Review and Future Prospects for Lab-Grown Meat

Demand for meat is increasing and supply of animals like cow, pigs, chickens used for meat, diminishing due to issues of commercial production of them. Commercial livestock production is becoming unviable on global scale in terms of animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and human health. Options for artificial meat are being explored using techniques like stem cell, satellite cells or myoblasts, Embryonic Stem Cells, Induced pluripotent stem cells, Totipotent stem cells, Pluripotent stem cells, etc. In this method animal tissue is grown in a controlled environment using cell culture technology. There are attempts made to develop different types of media and techniques like Self-organizing technique and Scaffold-based technique to grow the cell further. Cultured meat is also called as ‘clean meat’, ‘in-vitro meat’, ‘artificial meat’ or even ‘alt-meat’. The concept is in infant stage of commercialization hence along with technical aspect there is lot of work is being done in environmental, commercial, social, economic and ethical aspect of the concept. The real benefits and cost as compared to current methods of meat production are still to be explored.