Conceptual evolution and scientific approaches about synthetic meat

Abstract

Cellular agriculture has been considered a mechanism to enable the generation of animal protein in the laboratory. Notwithstanding, this emerging technology, still on an experimental scale, is imbued with speculations, paradoxes, and ambiguities. So, the objective of this research was to analyze how synthetic meat is considered in the scientific context from the perspective of cellular agriculture considering its trajectory and its approaches. For this, we used a systematic review of the literature with detailed analysis of 109 manuscripts and application of network analysis of co-citations and predominance. This paper has constructed a historical overview of the conceptual evolution of science concerning synthetic meat from its emergence to the present day. We also verified and categorized the research about synthetic meat into three distinct approaches: (1) environmental and health; (2) technical and economic feasibility of the production process; and (3) social and market. This research maximizes the understanding of synthetic meat and its stage of technological and economic development to make commercial production feasible. Aside from that, it has brought insights about synthetic meat and this knowledge can be used by the conventional meat industries.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1007/s13197-019-04155-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Introduction

Throughout history, society has faced challenges related to food, so that beliefs, moral values, new lifestyles, and other elements, have delineated distinct food cultures. The relationship among environment, consumption, and culture is dynamic, evolving at different points in time and place (Philippon 2018).

Thus, even though food culture is passed down through the generations, it is continually changing in light of the introduction of new food products on the market, changes in consumer habits, and individual preferences (Bekker et al. 2017a, b). So, although food cultures are mutable, they continue to present identities and ideologies of specific populations over time (Carruth 2013).

However, certain aspects that promote the development of new food products occur at different times in the history of human civilization. In the 1970s, demand for palatable proteins as an alternative source of animal protein, based on both the desire not to consume meat and food safety concerns, promoted soy protein production, for example (Miller and Morrow 1975). Notwithstanding, estimates related to population growth and food shortage of current production systems (FAO 2011), changes in consumer behavior (Slade 2018), growing food discontent (Zwart 2015), and a projected 60% increase in slaughter over the next 3 decades (Donaldson 2016) prompt research about the production of synthetic meat.

This new food product originated from biomedicine, specifically regenerative tissue engineering, and integrates the scientific field of cellular agriculture as a new concept of food biotechnology (Enrione et al. 2017). Its production process consists of the generation of edible biomass (Mattick et al. 2015a, b) entirely in the laboratory, by in vitro culturing of stem cells withdrawn from the interior of the muscle of the living animal, which reflects only in the production of the edible part of the animal (Post 2017).

The purpose of this technology is to create product with the same texture, appearance, flavor, and nutritional value of conventional meat (Post 2014). This would represent an almost infinite source of protein with potentially mitigated environmental impacts (Bekker et al. 2017a, b). Although, because it is at an early stage, research is still needed to address the challenges related to the technical and economic feasibility of large-scale production (Stephens et al. 2018), but estimates indicate that the first commercial products may be available in fewer than 10 years (Winiwarter et al. 2014).

The production of bio-artificial muscles derived from satellite cells has been studied for approximately 15 years (Post 2012); its potential for food production began to be considered only at the beginning of the twenty-first century. So, companies have been set up to develop and market these products only in the last few years, quickly resulting in a very competitive environment (Specht et al. 2018). In view of this scenario, the research carried out had the objective of analyzing how synthetic meat, in the perspective of cellular agriculture, is approached in the scientific scope, considering its trajectory and its approaches.

Systematic review

The method used consisted of a systematic review of the literature, which is characterized by providing insights through the synthesis of knowledge accumulated in a specific set of studies (Van Aken 2001), enabling the development of well-founded premises (Kitchenham and Charters 2007). In this way, this is an essential element for the structuring of a field of research (Easterby-Smith et al. 2010), endowed with rigor and reproducible (Fink 2005), without researcher bias (Tranfield et al. 2003).

Therefore, it is possible to systematically analyze (Crossan and Apaydin 2010) the contribution of a given set of literature to the construction of knowledge (Ginsberg and Venkatraman 1985). Afterward, we adopted the structure of the literature proposed by Kitchenham and Charters (2007), whose initial phase corresponds to the circumscription of the purpose of the review, as well as its guiding questions and protocol, to make it transparent. The second phase approaches the execution, contemplating the search guidelines and inclusion/exclusion criteria of the documents to be analyzed. Finally, the third phase concerns the preparation of the report and dissemination of the results obtained (Kitchenham and Charters 2007; Rekik et al. 2018).

