Watch: Is lab-made meat the future for food? Aston University pioneers new way of eating

Aston University leads the way when it comes to innovation and they’re currently pioneering the development of lab-made meat. It sounds like a product of Sci-Fi but it could become the future.

I went along to Society Matters Live, a series of talks from the university, which take place across the Midlands, and are where ideas like this are shared with the public. Sam Cook, Press and Communications Manager for Aston University, says: “So Society Matters Live started about 12 months ago. We’re just coming up to our one year anniversary. It started out as a podcast series - that’s still going.

“But we wanted to branch out into something a little bit different - some live talks aimed at the intellectually curious people of Birmingham. And that’s why we hope that’s what we’ve delivered so far. The talks have been going really well. We’ve done things around net zero, the science of swearing and most recently - lab made meat.”

The demand for animal based foods is predicted to increase by 70% by 2050. With current methods meeting this demand will be problematic for the climate and animal welfare. Lab grown meat is said to counteract this but can it truly be considered meat?

Eirini Theodosiou, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at Aston University, says: “It is identical to the meat that you buy from the traditional meat industry. It has the same taste, this has the same texture and because it is grown in controlled conditions, it is much safer. There is no risk of salmonella poisoning etc. So it is a much more sustainable, safe way of producing exactly the same type of meat.”

Despite the apparent benefits of this innovation many have expressed reluctance -  but why is this the case? Jason Thomas, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Aston University, says: “I think part of it is what they might call the unnaturalness of it, so that it seems quite artificial.

“But actually, really, it’s a particularly clean process. So the ‘ick; factor or that disgust that people might feel when you talk about the idea of cultivated meat, actually, once you start talking about what it really means, how it’s produced, and you educate people about what it’s really about - that can actually fall away quite quickly, so that disgust can actually fall away quite quickly.”

If proponents of cultivated meat are successful, it may end up being a staple of our diets. But how important is this research when it comes to sustainability over the coming years?

Eirini Theodosiou, says: “It is extremely important because the traditional meat industry has a very detrimental effect on climate change, on deforestation - we are losing biodiversity.

“There is the risk of having antibiotic resistance. And also we’re slaughtering quite a lot of animals. So in general, by replacing some of the traditionally produced meat with cultivated meat, is going to be so much better for the environment.”