‘We Could Eat Malignant Chicken Tumors by the Bucket Load’ – Lab Grown Meat’s Impending CANCER Problem.

‘We Could Eat Malignant Chicken Tumors by the Bucket Load’ – Lab Grown Meat’s Impending CANCER Problem

Lab-grown meat, touted as the “cruelty-free” food of the future by everyone from the World Economic Forum to Hollywood mega-celebs like Leonardo DiCaprio, may have a fatal problem, according to a new Bloomberg story.

The problem is that the materials used to make the product – “immortalized cell lines” – replicate forever, just like cancer. Which means, in effect, that they are cancer. Although these cell lines are widely used in scientific research, they’ve never been used to produce food before.

“Immortalized cells are a staple of medical research, but they are, technically speaking, precancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous… [but d]on’t worry: Prominent cancer researchers tell Bloomberg Businessweek that because the cells aren’t human, it’s essentially impossible for people who eat them to get cancer from them, or for the precancerous or cancerous cells to replicate inside people at all.”

Industry types are “confident” that eating such products poses no risk – although there isn’t any hard data – but it’s not difficult to see, even if the products are “proven” safe, how people might be put off by the thought they’re eating a glorified tumor.

All the evidence suggests that the most prominent producers of these new products – including the “Big Three” startups, Believer Meat, Eat Just and Upside Foods – are doing their best to avoid confronting the issue in public. But whether they’ll be able to keep do so after this latest blast of high-profile negative publicity, remains to be seen.

The story comes at a time of growing difficulty for new alternatives to traditional animal products, especially so-called “plant-based meats”.

At the beginning of the month, we reported on the ongoing problems faced by Impossible Foods, which is laying off 20 percent of its workforce, or nearly 140 staff.

Plant-based meats have gone from double-digit growth to double-digit decline in the last year, with sales of refrigerated meat alternatives falling by 10.5 percent for the year to September 4 2022.

In response to another cover story from Bloomberg Businessweek, which labelled plant-based meats “just another fad”, Impossible took the bold step of taking out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times to counter the claims. Impossible’s new CEO, Peter McGuiness has put the company in a more confrontational stance, which includes denying the mounting evidence that his company, and others like it, are in serious trouble.

Beyond Meat, by contrast, has barely even been able to put on a brave face. Shares in the company plunged 75 percent in the first three quarters of the last year, and its flagship pilot collaboration with McDonald’s, the “McPlant Burger”, was discontinued by the fast-food giant.

More...