Planning phase

This systematic review of the literature has two distinct objectives: (1) to identify the evolution of synthetic meat in scientific publications and (2) to analyze how scientific publications approach this subject. To reach the first objective, the following guiding question was elaborated: How has the evolution of synthetic meat in scientific publications occurred? For the second objective, the guiding question of the review was: What is the approach of scientific research about synthetic meat?

Faced with these questions, as the subject of this study does not have a single consolidated term that defines it (Verbeke et al. 2015a, b), we determined the terms used in the literature in the title, abstract, and keywords—because these elements clearly synthesize the theme approached in one scientific article—of one of the following terms: “artificial meat,” “synthetic meat,” “laboratory meat,” “cultured meat,” “in vitro meat,” and “cultured beef.” To ensure the quality of the manuscripts, we established that they should be published in the Scopus or Web of Science database before July 5, 2018. We also defined, as a search criterion, that the kind of document should not be a note, because due to its structure, a note presents the information in an exceedingly succinct way.

Execution and reporting phase

After the six search rounds were carried out in both databases, we proceeded to exclude duplicate manuscripts. Thus, the initial portfolio was composed of 159 documents, which after the download in portable document format, were the object of a dynamic reading.

Considering the perspective of cellular agriculture that circumscribes the understanding of synthetic meat in this research, we performed filtering according to the heterogeneity of definitions. Therefore, it became necessary to restrict the portfolio of documents for analysis to those that consider synthetic meat as coming from the in vitro culture of cells withdrawn from a living animal. So, we include as an exclusion criterion the understanding of the meaning of synthetic meat preponderant in the manuscripts.

Thereby, those referring to vegetable protein, subprocessing of meat, laboratory analyzes, and experiments with conventional meat, among other uses of the terms that were not adherent to the proposal of that study, were excluded. So, the portfolio analyzed was composed of 109 manuscripts (Fig. 1). The results we presented in the form of a report, as postulated in the last phase of the systematic review proposed by Kitchenham and Charters (2007).

Fig. 1.

Portfolio composition process and guiding review questions. *Reasoning question

Conceptual evolution of synthetic meat

From the research carried out in the databases, we observed that until the first decade of the twenty-first century, the term “synthetic meat” was used as a reference exclusively to conventional meat elements used on an experimental scale in laboratories and, therefore, was considered of a synthetic or artificial nature or made in a laboratory (Reddy et al. 1970). This nomenclature was also employed in research related to the creation of artificial meat-flavored mixtures (Hsieh et al. 1980) and in investigations into the use of anaerobic reactors in wastewater treatment from conventional meat processing industries (Borja et al. 1994).

However, because global demand for additional palatable protein, the first products derived from plant proteins with food potential emerged in the 1970s (Miller and Morrow 1975). Thereby, the use of the term was expanded, and “synthetic meat” was commonly used as a reference to soy protein.

Initially, the research had a technical focus, dealing with the possibility of bacterial contaminations (food safety) (Schroder and Busta 1973), of toxicological control (De Groot 1974), and the concentration and orientation of the fibers (Miller and Morrow 1975). However, as was predicted, “soy meat” and other “synthetic” products were introduced throughout the American market in 1975, and scientific publications turned their attention to market and consumer behavior (Mccarney 1975).

From the filtering of the studies obtained, the first publication considering the subject of synthetic meat from the perspective of cellular agriculture was registered in 2008 under the authorship of Patrick Hopkins, a member of the Department of Philosophy, Millsaps College, and Austin Dacey, affiliated with the Center for Inquiry. The research presented propositions about the possibility of meat for human consumption without the need of animal slaughter. For this, the authors explain about synthetic meat as an example of nascent biotechnology that attempts to fulfill such a promise. Consequently, this subject of research has emerged, the temporal distribution of which is shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

Temporal distribution of publications on synthetic meat in the analyzed portfolio

In addition, we pointed out that it was also in 2008 that the U.S. activist organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals engaged in solving the problems of traditional herding, announcing a $1 million award for the first laboratory producing and bringing synthetic meat to the market within 3 years (Fox 2009). As no laboratory claimed the award by the end of the challenge (extended to March 2014), it was never made available, but the organization continues to support initiatives in this perspective, and its manifestation has stimulated interest in the subject and enabled the approach of different researchers around the world (Ferrari and Lösch 2017).

Also, in 2008, the first symposium was organized by the Norwegian Institute for Food Research, which intended to discuss the commercial possibilities of these new products (Kadim et al. 2015). Despite this, the growth in the number of publications since 2013 was only approximately 87%. This situation can be justified because, in August of that same year, the first hamburger produced with synthetic meat was prepared and tasted on a television program, “staged as a hybrid science media event somewhere between press release, experiment and cookery show” (O’Riordan et al. 2017).

