Lab-grown meat claim skewered by simple facts

There are claims a factory in the Netherlands uses animal stem cells among its ingredients while 3D printing food products which mimic steaks.

This is false. Israeli “alternative meat” company Redefine Meat does not use any animal products in the manufacture of its “meat”. It says the products are “purely plant-based” and “strictly vegan”. 

The claim is based on an erroneous mashup of two different sources of information.

The fake meat misinformation is being spread across social media, as seen in this Facebook post (archived here).

“A factory in Holland 3D prints of (sic) 500 tonnes of steaks a month. The redefined meat company will supply German restaurants with printed fillets. About 110 German restaurants are already buying ‘meat’ from the synthetic redefine meat, that has who knows what in it?! I don’t think I really want to know!” the post states.

Other examples of posts using the same text can be seen here, here and here.

The posts go on to claim: “‘To begin the process of 3D printing meat, scientists biopsy a batch of animal stem cells depending on the desired type of meat – beef, pork, poultry, and even fish.’ These cells then undergo the process of in vitro proliferation … “

The first part of the text can be traced to a subreddit post from May 2023. However, it makes no mention of animal stem cells being used in the process.

An almost identical post reappeared in another subreddit post in January 2024. In the comments section, the poster supplied additional text referring to the process of 3D printing meat, beginning with animal stem cells.

Text from the second subreddit post is almost identical to the recent Facebook posts.

The additional text has the byline Brooke Becher, a reporter with Built In, an online community for tech companies and startups, and is taken from an April 2023 article titled “What is 3D-printed meat?”.

“Made out of lab-grown stem cells, 3D-printed meat is an edible rendering of a meat-like product created from an additive manufacturing process,” says the article.

The text used as the basis of the claims in the Reddit post and Facebook posts is under the subheading “How is 3D-printed meat made?”.

However, the Built In article clearly states that Redefine Meat’s products do not use any animal by-products and are “purely plant-based”.

“The entirety of Redefine Meat’s portfolio is strictly vegan, meaning that none of their 3D-printed meat products are sourced from cultured meat or utilize any animal byproducts,” it reads.

“Instead, the company’s ingredient list consists of soy and pea proteins, chickpeas, beetroot, nutritional yeasts and coconut fat used to create their brand of ‘new meat’.”

This is backed up by the Redefine Meat website. Its FAQ page, under the question “Are Redefine Meat products vegan?”, states: “Yes. All Redefine Meat products are free from animal-based ingredients, thus suitable for vegans.”

Redefine Meat is headquartered in Israel, with an office and factory in the Netherlands.

Its website confirms it sells “new-meat” around Europe, including to restaurants in London, Berlin and Amsterdam, as well as some 150 restaurants in Israel. It announced its launch in European retail outlets in November 2023.

Redefine Meat CEO Eshchar Ben-Shitrit describes how the meat is made in this video, from the 7min 49 sec mark. 

From the 18sec mark, Ben-Shitrit says Redefine Meat is about “creating tasty meat without using animals … Good meat, no animals”.

AAP FactCheck has emailed Redefine Meat for comment.

Regardless of whether it is produced in Europe, lab-grown meat is not yet permitted for sale in the EU. 

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