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  • Correspondence
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Challenges in the quest for ‘clean meat’

Nature Biotechnology volume 37, pages 215–216 (2019)Cite this article

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To the Editor — A News Feature1 by Amber Dance in your July 2017 issue entitled “Engineering the animal out of animal products” highlights increasing interest in expanding tissue-cultured skeletal muscle as a ‘clean meat’ food source (see also ref. 2). It has been claimed that clean meat would eliminate the need for animal farming and slaughter3. Additionally, replacing animals as a food source by clean meat is touted as holding environmental benefits4,5. Although certainly worthy causes, several scientific issues with this approach have been previously discussed6,7 but appear to have been forgotten in the rush to commercialize a product. Here we briefly discuss the outstanding issues that will need to be addressed before market success. We note where claims in the public media differ substantially from data published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

Clean meat is created by expanding and differentiating animal (typically bovine and porcine) muscle progenitor cells outside an animal. The term is also used in a broader sense encompassing plant- and microorganism-based products, such as tofu and Quorn; however, we consider these to be meat replacers, outside the scope of this Correspondence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven, Kortrijk, Belgium

    Lieven Thorrez

  2. Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Herman Vandenburgh

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  1. Lieven Thorrez
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  2. Herman Vandenburgh
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Correspondence to Lieven Thorrez or Herman Vandenburgh.

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Thorrez, L., Vandenburgh, H. Challenges in the quest for ‘clean meat’. Nat Biotechnol 37, 215–216 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0043-0

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