There is something wonderfully absurd about people becoming terrified of “cancer cells” the moment somebody suggests producing flesh without breeding and slaughtering an animal. Because if tumours are your concern, I have some bad news about conventional meat. Animals get cancer. Animals farmed for food get cancer. And slaughterhouses already have entire procedures for dealing with tumours found in the bodies people intend to eat.
A new peer-reviewed review published in Physiological Research has examined the safety of cultivated meat alongside conventional meat, including one of the most persistent attacks on the technology: the claim that cultivated meat is effectively made from cancer cells. The review was written by researchers connected to cultivated meat company Bene Meat Technologies. 3 of the 4 authors work in the company’s research and development team, while the fourth is a scientific adviser to the company. That conflict of interest is declared, and the authors state that the review received no funding. The researchers directly address the use of immortalised cell lines. Their argument is simple: immortalisation is not the same thing as malignancy. Cells used to produce cultivated meat may be selected or modified so they can continue dividing for long periods in controlled conditions. According to the review, comparing that process with cancer is scientifically misleading. The researchers point to immortalised HEK293 and CHO cell lines that have already been used for decades in biopharmaceutical production. They also note that harvested cultivated cells are subsequently inactivated, while cooking breaks cellular material down into proteins, fats and nucleic acids.
There are legitimate questions to ask about cultivated meat.
The review itself discusses microbial contamination, genetic modification, residues from cultivation media, allergens and nutritional composition. Cultivated meat should be subjected to rigorous safety testing before people eat it. But “CANCER CELLS!” is not rigorous analysis. Especially when we look at what already happens in slaughterhouses.
Tumours are already arriving at slaughterhouses
In 2014, the UK Government published figures showing what Food Standards Agency inspectors had found during post-mortem inspections.
Among poultry, 380,892 instances of tumours had been identified since April 2012 and prevented from entering the food chain. Inspectors had also identified millions of cases involving contamination, cellulitis, ascites, peritonitis, septicaemia and other conditions. Among animals classified by the industry as “red meat animals”, inspectors recorded 1,490 animals with tumours, alongside hundreds of thousands of abscesses and nearly 28,000 cases of tuberculosis during the period reported.
A systematic review published in 2023 examined 1,873 reported spontaneous neoplasms in cattle, pigs, sheep and goats, including carcinomas, melanomas and other tumours. Cattle accounted for 1,308 of the reported cases.
Chickens are not exempt either. Marek’s disease, a contagious herpesvirus disease found in chickens, can cause T-cell lymphomas. And the UK Government itself warns that cattle infected with enzootic bovine leukosis can develop tumours throughout their bodies. Internal tumours may only become visible after the animal has been killed and butchered, which is why slaughterhouse workers are instructed to look for them. The tumour may only be discovered once the animal has already been killed and cut open.
And the rest of the body can still become food
US regulations make the reality even clearer. If an individual organ or part of a carcass contains a neoplasm, that part must be condemned. If the cancer has metastasised, or the animal’s general condition has been affected, the entire carcass must be condemned. But where the tumour is localised, the rules allow the affected part to be removed while the remainder can still be passed for human consumption.
USDA guidance for poultry is even more explicit: tumours can be trimmed from an affected organ or other part of a carcass, and if there is no evidence of metastasis or wider effects, inspectors can pass the trimmed carcass as human food.
So no conventional meat comes from some magical population of pristine, cancer-proof animals. People already eat flesh from bodies in which tumours can occur. The slaughter system simply attempts to identify diseased tissue, cut away what regulations say cannot be sold, and send the remainder into the food chain. Suddenly being horrified by abnormal cells when nobody had to be bred, confined and killed to produce the flesh is a strange place to draw the line.
Cultivated meat should face proper scrutiny. So should conventional meat.
And if the thought of eating flesh grown from cells bothers you, there remains an extraordinarily simple alternative.
Eat plants.