Cell-based food still an idea that could take a while to reach the plate

Scientists and entrepreneurs in India have started formulating ways to grow meat in the lab

Women and men of science in India are earnestly plotting what Varun Deshpande sees as “a Mars landing for meat”. The head of the Good Food Institute India is talking about attempts to grow cell-based mutton and chicken in laboratories, which he expects will be done here at lower budgets than elsewhere in the world. 

At the WeWork office in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex, where water is served in tall metal tumblers that look suitably futuristic for a conversation about a brand new venture in cellular research, he fills the hour outlining reasons for making meat outside of the animal. It is like listening to a podcast. Himself an ethical vegan, Deshpande joined the non-profit which rallies for alternatives to factory-farmed meat in 2017. The group has been trying to network entrepreneurs and scientists who are working on the subject into a consortium model. 

The world’s first cultured hamburger in 2013

Activity in the space appears to be gathering momentum. Many in the sector quote an AT Kearney report that says 60 per cent of global meat by 2040 will come from vats and plants rather than slaughtered animals. In March, the Department of Biotechnology gave a small grant of Rs 3.7 crore to the Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology and the National Research Centre for Meat, both based in Hyderabad, which want to culture mutton mince. The Maharashtra government-backed Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) Mumbai teamed up with the Good Food Institute India to launch a government research centre. Where The Good Dot and GoodMylk have been working on plant-based alternatives to meat and milk, Delhi-based Clear Meat is growing cell-based chicken in vats after it received backing from Germany’s Pro-Veg Incubator. 

Globally, too, strides have been taken in this direction for some years. Memorably in 2013, Mark Post, a Dutch pharmacologist and university professor, presented the first ever prototype of cultured meat in the form of a hamburger that cost $325,000, funded by Google’s Sergey Brin. Post is now chief scientific officer of Netherlands-based Mosa Meat. Researchers can seek inspiration from both West and East. US-based Memphis Meats made the first cell-based meatball and counts Bill Gates and Richard Branson among its investors, while Shiok Meats in Singapore is making cell-based shrimp, crab and lobster. In Israel last December, Aleph Farms produced the first cell-grown beef steak. New York-headquartered New Harvest, a donor-funded research group led by Isha Datar as director, expects to make milk and eggs using biotechnology rather than livestock. They have all admitted, however, that one of the toughest parts is getting the alternative to taste like the real thing.

Associate scientist Kyle Okada measures plant-based burgers tailor-made for Burger King at a facility in California, USA

What got people excited recently in the alternative meats space was Beyond Meat’s blockbuster IPO in the United States: by June this year the plant-based meat company’s shares had gained 700 per cent since debuting at $25 per share in May. There had been scepticism about the sector until then, says Clear Meat co-founder Kartik Dixit, whose applications for support had been rejected by numerous incubators. “Interest is on a spike now and they are trying to understand how this technology will affect the food system,” he says over the phone from Delhi. His co-founders, Pawan Dhar and Siddharth Manvati, are scientists of synthetic biology and tissue culture. The company has reached what it calls the “inedible prototype stage” and hopes to create an edible chicken keema in six to eight months. The 24-year-old Dixit, who became vegan three years ago after watching some videos on animal cruelty, turned his entrepreneurial attention to cell-based meat so he can taste chicken meat again some day. If the keema works out, the trio will move on to chicken drumsticks and breasts. 

The Good Food Institute’s international engagement team at a retreat

Given religious taboos in India, nobody has so far ventured to make beef or pork. Nalam Madhusudhana Rao heads the Atal Incubation Centre at CCMB where experiments are on to produce sheep and goat meat. More than a dozen scientists and staff are involved in the project. How cultured meat typically works is muscle stem cells are isolated from the animal without killing it and introduced in a liquid medium, where they are allowed to mature until there is enough density of cells to make a solid mass. They are fed a combination of nutrients including vitamins, amino acids and fatty acids. There is a lot that remains to be perfected. Researchers are looking for the best way to mimic scaffolds that will hold the cells together. One challenge both CCMB and Clear Meat are working on is creating a plant-based culture medium instead of using “serum”, which is drawn from foetal calves or horses.

varun deshpande, MD, Good Food Institute India

Several circumstances are cited to suggest a need for cellular agriculture, the main argument being sustainability. It could ease environmental burdens, says the Cellular Agriculture Society, because cultured meat, seafood and dairy may require 80 per cent less land than conventional methods and 94 per cent less water. It may also be possible in lab environments to create meats free from pathogens and hormones. However, some researchers attached to the University of Oxford raised doubts over whether lab-grown meat is a climatically sustainable alternative given its production too currently generates greenhouse gases. Their argument is that farming cattle for beef releases methane whereas the lab alternative releases carbon dioxide. Methane is more radiative than carbon dioxide but it stays in the atmosphere for 12 years versus carbon dioxide’s millennia-long lifespan. 

Some 71 per cent of Indians older than 15 eat meat, although per capita consumption is among the lowest in the world. Demand is headed upwards, particularly in the case of chicken, for which India is the fourth-fastest growing market in the world. Everyone agrees the big task for the lab-grown meat sector will be the s-word: scale. To meet increasing needs, cells would have to be cultured in large bioreactors and not vats or flasks. How long will it take for this food to go from scientific facility to fork? “I would have to open my almirah and gaze at the crystal ball,” laughs CCMB’s Rao. Pushed for an answer, he says it will take at least two years to create a prototype using plant-based serum. 

Ethical questions are not top of the mind for Girish Patil, a scientist with CCMB’s partner organisation, the Hyderabad-based National Research Centre for Meat. Meat should be sourced by multiple means to satisfy nutritional needs, he says. An initial survey by his centre found that 70 per cent of respondents were open to trying lab-grown varieties. As for concerns of how this might affect conventional animal farmers, he says there will be business for all. “When the Metro came to Delhi, people were worried that autorickshaws would disappear. There are enough people in India for everyone to have a market.”

Apart from space missions, emerging cell-based meat-growers are also seeking inspiration in the Indian pharma industry's large-scale manufacturing of affordable generic medicines. Summits like “The Future of Protein” and “New Food Conference” have recently become annual fixtures. Alokparna Sengupta, Humane Society International, India, which also supported CCMB’s pitch to the government, says there is a plan to offer smaller grants to outside researchers whose studies can then be peer-reviewed by scientific circles. The hope is to put something on the plate soon. “You can educate people and impress with facts that this is going to have immense consequences for the world,” says GFI India’s Deshpande. “But unless you give them something that perfectly replaces what they were doing before it’s really hard to make that sacrifice.”