes become tense; form muscle
6. Muscle fibre is formed and multiplied
7. Fibre can now be used for meat

For a more in-depth description of the cultured meat process read up on my article here.

Mosa Meat’s next steps

Their first cultured meat burger cost $300,000 to produce and it was almost meat. Since then, the production cost has been lowered to $11. They still have a long way to go in order to disrupt the market.

Currently, they’re working on scaling up (bringing the price down) and they’re hoping to hit the market in 3–4 years.

In the future, they are hoping to also develop a meatless steak or another more complex meat, but unfortunately, tissue engineering techniques just aren’t there yet.

Mosa Meats is one of the lead companies working on advancing the unethical, unsustainable food industry.

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