Why are people so intent on creating fake meat? If you want to eat meat… eat meat. If you don’t… don’t. All fake meat is made through a frankenfood process that can’t be good for humans in the long run.
Yes, all lab-grown meat so far requires a product called fetal bovine serum. What is fetal bovine serum? Why does it exist? Where does it come from? What else is it used for? It turns out that FBS is a somewhat common product, and one that we have to thank for many a medical innovation. Let’s explore.
FBS, as the name implies, is a byproduct made from the blood of cow fetuses. If a cow coming for slaughter happens to be pregnant, the cow is slaughtered and bled, and then the fetus is removed from its mother and brought into a blood collection room. The fetus, which remains alive during the following process to ensure blood quality, has a needle inserted into its heart. Its blood is then drained until the fetus dies, a death that usually takes about five minutes. This blood is then refined, and the resulting extract is FBS.
Millions of fetuses are slaughtered this way. Although cows and bulls are kept separate to preclude the possibility of horseplay, most dairy cows, which are kept pregnant to ensure milk production, are eventually slaughtered too. Estimates put the percentage of slaughtered dairy cows found to be pregnant between 17 and 31 percent.
The Gruesome Truth About Lab-Grown Meat – Slate