The European Space Agency (ESA) has funded two research projects to learn more about cultivated meat and its potential for production in space. The first team, led by German company Yuri and Reutlingen University, and the second team, made of UK companies Kayser Space, Cellular Agriculture, and Campden BRI, have found promising results.
"The focus is to provide astronauts with nutritious food during long-term missions far from Earth, overcoming the typical two-year shelf-life of traditional packaged supplies. Given the limited resources in space, growing fresh food in situ would be necessary to increase the resilience and self-sufficiency of a mission, and could also provide psychological support to the crew.” - Paolo Corradi, ESA engineer.
Both research teams have been working independently, but have reached the same conclusion: growing cultivated meat in space is possible. They have compared the nutritional value of plant and algae-based protein alternatives to cultivated meat and explored different production methods and bioreactor technologies.
Last year SpaceX Crew Dragon conducted an experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) in collaboration with Aleph Farm to test the possibility of producing cultivated meat in space.
"The feeling is that we are at the beginning of a process that could transform the industry, making the conventional meat production model obsolete. Developed countries have the historical opportunity to move away from farming and killing animals, being a very inefficient process to produce food, unsustainable for the planet, dangerous for our health and raising more and more ethical concerns among the population.” - Corradi.
Image Credit: European Space Agency