News from CRIS: Cultivated Meat & Seafood - Background

October 5, 2021

Traditional meat and seafood alternatives: Cultivated meat & seafood – background

Maybe you've heard of lab-grown meat? Or perhaps, cultured meat? Maybe cultivated meat? How about clean meat? All of these labels represent an emerging food technology poised to change the foodscape. In this series, we explore traditional meat and seafood alternatives.

What are traditional meats and seafood?

All meats sold on the market come from animals like cows, pigs, and chickens born, raised, slaughtered, butchered, and packaged for use and distribution. 
 
All seafood food on the market like fish, shrimp, and crab are either farm-raised or wild-caught, slaughtered, processed, and packaged for use and distribution. 
 
These are all traditional meat and seafood products because they follow a harvesting and production process we've been using for millennia. 

What are alternative meat and seafood products?

We have many plant- and fermentation-based alternative meat and seafood products available to us. These include Impossible Burger™, Beyond Burger™, faux chicken nuggets, faux fish sticks, etc. These products are typically vegan (meaning they contain no animal products) and instead use a wide variety of plant protein sources including peamung beanpotatosoy, and more. They have become widely available over the past 10-years.
 
This series focuses on emerging technology that will allow us to eat meat and seafood that doesn't require traditional harvesting and processing methods.

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To continue reading the entire blog post, visit: https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/cultivated-meat-seafood-background