Synthetic egg mayo on your human burger? The future of food
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By Vicky Allan
The future of food, some people think, belongs to laboratories and factories, not farms. In giant vats, muscle and fat cells will be cultured then made into so-called ‘clean meat’, without, if the technology progresses, a single animal having to die. Wine – with an almost biblical flourish – will be produced not from grapes, but from, water, ethanol, sugar and other substances. Eggs will be made from plants.
This may all sound like sci-fi, but in fact the basic technology is already here. Much of the pioneering of this ‘cellular agriculture’ has taken place in the tech labs of Silicon Valley. It’s already possible to buy milk that is a vegan simulacrum of the real thing. The lab grown burger, first developed in the Netherlands, has been around for half a decade.
Such meat has been described as ‘clean meat’ since it doesn’t come with the same welfare and ethical implications that meat from farmed animals does. Those that promote it see it not just as answering an ethic...
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