Can Cultured Meat Ever Be More Than a Science Experiment?

Ata test kitchen for a startup called Wildtype in the trendy San Francisco neighborhood known as Dogpatch, the saku, or “block” of salmon is visually a stunner. The most striking feature is the white striations between layers of orange flesh that serve as connective tissue. I say “serve as” because these white cells never helped muscles adhere to one another, spent any time in the vicinity of seawater, or even existed at any point anywhere near an actual fish. The salmon was grown purely from cells, or “cultured” in a lab. And yet the meat has the same slightly spongy mouthfeel as the real thing. Dating back to the first $330,000 lab grown burger in 2013, demos for cultured meat typically take the form of burger patties or preformed nuggets, since it’s easier to turn cultured cells into “minced” products rather than fully structured filets or steaks. But Wildtype uses a more advanced technique. After nurturing the growth of cells in a large steel tank called a “bioreactor,” the team concentrates the freshly cultured cells on a plant-based scaffold. The cells then grow into the complex texture of orange muscle cells and white connective tissue. <a href="https://medium.com/neodotlife/can-cultured-meat-ever-be-more-than-a-science-experiment-6fa6f8145d15">Website</a>