Lab Grown Meat- Brianna Patrickio

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 Lab Grown Meat 
People might one day grow meat in factories instead of having to harvest it from farmed animals. So far, attempts at lab-grown meat haven’t managed to match the texture of the animal muscles eaten as meat. Scientists have been working to coax cells to organize into something like the fibrous meat that ends up on our plates. It grows meat with more structure, this structure is what makes different kinds of meat cuts. Scientists could grow only the meat parts they want. This will reduce the number of products from the livestock that just get thrown away. Researchers already know how to grow cells, the basis of meat. However, a pile of cells doesn’t have the chewy texture of a chicken breast. Cells without support are more like a soup, or at best a meatball.
So MacQueen and his team developed a way to make a scaffold to support their growing cells. The new process resembles the way cotton candy is spun, except that it uses gelatin instead of melted sugar. The scientists spin the gelatin-containing solution to make tiny fibers. The team uses stem cells that become either cow or rabbit muscle. As they grow, these cells work their way into the edible gelatin scaffold. Spun gelatin fibers that scientists use as a support to grow animal cells look similar in size to real muscle from a rabbit leg. By controlling how the gelatin fibers had been spun, the scientists could set the fibers’ alignment and spacing.  Those traits affect how chewy, springy or soft the tissue is. And determines if the tissue ended up more like a burger or a steak.

Some of the cross-cutting concepts are structure and function, and energy and matter. I question I have is if the lab-grown meat will still have the same nutritional values as livestock. Growing meat in a lab could mean using fewer animals and lowering the environmental costs associated with raising livestock. Livestock especially cows produce methane as a waste product so not having so many cows would reduce this greenhouse gas and possibly reduce the effects of climate change. This could be great for the environment or it could just add to the amount of meat the population is already eating. It is hard to know if the advantages will way out the disadvantages until this is perfected and it put into circulation.

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