Cultivated pork fat nearing market

I was pleased to learn cultivated pork fat produced by American company Mission Barns has gained the approval of the Food and Drug Administration. For those who don’t know, cultivated pork fat, like other cultivated products, is grown from animal cells, without slaughter. Once the offering gets the go-ahead from the Department of Agriculture, Mission Barns will introduce it at select restaurants and stores.

“First and foremost, consumers won’t eat food that isn’t absolutely delicious — which is why we chose to pursue a fat-first approach,” said Eitan Fischer, founder and CEO of Mission Barns. “Not only is fat the main driver of flavor and juiciness, but it is also less costly and faster to produce than lean meat… By advancing cultivated meat production, we are helping to create a more resilient and reliable food system.”

Mission Barns’ cultivated pork fat will be mixed with plant-based meatballs and bacon. These will be sold at Fiorella restaurants and Sprouts Farmers Market stores. At the current stage of technological development, cultivated products are prohibitively expensive to mass produce. Mixing them with plant-based offerings is a way to bring down costs and make the products more accessible in the here and now.

“The vulnerability of our global food supply chain impacts every aspect of my business,” said Brandon Gillis, co-founder at Fiorella, a leading Italian restaurant group in the San Francisco area. “I’ve been keeping tabs on the cultivated meat industry as a potential solution, and after meeting with Mission Barns and tasting its products, I wanted to make sure we created a partnership for this historic moment.”

This is an important step for the nascent field of cellular agriculture. Still, Mission Barns’ need to mix their cultivated pork fat with plant-based offerings, to make the former economically viable, underlines how much further technological progress is required. This can and should be accelerated with a massive infusion of public funding into cultivated-meat research. It’s the right thing to do for a variety of reasons.

The scale of our violence against animals boggles the mind. There simply is no human equivalent that comes close to matching it. The development of cellular agriculture can help end this. We can create a better world, without batteries cages, gestation crates and livestock trucks. Someday, our descendants will look back with shock and shame that humanity ever relied on such a horrific food system.

Similarly, widespread adoption of cultivated meat could help dramatically lower our pandemic risk. Such catastrophic events are frequently traced back to animal agriculture, where humans come into close contact with sick livestock. Of course, since cellular agriculture removes the need for this contact, there would be significantly fewer opportunities for zoonotic viruses to make the jump to our species.

Finally, while the technology is still being developed, scientists expect cultivated meat will require a fraction of the greenhouse-gas emissions to produce that slaughtered meat does. Many people aren’t aware that animal agriculture is one of the leading contributors to climate change. A serious environmentalism must deal with this inconvenient truth. Cellular agriculture provides a way of doing so without sacrifice.

So, while I’m very excited about the impending release of Mission Barns’ cultivated pork fat, the fact it can’t be sold as part of a wholly cultivated product demonstrates the need for more research in the field. Our political leaders, at the both the federal and state level, should direct government money toward cellular agriculture development, for the sake of animal welfare, public health and the environment.