It's Not 'Lab Meat,' It's 'Clean Food'

Industry behind lab-grown foods is lauding their efficiency and sustainability
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 18, 2016 1:25 PM CDT
It's Not 'Lab Meat,' It's 'Clean Food'
In this photo taken June 23, 2016, Kansas City strip steaks are cut from beef strip loin from some of the 13 Alpha X Gamma calves born and raised at West Texas A&M University, are displayed at university's Meat Lab in Canyon, Texas. The calves were part of the the offspring from Alpha, a cloned bull,...   (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

If meat grown by scientists using stem cells in a lab doesn't sound terribly appetizing, consider the perks: It's more sustainable, it doesn't involve killing any animals, and it uses less energy than growing real animals to butcher. So the industry behind so-called "in vitro" meat has been working hard to find a way to brand it differently, and they've taken a page from the "clean energy" history books and proposed "clean food," reports Quartz. Not that everyone's loving the shift; Grub Street notes that while it's "great because it doesn’t immediately make you think of scientists and beakers and lab environments," but it's also "so vague, it doesn't really make you think of anything at all."

The Good Food Institute, which is the industry's nonprofit trade group, is leading the rebranding effort, reports Eater. They're attempting to make the change as a number of lab-grown meats start to hit the market, notes Quartz. And the industry is getting some serious investments from the likes of Bill Gates, who contributed to the Impossible Burger, the veggie-based burger engineered to taste and even bleed like real meat. (Some say lab meat can be designed exactly to one's preferences.)

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