According to the investigation of the journalist Gilles Luneau, the lobbies of artificial food have already invested more than $14 billion in new lab-grown meat startups.

Lab-grown meat. What environmental, social, economic, and even human health implications of this food produced in a laboratory? It was discussed on Friday, December 17, 2021, during the debate organized on the occasion of the release in Italy of the book published by Castelvecchi “Lab-grown meat? No, thanks!” written by the French journalist Gilles Luneau. In his investigation, published by Le Nouvel Observateur, Géo, VSD, and Challenges, he reports the flow of capital that finances the startups that today are working to produce synthetic meat.

The data made public by the Good Food Institute, the non-profit organization that promotes plant and cellular alternatives to animal products, are reported in the book: from 2017 to 2018, investments in companies to replace meat, milk, and eggs with plant-based alternatives have reached $14 billion. For lab-grown meat instead, although it is not commercially released yet, between 2015 and November 2019, 150 million dollars in investments have been exceeded.

“Whether we are talking about meat, rather than smoking or alcohol when we are talking about nutrition and the possible harmful effects on health, the recurrent problem is first of all proper communication – Paolo De Castro said, S&D Group coordinator in the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee – We cannot leave out the fact that the main issue is the distinction between consumption and abuse of certain foods. Every citizen and consumer has the right to take what they want within the limits of the law. And here in EU Parliament, especially in the Agriculture Committee, we are working on writing rules that inform people correctly, but without conditioning them when buying this or that product”.

But is Italy ready to eat lab-grown meat? According to Ettore Prandini, president of Coldiretti, not: “95% of Italians would never eat synthetic meat if it arrived on the market, with rejection for steak made in a laboratory by stem cells taken from the muscle of a bovine, breaking the link with the naturalness of food”. And about their environmental impact the president of Coldiretti reiterates the high standards of Italian livestock: “The real Italian meat originates from a farming system that is incomparable in the world for safety and quality, also thanks to valorization initiatives proposed by farmers, with the adoption of controlled nutrition, restrictive breeding protocols, electronic traceability systems and direct sale of meat through the farms and markets of Campagna Amica. Choosing Made in Italy meat also means supporting a system made of animals, grassland and especially of people committed for generations to combating depopulation and degradation, even in difficult areas.”

Giorgio Cantelli Forti, President of the National Academy of Agriculture, said: “The purpose of this system is to encourage public awareness to replace agriculture and livestock with protein foods defined “identical” and fake products “traditional” obtained in a laboratory through biotechnological techniques aimed at the production of “animal” meat from plant protein cells, and then serving veg burger or vegan chicken with the same look and possibly the same flavour.” And about the ethical implications, the professor adds: “The costs to replace meat, eggs, milk and all animal source food are still prohibitive, but this “war” industry, strong of an unconscious ideological network, will tend to destroy the agricultural world with negative consequences on the economy of countries and the work of millions of workers.” The question Cantelli Forti asks himself is: “Destroyed the current world of farming, what scientific certainties (and not algorithms or predictive projections) are offered to ensure sufficient availability of plant-based or vegan foods to satisfy the mouths of the inhabitants of the Earth in 2050 while ensuring the economy of every human?”.

And from a nutritional point of view? What are the qualities of lab-grown meat? “Although nutrients are reconstructed in a laboratory and artificially added, the impact on human metabolism is not the same as natural food – Susanna Bramante, agronomist and nutrition consultant, comments – Natural food is a complex matrix of nutrients and substances that interact with each other, many of them are still unknown. There are still no studies on the impact that synthetic meat will have on our health, but the assumptions do not bode well”. And about fake meat, she adds: “On it studies already exist. Eating these artifacts is bad for your health. They are hyper-processed products that have undergone deep industrial processing to extract isolated protein from soybean, peas, or wheat. If we read the ingredients that make up these products, we realize that the list of additives is very long”.