‘Exotic’ Cultivated Meat Not As Harmless as Previously Claimed, Could Threaten Endangered Animals

Cultured meat has been growing in popularity. However, even if developed in labs, they are not 100 percent harmless and reportedly threaten endangered animals.

Why Is Cultured Meat a Threat to Endangered Animals?

Startups like Primeval Foods and Vow have been developing meat cultured from the cells of exotic animals and extinct animals like tiger, zebra, and mammoth. However, while cultured meat is a good option for those who don't want to consume actual meat, it raises eyebrows.

The tech could reportedly create an appetite for real tiger meat and threaten the endangered wild big cats. Yilmaz Bora, CEO of Primeval Foods, a company developing cultured tiger meat, said he began developing alternative proteins to convert diehard meat eaters from factory-farmed animals. However, he believed that the "masculine" groups that drive meat consumption would still find the meat from big cats more compelling.

An appealing way to promote cultured meats might be to create flesh from the cells of an animal that stands for power. However, issues will develop if the demand for meat from wild tiger populations increases due to the thirst for lab-grown tigers. At present, there are just 4,500 wild tigers left. John Goodrich of the big cat conservation charity Panthera spoke about the potential threat of cultured tiger meat to tiger conservation.

Poaching for their body parts, primarily for use in traditional Chinese medicine, is one of the major risks to large animals, especially tigers, according to Goodrich. You'd expect that [cultivated meat] will overtake the market, eliminating the demand for wild tiger parts.

However, even if grown tiger meat were a commercial success, it's not a guarantee that the demand for wild tiger meat would be gone. Goodrich was concerned that there would always be a group of people who would want the actual thing.

He added that they are generating a much, much larger market for tiger parts by mainstreaming it. If fewer than 1% of your market's suppose a billion people want the actual thing, the 4,500 wild tigers would still be stressed. He concluded that it's not a risk worth taking.

What Is Cultured Meat?

Cultivated meat or lab-grown meat is produced through cellular agriculture. In layperson's terms, cultivated meat is meat grown directly from cells.

Any meat can be cultivated. Producers cultivate meat from various species, domesticated and wild, including beef, pork, chicken, turkey, duck, kangaroo, salmon, mahi mahi, bluefin tuna, grouper, shrimp, lobster, and more. The first cultivated meat products, like burgers and sausages, were sold as ground meat. Cultivated steaks and fillets are expected to be available soon.

When it comes to taste, cultured meat tastes like the conventional meat. Producers are dedicated to achieving this by matching the taste and texture of conventional meat. As for nutrition, both have the same nutrients, and some companies of cultured meat work on optimizing their nutritional profile.