stem cell cons

veganism is all about reducing the harm wecause to sentient beings to the best of our ability. this is why we don’t eat animal products. it’s impossible to take the body part or secretion of a living being withoutexploitation and pain. or is it? if meat and other animal products could be made without harming animals, would there finally be such a thing as vegan meat? hi it's emily from bite size vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. when it comes to lab grown meat, there are vegans on both sides of the debate. with the potential for massive reductions in the environmental impact of animal agriculture and an end to the suffering and death of trillions of animals every year,

why wouldn’t every vegan be championing the cause for test tube meat? well like most topics i set out to cover,cultured meat production is far more complicated than it may first appear. we’re going tocover some of the pros and cons of cellular agriculture and why it's a hot button withinthe vegan community. as always, i’ll be barely scratching thesurface and will provide links to citations, further resources, and a full bibliographyon the blog post for this video linked in the description. the concept of growing and maintaining muscleoutside of the body is not new. starting in 1912, biologist alexis carrel kept cells froman embryonic chicken heart beating in a nutrient

bath in his laboratory for more than 20 years.in 1931, winston churchill wrote in a predictive essay optimistically entitled fifty yearshence that, “we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eatthe breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” over the decades from nasa-backed fish filletsmade of goldfish cells to the 2013 taste test of the first ever lab-grown burger, the culturedmeat, well, culture, continues to grow. [see a brief but thorough timeline in the ‘in-vitro meat” section of this essay] the advantages of this method of meat creationare obvious. despite the efforts, hopes and dreams of vegans and activists alike, theglobal demand for meat is on the rise

with india and china leading the charge. with animal agriculture contributing as muchas 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions, using a third of the earth’s fresh water,up to 45 percent of the earth’s land, causing 91 percent of amazon rainforest destructionand serving as a leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, and habitatdestruction,â the environmental implications alone could be staggering. a 2011 study concluded that, “cultured meatinvolves approximately 7–45% lower energy use... 78–96% lower ghg emissions, 99%lower land use, and 82–96% lower water use depending on the product compared.” whilethese numbers sound promising, the study was

largely criticized for basing its numberson a not-yet-proven method of cultured meat growth. while still theoretical, a 2014 study accounting for other potential production methods foundthat energy use for cultured meat actually exceeded current levels for beef production,but had significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions and land usage and was only higherthan poultry in water usage. the reality is that the actual environmentalimpact of cultured meat remains unknown because it’s still in such an experimental phase.the ground meat grown for 2013’s seminal burger was a relatively simple creation ofpure protein. it lacked any of the fat and blood that give meat its flavor or the firmnessof once-active muscle tissue. in order to

create meat products of more substance, themuscle, which is what meat is after all, has to be exercised and provided with artificialblood flow, oxygen, digestion and nutrition. some scientists speculate that this increasedenergy demand may negate any reduction in land usage and agricultural input. basically, when it comes to the environmentalbenefits, it’s still too early to know. so what about the other main benefit: an end to the suffering and death of trillions of beings every year? here is where cultured meat has the potentialto shine. maybe. eventually. there are several significant hurdles to overcome before lab-grown meat can be called anything near

"cruelty and animal-free.” the major issues on theethics end are establishing self-renewing stem cells and finding plant-based materialsfor the growth medium and scaffolding. to understand what that means, i’ll givea very simplified version of in-vitro meat production. initially, cells are taken viabiopsy from a living animal and deposited into a growth medium where they proliferateand grow. eventually, in order to produce meat products with more structure than the ground patty, they will need a form of scaffolding to hold their shape. the first ethical issues arise when consideringthe long-term viability of the initial harvested cells. professor mark post, the man behindthe famous taste-tested burger, has said that,

“the most efficient way of taking the processforward would still involve slaughter,” with a “limited herd of donor animals”kept for stock. others in the movement envision the establishment of a self-renewing stemcell line, meaning only an initial biopsy would be required at which point the cellline would replicate indefinitely. yet another concern is that, given humanity’slove of the new, different and exotic, we may start breeding specialty animals for cellharvesting, which would still require the confinement and reproductive control of sentient beings. as a side-note, post’s famous burger wasmade with egg powder to enhance the taste, introducing another level of animal suffering.this is by no means, however, a necessary practice.

the second major ethical issue and one thatisn’t widely addressed in most of the news reports on cultured meat, is the growth mediuminto which the cells are deposited. at the moment, the most widely used medium is bovinefetal serum. fetal serum from an array of animals is commonly employed in a wide rangeof experiments, including those for tampons, which i covered in my “are tampons vegan?” video. the harvesting of bovine fetal serum is farfrom transparent. one study reached out to 388 harvesting entities with only 4% respondingwith any kind of methodology data. five sources explicitly declared their harvesting methods to be confidential. of those that did respond, the typical procedurefor fetal serum harvesting was “by cardiac puncture"

