"IVM would help satisfy consumer demand for meat, without the cruelty and environmental degradation associated with factory farming."

N G Jayasimha Campaign manager, Humane Society International

IN JANUARY 2010, scientists from Netherlands announced that they were growing pork in laboratories using a technique that turned stem cells from pigs into meat strips. This is in vitro meat (IVM) or meat in a petri dish.

In 1995, the US Food and Drug Association approved trials involving production IVM. NASA has been conducting experiments on IVM since 2001, producing IVM from turkey cells.

The first edible form of IVM was produced by the NSR/Touro Applied BioScience Research Consortium in 2000 when goldfish cells were grown to resemble fish fillets.

The production of cultured meat, or IVM, begins by taking a number of cells from a farm animal and getting them to multiply in a nutrient-rich medium which can come from a variety of other sources, including plants and microorganisms. After the cells are multiplied, they are attached to a sponge-like "scaffold" and soaked with nutrients. They may also be mechanically stretched to increase their size and protein content. The resulting cells can then be harvested, seasoned, cooked, and consumed as a boneless, processed meat, such as sausage, hamburger, or chicken nuggets.

Why IVM?

Despite its popularity, meat -both in its production and in its consumption -has a number of adverse effects on human health, environmental quality, and animal welfare.

There are many diseases associated with the over-consumption of animal fats; meat-borne pathogens and contaminants; antibiotic-resistant bacteria due to the routine use of antibiotics in livestock; inefficient use of resources in cycling grains and water through animals to produce protein; soil, air, and water pollution from farm animal wastes; and inhumane treatment of farm animals. As meat consumption continues to increase, worldwide, these problems are now a global concern.

Consider this: The world's total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons.

Worldwide, the expectation is that total meat consumption will double by 2040. It takes more plant food and energy to raise a cow than the animal is worth as a source of food. To produce 1 pound of feedlot beef requires about 2,400 gallons of water and 7 pounds of grain." If that grain and water went straight to people rather than going through a cow, you could feed a lot more people.

Rain forests are being destroyed at a rate of 125,000 square miles per year. The primary cause of deforesta tion is raising animals for food. More than a quarter of all the rain-forests in Central America have been converted to cattle rearing since 1960 and 70 per cent of former tropical rain-forest in Costa Rica and in Panama has been stripped and converted to cattle-raising pasture. Brazil calculates that almost 40 per cent of its land has been cleared for raising beef. Cattle rearing is said to have claimed the loss of more species than any other single human activity.

Meanwhile, nations like Japan and Saudi Arabia are acquiring land in other countries, ready to fly the produce straight back home.

A report released by the World Wide Fund earlier this year, found that that 58% of direct food production of green house gas emissions come from animal products.

Diseases like swine flu and avian flu both originated and spread through animal factory farms.

Professor Brian Ford, Associate from Cambridge University, says that IVM is the way to overcome a looming crisis in natural meat production to feed the world. According to him, creating meat on "an area the size of an industrial estate" could "provide more than enough food for the world's population.

IVM has the potential to be healthier, safer, less polluting, and more humane than conventional meat. Fat content can be more easily controlled. The incidence of food borne disease can be significantly reduced, thanks to strict quality control rules that are impossible to introduce in modern animal farms, slaughterhouses, or meat packing plants. Inedible animal structures (bones, respiratory system, digestive system, skin, and the nervous system) need not be grown. As a result, cultured meat production will be more efficient than conventional meat production in its use of energy, land, and water; and it would produce less waste.

A group called New Harvest focuses solely on the development of meat substitutes, with the long-term goal of delivering economically competitive alternatives to conventional meat production. New Harvest recently funded a study conducted by Oxford University to examine how IVM compares to conventional meat in terms of energy impact. The study showed that IVM uses 90 percent less land and water, all while producing 80 percent fewer greenhouse emissions.

Researchers have suggested that omega-3 fatty acids could be added to IVM as a health bonus. Because IVM is produced under controlled conditions impossible to maintain in traditional animal farms, it can be safer, more nutritious, less polluting, and more humane than conventional meat. Lab-based techniques have the potential to yield far purer meat, uncontaminated with growth hormones, pesticides, E. coli bacteria or food additives. The writer is an environmentalist and former head, Peta, India