There are many things in today’s world that aren’t what they used to be.
Some cars are no longer mere mechanical slaves of their drivers.
Most telephones are no longer connected to wires.
Then there’s meat.
Meat used to be simple. It was loved by carnivores, hated by vegetarians. It invariably came from an animal, raised, grazed and slaughtered in the usual ways.
Not anymore.
There’s a new meat in town — or at least close to town — and it’s defying many of the old stereotypes associated with meat. No, we’re not talking about plant-based “meats,” manufactured with vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds or legumes, especially soy-based proteins like tofu.
We’re talking about meat that’s actually meat. But also isn’t.
It does not come from an animal the way it once did, although it did originate with an animal. An animal does not have to have been slaughtered to produce it, although some are.
Cynics call it “fake meat,” although the term isn’t really accurate. Advocates have a whole slew of names for it: Cultured, synthetic, in-vitro, vat-grown, clean, healthy, artificial or laboratory-grown meat, all of which are more or less spot-on.
Take your pick. It’s still meat, and a great many who have tried it say they can’t tell the difference from the “real” thing.
It’s already being produced and sold in some countries, including Israel, where last month a company called Aleph Farms announced that it has produced the world’s first “slaughter-free steak,” using cow cells and 3-D “bio-printing” technology. The worldfirst cultured meat restaurant, specializing in chicken dishes, opened in Tel Aviv last year.
Similar products will become available in the US as early as this year, and those who know something about the meat industry and American consumerism predict it’s going to be a huge hit here.
While cultured meat is likely to satisfy the carnivorous urges of many meat-eaters, it will also find favor with environmentalists, vegetarians and vegans. They might not eat it themselves, but realize its positive impact on global warming and animal rights.
So, OK, it’s meat and it’s likely to have a major impact on the meatpacking industry, hopefully on the environment, and certainly on the welfare of the animals who have served as the source of meat for so very long.
But is it — can it ever be — kosher?
Before we allow one of the world’s preeminent experts on kosher meat to consider that question, it might be helpful to explain, in reasonably simple layman’s terms, what cultured meat actually is.
Cultured meat is produced in vitro (as in, test tubes) from animal stem cells instead of from slaughtered animals. An excellent explanatory term for it is “cellular agriculture.”
The idea is related to, and to some degree derives from, many of the same tissue engineering techniques developed for regenerative medicine in which organs and other tissues are artificially created using human or animal stem cells.
While the development of cultured meat accelerated dramatically in the early 2000s, the idea has been around for a long time. In a 1931 essay, Winston Churchill wrote: “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”
In the 1950s, Dutch scientist William Van Eelen, who had suffered great hunger during WW II, independently came up with the idea of using cell lines to artificially cultivate nutritional food products.
By 2013, the concept became reality, when German professor Mark Post created a cultured hamburger out of more than 20,000 thin strands of muscle tissue. It took two years and cost him more than $300,000 to produce the world’s first cell-based meat product.
It was tested on live television in the UK. The “$300,000 burger” was prepared by a professional chef and tasted by food critics, one of whom concluded: “This is meat to me . . . It’s really something to bite on.”
Suddenly, the media was interested, as were non-profits and corporations.
More cultured meat prototypes followed in rapid succession, including the Chicken Burger, developed by SuperMeat, the Israeli firm which opened the aforementioned Tel Aviv restaurant, largely to test consumer reaction. Restaurants in Singapore and other locations opened in its wake.
So far, while consumer reaction is largely positive, the fledgling industry is still doing extensive research and has acknowledged that much room for improvement remains, especially in production, more specifically the challenges involved in deriving and replicating cells on an industrial scale.
Scientists are also still exploring the comparative health and environmental impact of cultured versus natural meat products.
Such uncertainties and continuing research notwithstanding, there seems to be a consensus that cultured meats are virtually guaranteed to become a major player in the food landscape, including among consumers who observe the halachic requirements of kashrus.
The Orthodox Union, for a great many observant American Jews, has the final say when it comes to the halachic acceptability of food products. The OU has ruled that — under certain conditions and circumstances — cultured meat can be considered kosher.
That’s the summary provided by Rabbi Menachem Genack, the CEO of OU Kosher, the organization’s kosher certification program and one of the country’s top experts on kashrus.
Speaking recently to the Intermountain Jewish News, Genack noted that the OU has been studying cultured meat since well before it became a tangible thing.
“This is not something new,” he says. “We’ve been researching it for several years already. It’s something that’s enormously important to us.”
In elaborating on that importance, Genack begins with the potential environmental impact of such products.
“In terms of the wider community, as the population continues to grow and arable land decreases, and because of climate change, what is going to be the source of protein? Whatever you call it, clean meats, synthetic meats — there are different names for this — it’s much milder on the environment.
“Cattle are a huge producer of CO2 and methane, a big contributor to the carbon footprint. One statistic, which is probably an overstatement, says that the amount of carbon dioxide and methane produced by cattle in the US is almost equivalent to cars.”
While cultured meats might have a powerful impact on such ecological concerns, and are not halachic considerations per se, Genack acknowledges, this doesn’t mean that observant Jews don’t consider them to be of crucial importance.
The same can be said of those who are concerned about issues related to the treatment of animals, he adds.
“I was recently speaking to a person from a vegan certifying organization. I was curious to know whether they would consider this vegan or not, you know, what’s the ‘Halachah’ for them? That person told me that they’re very much for this.”
