The construction (and promotion) of “synthetic tissues” as food is moving forward: companies that obtain the relevant licenses (4 so far in the US) are fueled by the desire to “provide a solution to a huge problem in our society: to ensure enough meat and seafood for the next 3 billion people,” as Justin Kolbeck, owner of the company Wildtype, which obtained the most recent license for synthetic salmon trade, stated last summer.
A work of art in the square, since it is accompanied by boundless nature-worship: thanks to the «bio-reactors» the slaughter of animals, fishing, and all those abhorrent activities of the (until now) «primitive human» will cease.
But how are cells industrially cultivated in a lab so that tissues, that is, flesh, can be produced to feed so many billions of hungry people (unless they are “punished”..)? Do you put a few cells in the pot and they multiply on their own?
No way! Various materials are needed. Note: Collagen (protein derived from cattle or pigs, which they probably don’t donate voluntarily…); silk fibroin (protein derived from silkworms to create “biocompatible scaffolds”…); alginate and hyaluronic acid; fibrin (another protein extracted from blood); poly(lactic acid), polycaprolactone, hydrogels, calcium phosphate salts, various polymers (as an “extracellular matrix”), ceramics, etc. etc. These serve as the “environment” for cultivation, because biotechnological triggering of cell multiplication is absolutely necessary as well.
It seems that the admirable intentions of the new food industry have nothing to do with what its bosses proclaim. “Protecting nature” is a cheap and sweet advertising pretext. In reality, what is sought is the concentration (in few hands) of food production, something like the cartel of big oil companies or others.
Capitalism without the construction of scarcity, rarity, poverty does not exist! The underfed will not be nourished by progress. It is not in their interest…