The credit for the creation of this biotechnological product is the pharmacologist Dr. Mark J. Post of Maastricht University, in the Netherlands, who used techniques and principles of muscle tissue engineering and in vitro cultured stem cells taken from live bovine skeletal muscle to form edible filaments (Mattick et al. 2015a, b). As a result, researchers’ interest in the subject intensified, accompanied by efforts of the private sector to develop and commercialize the product, which reflects the exponential growth of startups (Specht et al. 2018). Thus, there are indications that commercial-scale production is being projected (Mattick et al. 2015a, b).

Predominant approaches about synthetic meat

According to the central focus of the publications about synthetic meat, the different interfaces of this biotechnological phenomenon are verified, as well as the multidisciplinarity nature of its debates, which has shown to intensify over time. Employing a timeline, Fig. 3 illustrates the predominant aspects of the investigations analyzed.

Fig. 3.

Timeline containing the central focus of the publications on synthetic meat

To verify the predominance of the approaches of the scientific publications about synthetic meat, we consider the primary associations among the predominant terms in the analyzed portfolio, which makes it possible to identify the domain in each set of investigations (Griffiths and Steyvers 2004). We recognized that although researchers employ distinct vocabulary in academic writing, which entails greater variability of terms about an interdisciplinary subject, there is a greater similarity among investigations that integrate the same area of knowledge (Korom 2019).

So, we developed a network of co-citation of terms based on textual data contained in the title, abstract and keywords, elaborated through VOSviewer software. For operation, we used the binary counting method with a minimum number of two recurring terms, so that only 68 terms extracted from the set of 493 predominant words met this criterion. Figure 4 illustrates the network of co-occurrence of these more significant terms.

Fig. 4.

Co-citation network of prevailing terms on synthetic meat.

Source: Developed from VOSviewer software

The visual map obtained is composed of 68 vertices, each representing a respective term the diameter of which is proportional to the total force of the links, which makes some markers invisible to avoid overlapping. The network also has 1121 links; among the associations of terms, the total strength corresponds to 1.553.

Moreover, the coloring of the links determines the cluster to which the term belongs, so that the distance between the vertices elucidates the strength of the relationship in terms of co-citation (Van Eck and Waltman 2010). That is, the proximity of citations indicates the frequency with which they tend to be listed simultaneously in the studies analyzed (Korom 2019). So, there are three clusters with the following composition: green with 25 vertices; blue with 15 vertices; and red with 28 vertices.

Then, given the association of the predominant terms in each cluster, we assign the following denomination from the emphasis of the studies: (1) environmental focus and health (green); (2) focus on the technical and economic viability of the production process (blue); (3) social and market approach (red). The first set includes research on the development of synthetic meat from environmental aspects (Bhat et al. 2015a, b).

Studies about the life cycle assessment of synthetic meat (Tuomisto and Mattos 2011; Mattick et al. 2015a, b) and systemic environmental analyzes (Mattick et al. 2015a, b), are highlighted. Research also points to synthetic meat as belonging to a future food system (O’Keefe et al. 2016), a food revolution based on cellular agriculture (Mattick 2018), as part of the “sustainability revolution” (Chen and Zhang 2015), or as a promoter of the reconfiguration of the future food policy (Ferrari and Lösch 2017).

In contrast, we also have studies on the orientations that mediate human interaction with the environment, pointing to synthetic meat as an element capable of distancing humans from nature (Galusky 2014) or causing human alienation (Datar and Betti 2010). There is also research that raises questions about the violation of animal dignity and the possibility of cannibalism through in vitro cultivation of human flesh (Chauvet 2018). In this same perspective, studies emerge that polemicize the dependence of industrial energy for the production of synthetic meat (Tuomisto and Mattos 2011; Alexander et al. 2017).

Alternatively, the second set includes research from the perspective of the viability of the productive process, considering technical and economic aspects. Thus, research that emphasizes technical elements of synthetic meat production points to the scarcity of investigations in the field of bioengineering for large-scale tissue culture, and studies generally refer to tissue replacement in vivo (Datar and Betti 2010).

Regarding the improvement of the productive process, there are discussions about the limitations in the expansion systems regarding the micro loaders and the apoptotic cells, pointing out the possibility of optimization of the cellular culture in large scale for the development of successful protocols in the production of synthetic meat (Moritz et al. 2015). In this way, they approach alternative sources of seasonal cells and mechanisms to grow them in a three-dimensional environment inside a bioreactor (Bhat and Fayaz 2011) with the potential for the use of non-animal origin elements (Enrione et al. 2017). They also propose other materials to support muscle cells (Schuster et al. 2017) and ways to accelerate the growth of myoblasts (Verbruggen et al. 2018) with the possibility of proliferation of the fibers through an array of edible biopolymers (Acevedo et al. 2018).

