Social media posts claim lab-grown meat is made from cancer cells. DW takes a look at this and other major concerns.
A German cultivated meat startup has taken the first steps toward getting lab-grown sausages made from animal cells on supermarket shelves. In mid-September, The Cultivated B began early discussions with the European Food Safety Authority to eventually have its “hybrid sausage product composed of vegan ingredients, including significant amounts of cultivated meat” approved for sale.
While that step is still likely months, or years, away, it’s already a reality overseas. US regulators gave the green light for the sale of lab-grown chicken in June 2023, after Singapore became the first country to approve the sale of cell-cultivated meat in 2020.
News of this advance in food technology has some people wary of so-called “Frankenmeat,” which can look different from traditional meat and be produced much faster than it takes an animal to grow big enough to eat.
Is lab-grown meat made from cancer cells? And can it cause cancer in humans?
This is a primary concern for many who remain skeptical of cultivated meat, with some convinced it’s derived from fast-growing tumor cells. In response to a recent DW Planet A video, one commenter wrote that “lab grown meat is literally grown using cancer cells.”
n February 2023, an article published in collaboration with Bloomberg Businessweek pointed out that “normal meat cells don’t just keep dividing forever.” It stated that leading cultured meat startups are “quietly using what are called immortalized cells […] a staple of medical research [that] are, technically speaking, pre-cancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous.”
But that’s not entirely true. Food scientists do use cells to grow meat, but they work with stem cells from a living animal or a fertilized egg. Using criteria such as taste and ability to divide, scientists select the best cells and immerse them in a nutrient-rich broth. These cells are then grown in large quantities in steel tanks known as bioreactors or cultivators, a process outlined by US-based nonprofit, the Good Food Institute.
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