meaning a needle directly intothe beating heart of the fetal cow. they specify that, “fetuses should be at least 3 monthsold; otherwise the heart is too small for puncture.” the general process is as follows: “at the time of slaughter, the cow is foundto be pregnant during evisceration (removal of the internal organs in the thorax and abdomenduring processing of the slaughtered cow) … the calf is removed quickly from the uterus[and] a cardiac puncture is performed by inserting a needle between the ribs directly into theheart of the unanaesthesised fetus and blood is extracted.” this bleeding process cantake up to 35 minutes to complete while the calf remains alive. afterwards, “the fetusis processed for animal feed and extraction

of specific substances like fats and proteins,among other things.” the study continued with a detailed debateas to whether the fetal cows can feel this procedure and their possible slow death fromanoxia, meaning lack of oxygen, from placental separation, and estimated that between 1 and2 million fetuses are harvested annually for serum. all in all, fetal serum from any animal isnot, by any stretch of the imagination, cruelty-free. the good news is that the champions of thecultured meat movement seem to be invested in finding plant-based medium alternatives with both algae and mushrooms providing promising options. fetal serum’s drawbacks don’tstop at the ethical line. there are scientific concerns as batches vary considerably in theircomposition. it also poses the threat of pathogen

introduction, is not environmentally friendlyand is cost-prohibitive. dr. neil stephens of cardiff university states that: “everyonein the field acknowledges this as a problem … it currently undermines a lot of the argumentsthat people put forward in support of in vitro meat." this leads into two of the additional prosof cultured meat, both revolving around human health. though i personally believe that healthis the last worry when it comes to producing a possible alternative to mass animal slaughter,it’s worth noting that the composition of cultured meat can be altered to provide superiornutritional benefits. the level of fat and type of fat can be selectively controlled.the threat of food contamination and spread of pathogens would also be greatly reduced,as cultured meat would not involve all the

biohazards of traditional slaughter.so if scientists are able to create a self-replicating cell line, thus eliminating the enslavementand potential slaughter of animals, and find a suitable plant-based growth-medium and scaffolding,thus eliminating the cruelty of fetal serum and other animal byproducts, what objectionsremain against going after this concept in full force? two of the largest are cost and what’s bestdescribed as “the ick factor.” surveys involving every range of dietary practiceseem to indicate that the majority of people are put off by the concept of lab-grown meat.interestingly enough, those people with the highest rates of meat consumption appear tobe the most sensitive to disgust. of course cultured meat proponents emphasizethat “lab-grown” is a bit of a misnomer.

while in the testing stages, the meat is grownin laboratories. however, were it to go to commercial production, it would be made infactories just like all of our packaged food items, and some could argue, would be morenatural than other chemical concoctions the public readily consumes. [see blog for an illustrationof potential production methods]. also, given what all we inject into our foodanimals from hormones to antibiotics, to our outright manipulation of their genes, onecould ask just how natural “standard” animal products really are. while cultured meat doesn’t require theuse of gmo’s, it’s possible that genetically modifying cells may allow them to reproducefaster and thus prove more economical.

speaking of cost, mark post’s initial burgerin 2013 cost approximately ￡250,000 (over $350,000) to produce. however, by 2015, poststated that the cost is now down to ￡8.00. as with any new technology, the initial costinvestments will be steep, but post and others in the movement see cultured meat eventuallyattaining a competitive price to traditional products, though most likely not for at leastanother decade. the vegan community is most dramatically tornon either side of this issue. some feel that any product derived from an animal remainsa form of exploitation. others believe that with the insurmountable fight against theongoing animal holocaust and more non-vegans being born every day, we need to search forpractical and viable solutions to replace

humanity’s rising demand for meat. the vegans on the pro-cultured meat side i’vecome across through my research say their motivation is putting the animals’ interestsabove all else. they believe it’s unrealistic to expect humanity on a global scale to ceaseor even reduce their consumption of animals. thus, providing an alternative that not onlylooks and tastes like but actually is meat could be, with the proper harvesting methodand growth medium, the most immediate path to animal liberation currently available.with the concurrent rise of research into milk and egg-producing yeast and cell-culture-grownleather and other animal byproducts, could it be that the laboratory and not the picketline will be the ultimate genesis of a vegan world?

i’d love to hear your thoughts on this hotdebate in the comments below. if you’d like to help support bite size vegan so i can keepputting in these long hours to bring you this educational resource, please check out thesupport links in the video description below where you can give a one-time donation orreceive perks and rewards by joining the nugget army on patreon. i’d like to give a specialthanks my $50 and above patrons and my whole patreon family for making this and all ofmy videos possible. if you enjoyed this video, please give ita thumbs-up and share it around to spark debate. if you’re new, i’d love to have you asa subscriber. i put out fresh vegan content every monday, wednesday, and some fridays.

now go live vegan, put the animals first, and i’ll see you soon. i know i didn't have much time, i like tacked it on at the end there, but there are people who have made yeast that produces the milk of a cow. and yeast that produces egg whites without a chicken. that's molecularly identical. >from yeast. you've got the milk yeast...and the egg yeast. maybe we can make a meat yeast? probably not.

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