In Vitro Meat

In Vitro Meat

In vitro meat, also known as cultured meat, test tube meat, cloned meat, or shmeat, is an animal flesh product that has never been part of a complete, living animal. Alternative names include hydroponic meat, vat-grown meat, victimless meat and vitro meat.

This form of meat has been described, sometimes derisively, as "laboratory-grown" meat. In vitro meat should not be confused with imitation meat, which is a vegetarian food product produced from vegetable protein, usually from soy or gluten. The terms "synthetic meat" and "artificial meat" may refer to either. The original NASA research on in vitro meat was intended for use on long space voyages or stays; it would be a sustainable food source alongside hydroponic or aeroponically grown vegetables.

Several current research projects are growing in vitro meat experimentally, although no meat has yet been produced for public consumption. As early as 2008, some scientists claimed that the technology was ready for commercial use and simply needed a company to back it. The first meats successfully grown in a lab included goldfish and lamb. Scientists at Maastricht University plan to produce sausage by March 2012 and hamburger by September 2012. A long-term goal for in vitro meat laboratories would be to grow fully developed muscle tissue after they made the first-generational products economically feasible for most people. Cultured meat is currently prohibitively expensive, but it is anticipated that the cost could be reduced to about twice that of conventionally produced meat. Potentially, any animal's muscle tissue could be grown through the in vitro process, even human.

With the costs of conventional meat farming techniques constantly increasing and an increased demand from a rising world population, in vitro meat may be one of several new technologies needed to maintain food supplies by the year 2050. Conventional meat production may simply become too expensive for the average consumer to support (when the world's population will reach 8.9 billion people). The price of in vitro meat would become detached from the price of grain and corn as there would be no feeding in the conventional sense.

Shmeat is a nickname given to lab-created meat grown from a cell culture of animal tissue. The etymology of this usage is the combination of “sheet” and “meat.”