USDA approves Bill Gates-backed fake meat: Safe or risky?

In a recent development that has sparked some excitement and a healthy dose of skepticism, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has given its seal of approval to lab-grown or synthetic meat.

This groundbreaking decision has put the spotlight on Bill Gates, a prominent advocate and investor in this emerging industry.

While proponents like Gates hail lab-grown meat as a potential solution to global food challenges, critics raise valid concerns about its safety and long-term consequences.

Lab-grown meat, produced through cellular agriculture, involves culturing animal cells in a laboratory to create muscle tissues that mimic conventional meat.

Proponents argue that this innovative technology presents a sustainable alternative to traditional livestock farming, offering a way to feed the growing global population while reducing the environmental impact of meat production.

Bill Gates, has been a vocal supporter and investor of lab-grown meat. Gates, and supporters like him, see synthetic meat as some sort of “green” solution to a litany of perceived worldly problems.

However, many others and detractors of synthetic meat have voiced their reservations and have raised significant concerns about its safety.

Among these concerns is the use of “immortalized cells” in lab-grown meat production.

These concerns were echoed as recently as February 2023, when Bloomberg wrote about this faux meat.

“[Immortal cells] are, technically speaking, precancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous,” Bloomberg freelancer Joe Fassler noted.

The typically left-leaning outlet quickly tried to assuage the obvious concerns it had just raised.

“Don’t worry: Prominent cancer researchers tell Bloomberg Businessweek that because the cells aren’t human, it’s essentially impossible for people who eat them to get cancer from them, or for the precancerous or cancerous cells to replicate inside people at all,” Fassler wrote.

While Bloomberg swiftly dismisses this specific concern (the outlet notes that nitrates and fecal matter found in meat should be a far greater concern), it’s easy to see why such claims are so alarming.

“Essentially impossible” is markedly different from “impossible.” Even a one-in-a-quadrillion chance of contracting real cancer from fake meat is not a worthwhile trade-off for many people.

In fact, Fassler admits this is a concern when he notes that “scientists aren’t as quick as journalists to use the words ‘essentially impossible’ in writing.”

“Despite the informal scientific consensus around the safety of immortalized cells, there just aren’t any long-term health studies to prove it,” Fassler wrote.

Again, phrases such as “informal scientific consensus” and the lack of “long-term health studies” are not doing the synthetic meat industry any favors.

Also not helping the synthetic meat industries: The boastful claims emanating from the industry’s top executives seem too good to be true for many.

“You just need a cell,” one synthetic meat company CEO said in June, per Bloomberg. “From that one cell, you can make billions of pounds of meat.”

There are also the simple ethical concerns of using immortalized cells. The entire practice began when cervical cancer cells were taken from a woman without her consent or knowledge.

Just as much of a concern for many: Even Bloomberg admits that the synthetic meat industry is being mum on the whole topic to begin with — and are aware of how suspicious they look in doing so.

“Nonetheless, interviews with dozens of current and former employees, executives, investors, analysts and other insiders, as well as reviews of the companies’ regulatory filings and past statements, make clear that the cultured meat industry is anxious about its use of immortalized cells and is doing what it can to avoid the subject,” Fassler wrote.

With these meats now plowing full steam ahead thanks to the USDA, the synthetic meat industry may not have much of a choice when it comes to not wanting to discuss this controversial topic anymore.

The post USDA Decides on Bill Gates-Approved Fake Meat – Are These Cancer Tumors or Totally Safe to Eat? appeared first on The Western Journal.

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