Growing your own fruit and veg is nothing new. But what if you could grow your own meat from the comfort of your own home? That’s what a company in Japan wants to make possible.
The Shojinmeat Project helps people grow their own meat, almost like a plant, without an animal having to die.
It’s called cultivated meat, and it’s made by taking a few animal cells and helping them grow in a tank called a bioreactor. It’s real meat, but it doesn’t come via a farm and slaughterhouse.
What the Shojinmeat Project is
The founder and director of the Shojinmeat Project is called Yuki Hanu. He describes his company as a not-for-profit citizen science project, which aims to enable “restaurant chefs or hobbyists to grow designer meat in their premises”.
The project hasn’t quite reached the level where they’re growing whole pork cutlets, but they’ve made a good start.
“We have been successful in establishing an entirely DIY version of animal cell cultural protocols,” says Hanu, explaining that the project provides people with instructions, including a list of items to buy, for cultivating small amounts of meat at home. And these items aren’t lab-grade gadgets; they’re all readily available online or on the high street.
A spin-off of the Shojinmeat Project, called IntegriCulture, has also developed a bioreactor system that people can buy and use in a domestic or restaurant setting. This one is pre-built, so it’s a bit less DIY than the Shojinmeat kit, but Hanu says it’s still far cheaper than using a lab-grade bioreactor, like those used to make commercial lab-grown meat.
With IntegriCulture, there’s also more choice. Their bioreactors can grow more than 30 different types of cells from a variety of animals and fish, according to Hanu – “but it is more of an industrial process,” he adds.
In contrast, the Shojinmeat method recommends using chicken cells, because they’re easier to acquire and grow at home, compared to other meats.
How the process works
So, you’ve decided to grow your own chicken at home. Where to begin? You’ll need to go shopping.
The Shojinmeat Project has a list of items you should be able to buy in supermarkets or online, for a total of ¥60,000 (that’s equivalent to £300 or $400).
Some items you may wish to acquire include a fertilised chicken egg, a towel warmer, a sports drink and a collagen-coated dish – but you can customise the components.
The idea is to replicate the kind of cell culture that happens in a lab. Hanu explains: “When the right cells are placed in the right culture media, under the right conditions for a sustained period of time, cells proliferate.”
So, once you’ve bought everything you need, you take cells from a fertilised chicken egg, and you keep them at 37°C (98.6°F) and at an acidity level of pH7.4 – so, just slightly more alkaline than water.
That’s where an incubator would come in handy, but luckily for you, you’ve got a towel warmer, which should (pretty much) do the trick.
The chicken cells need something to stick to, called a cell scaffold. That’s what your collagen-coated dish will do.
And you’ll need to feed the cells with sugar, amino acids, vitamins and minerals – something Hanu calls the ‘basal medium’. Hence, you’ve got your sports drink.
If you don’t want to bother with all these individual pieces, you could just opt for IntegriCulture’s cellular agriculture starter kit. It includes all the basal media, serums, starter cells and cell scaffolds you’ll need, but will set you back by a minimum of £440 ($600).
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Safety is a natural concern for anyone preparing food for consumption, especially when it comes to meat. But, according to Hanu, once you’re up and running, the main priority is keeping your equipment super clean. Do this and your homegrown meat shouldn’t present any problems.
“Avoiding contamination, such as mould and bacteria, is critical,” he explains. “This is actually the commonest form of failure in cell culture.”
One way you can do this is by adding egg white, which contains a protein called lysozyme, a natural antibacterial. Hanu says this isn’t 100 per cent effective, but it’s one of several methods people can use to help their cells thrive.
After that, it’s just a case of cooking your meat before you eat it, to avoid food poisoning – like with any other raw chicken.
The result: a little bit of meat
After all that effort, you might be hoping for your cells to grow into a whole roast chicken. But if that’s the case, you might be a little disappointed.
Hanu says the Shojinmeat method can, so far, successfully produce about a gram or so of food.
“We have effectively made ‘growing meat at home’ a possibility by developing gadgets and protocols, but the quantity and quality of the output needs thought,” he explains. “As of now, it may be better, but less excitingly, described as ‘DIY cell culture’.”
Hanu’s own DIY homegrown meat was too small to use in a recipe, but he says: “I still put it into a bun to recreate an anime food.”
It’s not just the amount of meat that’s still under improvement. In labs, cultivated meat can replicate complex textures, using plant fibres and 3D printers to imitate individual strands of flesh. But homegrown meat hasn’t quite reached these dizzying heights.
“Producing a complete muscle tissue with fat marbling and texture involves advanced tissue engineering,” notes Hanu. “With our technology, the product is cultured cell mass, and the final product resembles Spam or sausage.”
So, if you’re still keen to grow your own gram of chicken sausage, then these DIY gadgets could make that dream a reality.
And, who knows? Maybe, a few years down the line, your air fryer won’t be the newest gadget on your kitchen counter. Instead, right next door, you’ll have your very own incubator, quietly rustling up a rib-eye steak.
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