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Plant-based food company Hampton Creek recently announced its plans to bring lab-grown meat into stores within the next year. It’s an ambitious plan, and there are good reasons to be skeptical of its claim—the plant-based mayonnaise company’s business practices have been persistent targets for critics, drawing accusations of bad science, mislabeling, and even instructing employees to buy its mayonnaise off the shelves to drive up sales numbers. Hampton Creek is also hoping to beat its competitors to market by about two years, despite its late entry into “cultured meat”—a bold target that has others in the industry skeptical of the company’s claims.

The whole point of lab-grown meat is to create a more sustainable product that doesn’t require the hassle and waste of cattle production—it’s meat grown in a lab rather than on a set of bones. And if Hampton Creek wins (and thus far it’s come out on top in the majority of its controversies), it will have one massively important advantage over its competitors: The “meat” will be grown using plant nutrients only, while its competitors’ meat is grown using the blood of unborn cows. 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.

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FBS isn’t the only serum that can be used to culture meat cells, but it is the most widely used, even among other cow-blood products. Jan van der Valk, a scientist in the Department of Animals in Science and Society at Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��, explained that cow fetuses are “organisms in development.” That means their blood contains more growth factors than older cows’ blood, making it better for cell culture and growing cultured meat.

Het volledige artikel is verschenen in Slate Magazine, 11 juli 2017
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