A D.C. restaurant started serving chicken made from cultivated animal cells this week.
The restaurant, China Chilcano is owned by Jose Andres, who is on the board of directors of GOOD Meat, the California based company who "created" the "food."
The word food is in quotations, because there is nothing natural or foodlike about this product. Made in a lab from animal cells genetically modified to reproduce forever, this is the ultimate in processed. Forget about chickens happily roaming around a farm, and imagine tanks called bioreactors, where animal cells reproduce indefinitely, very similar to cancer cells.
And thats what this lab grown "chicken" is, cancer meat.
It's something out of science fiction.
And the health ramifications will be extreme.
Back in March, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided that a chicken product grown in a lab is safe to eat. the FDA issued a "no questions" response to GOOD Meat, marking the company's lab-grown chicken product safe to eat.
Before that, companies selling cultivated meats weren’t able to let the public eat without signing a paper acknowledging products were experimental.
Industry experts expect that the chicken will be ready for sale in stores in the coming months.
Lab-grown chicken and meat looks identical to standard meat. The cultivation process begins with cells extracted from real chickens via biopsy using long needles, no doubt a painful process. Then the chicken cells are taken to a lab and grown in tanks. They are programmed to replicate time and time again.
In fact, lab grown meat is made up of onco cells similar to cancer cells from genetically modified cells that are programmed to reproduce endlessly. Cells are not supposed to reproduce endlessly naturally, its completely abnormal.
Lab Grown Chicken poses potential cancer risk
Engineered chicken cells programmed to keep multiplying
This supposed “meat” is actually made up of engineered cells (how they are genetically engineered is unclear), using some sort of genetic construct called onco-genes, which is typically used to make stem cells keep growing.
In order to keep the cells growing, they are bathed in fetal serum (taken from chickens or cows) or some sort of synthetic serum alternative.
However, this process of non-stop cell growth would encourage the growth of cancer cells as well. And whoever eats this “meat” could be exposing themselves to serious cancer risk.
Touted as a process that is “cruelty free” and will "save the planet" this lab grown meat actually involves animal cruelty, poses a cancer risk to those that consume it, and will harm the environment.
Within the tanks themselves, huge amounts of antibiotics and antimicrobials will have to be used to keep the “meat” and tanks sterile.
Eating this meat will be equivalent to taking hefty doses of anti-biotics.
And unlike a real animal which removes toxins through urine and feces, the toxins from the production process will remain in the meat and anyone eating it will be exposed.
Likely this meat will be sold to restaurants many of whom use the worst possible ingredients to make a profit. Since its identical to regular meat, the end consumer will have no idea that he is eating lab grown meat.
lab grown meat is not cruelty free
In order to compete in the meat market, companies will have to figure out how to grow this lab grown meat profitably.
Many companies are scrambling to take part in this lab grown meat craze. Some companies are using bioreactors —very large vessels for containing biological reactions and processes. Which would implement a scaffold-based system to grow "meat," The scaffolding helps the cells differentiate into a specific meat-like formation. Bioreactors are bad for the environment.