Under the economic aegis, research indicates that the materials used for the production of synthetic meat (e.g., cell lines, scaffolding components) still represent high production costs (Datar and Betti 2010), making the product extremely expensive in the short term (Bhat and Bhat 2011). That is, if we look at the historical aspect, the first synthetic beef burger produced in 2013 by Mark Post cost $330,000 while the first meatball produced by an American company in 2016 cost $1200. Already in 2017, this same company was able to produce a chicken at a much lower cost (Shapiro 2018).

Thus, we can underscore that the synthetic meat production process from the perspective of cellular agriculture is becoming cheaper (Shapiro 2018). Still, studies addressing the development of new technologies indicate that the cost of producing synthetic meat can reach $ 3600 per tonne (Exmoor Pharma 2008). Thus, it tends to represent an economically viable alternative for industrial-scale production only from investments in biotechnology (Orzechowski 2015).

Consequently, the socio-market approach encompasses investigations concerning the introduction of synthetic meat into the market (Cole and Morgan 2013), ambivalence of consumer attitudes towards the product (Weele 2013; Verbeke et al. 2015a, b), media coverage (Laestadius and Caldwell 2015), vegetarian reactions (Hopkins 2015), consumer acceptance (Verbeke et al. 2015a, b), buy intention (Slade 2018), and the perception of this in relation to the problems of the meat industry (Hocquette et al. 2015).

We also emphasize analysis of the synthetic meat from the perspective of different theories from psychology, such as the sociology of expectations (Chiles 2013) and the representations (Marcu et al. 2015) and social practices (Bekker et al. 2017a, b). Nevertheless, the studies on the ethical and moral aspects of product production and consumption also emerge (Hopkins and Dacey 2008; Weele and Driessen 2013; Laestadius 2015; Shriver and Mcconnachie 2018), proposing reflections. There is also the contribution of investigations that circumscribe the institutional environment in which the synthetic meat is inserted. In this way, the regulatory aspects of synthetic biology concerning food safety are discussed (Kaiser 2013) along with the sociopolitical challenges (Stephens et al. 2018) and the legislative elements for product regulation (Lee 2018). We also highlight the relevance of the analysis of the social impacts of synthetic meat production in rural livelihoods (Verbeke et al. 2015a, b) and additional reflections on the byproducts of meat production (e.g., leather, wool) (Sun et al. 2015).

Given the above, it is verified that this multifaceted technology, although promising, promotes paradoxical discussions under various aspects, permeating different areas of knowledge (Stephens et al. 2018) and making public debates complex (Laestadius 2015). However, its benefits are not unanimous in the scientific community (Hocquette 2016), the possible socio-spatial and socioecological implications of which are still unknown (Jönsson 2016).

Conclusion

Historically, the emergence of new food products is justified by a large number of factors in a great many contexts. However, we cannot say for sure whether they are the drivers or the result of the emergence of new products, that is, whether foods are developed because there is an appearance of demand or if they are absorbed by the market because they are created and are understood as needs or desires of consumers. So, changes in consumption habits can be considered the cause or consequence of the introduction of new products in the market.

However, the creation of food products from biotechnological processes is justified by aspects related to food safety, population growth, social pressures, and other issues. This was experienced by society through the creation and introduction into the market of genetically modified organisms, genetic improvement, and attempts to make animal cloning feasible and socially acceptable, for example.

Currently, a subject that arouses the interest of researchers, especially in the biological and social sciences, corresponds to the production of synthetic meat through regenerative tissue engineering practices. The more technically and economically viable this process proves to be, the greater its discussions and debates, including moral, ethical, and religious aspects.

Although there are speculation and skepticism about synthetic meat, it has been studied in different ways and under different approaches. In this study, we can group such approaches into clusters that allow us to verify the panorama of science concerning this emerging theme and which is configured as a scientific field endowed with uncertainties and doubts, and therefore, very fertile for the development of future research.

In addition, by digging into what scientists are researching about synthetic meat we can also broaden our investigations into conventional protein sources and the impacts of other emerging food biotechnologies on the structuring of global agribusiness.

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Author Contributions

Conceptualization: AMF and ÂRLS. Project: AMF and ÂRLS. Methodology: AMF, ÂRLS and JPR. Analysis: AMF, OST and JPR. Supervision: ÂRLS, OST and JPR. Writing—preparation: AMF, ÂRLS, OST and JPR. Writing—review and editing: AMF, ÂRLS, OST and JPR.

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.