The vegan representative indicated that while vegans would not consume cultured meats themselves, because it originates with actual animal cells, they are hopeful that such products will find wide acceptance.
Of more specific relevance to the kosher-observant consumer, Genack adds, are issues of waste and cost.
“We have to remember that when you slaughter an animal, only about 20% of it goes into the kosher market. We’re only using half the animal because we don’t take the hindquarters.
“But if we could use stem cells from a glatt kosher slaughtered animal, then we can continue to propagate it. We would get a 100% kosher rate. That would have a dramatic impact on the cost of kosher meat.”
In other words, the “$300,000 burger” of a few years ago will cost far, far less when it’s available on the American market, the rabbi says. In fact, it’s likely to cost considerably less than what kosher meats are selling for now.
That combination of factors — environmental impact, animal comfort, economic benefits — strikes Genack as a surefire recipe for success.
Several bedrock principles will be applied in determining whether cultured meat products can be ruled kosher.
One of them is that the animal that serves as the source of the stem cells replicated to manufacture the product must, in fact, be slaughtered, and in accordance with Jewish law.
This might not sit well with PETA advocates, since stem cells can be taken and replicated from live animals, but Genack points out that according to Torah meat can only be ruled kosher if it comes from a properly slaughtered animal.
As he and many other rabbinical authorities see it, that must include cultured meat.
“If we would take stem cells from a non-slaughtered animal, since it’s not slaughtered yet, it’s not kosher,” Genack says. “Therefore, if you propagate that, anything that derives from that animal would also be not kosher. It has to come from a kosher-slaughtered animal.”
The rabbi acknowledges that there are currently different rabbinical opinions about this. The OU’s position, however, is firm.
Another imperative is that the source of the stem cells must be an animal that is itself a kosher species.
“The Halachah is that something which is derived from something that’s not approved or not kosher, in itself is not kosher. An example of that is if you take milk from a non-kosher animal, the milk is not kosher. That’s the OU’s position.”
There are also, however, some differing opinions on this. Some rabbis have concluded that stem cells are so minute that the resulting propagated product could be ruled as kosher, but Genack is convinced that this position is “not correct” — again, that anything that derives from something non-kosher is, in fact, non-kosher.
But do the differing opinions imply that such obviously non-kosher products as bacon or shrimp might — if they were laboratory-created — receive a hechscher from an accepted halachic authority?
Genack isn’t sure about that, but he can guarantee that the hechscher will definitely not be the OU’s familiar emblem.
As is typical with many halachic considerations, details on something as unprecedented as cultured meats can be fairly complex. While the OU has no problem per se with the use of stem cells themselves (as some Christian religious authorities do, at least with human stem cells) and while the use of such technology as test tubes and 3-D printers pose no obstacles, other issues do present challenges.
“There are other halachic issues that we’re still dealing with,” Genack says. “For example, is clean or synthetic or cultured meat fleishig (meat) or is it parve (not derived from animals)?”
Genack refers to his colleague, Rabbi Asher Weiss, an OU consultant from Israel, who applied the “duck test” to cultured meat: “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”
In other words, cultured meats are fleishig, Genack states.
“If it’s genetically identical to meat, it’s meat.”
The OU’s ruling is not on the same page as some other respected rabbinical authorities who have said that cultured meat is parve.
Rabbinical debates are ongoing on such questions as whether cultured meat can be ruled as kosher according to biblical versus rabbinical definitions, such as have been applied to poultry, which is so close to beef that it can be considered fleishig, even though the Bible itself does not specify this.
Such debates will only intensify as the cultured meat industry expands and ventures into additional new frontiers, Genack predicts.
“I think we’re going to see that kind of revolution in food production, not just in meat, but in terms of eggs, milk and vegetables and other areas.”
It’s hard to predict where all this is going, Genack says, but he’s fairly confident that cultured meats are going to take a big bite out of the meat market, and perhaps an even bigger one out of the kosher market.
“Many companies are already investing in this now,” he says. “We’re really getting closer and closer to being this becoming commercially viable and becoming a factor in the market.” The true test, of course, will come when consumers are able to purchase such products in their neighborhood market or grocery store.
“As it gets to the market we’ll have to see what the response is going to be. If you get a meat product that has all these advantages, especially the economic advantages, that it will be much cheaper, I suspect that people will look favorably on it.”
How it will affect the kosher meat industry, including its ranching, slaughter and processing components — all big players, and important clients of the OU itself — is largely unknown. Will the traditional industry engage in a commercial war with upstarts from the cultured meat industry, or will it sense the changes in the wind and adapt itself?
“I’m not sure how they’re going to relate to it. It’s not really upon us yet, but it’s going to be here and I think it’s going to be relatively soon, If this really overcomes [traditional] meat in the marketplace, who knows?
“Who could have imagined the world of communication that we have now, in terms of emails and cellphones and Zoom calls and things like that, how it dominates everything we do?”
Amidst all of these unknowns, one thing that kosher consumers can be sure of is that when cultured meats become an option, the OU will be there to offer reliable guidance, the rabbi promises.
“Many posekim (halachic decisors] are interested in it, they’re studying it and looking at it and opining about it. Many articles are being written about it.
“It is a serious development. If the product is actually equivalent, then I’m sure we can set up a kashrus system.”
Chris Leppek may be reached at IJNEWS@aol.com.
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