Is Cultivated Meat the Future of Food Safety or a Hidden Chemical Danger Lurking on Our Plates?
“Chemical safety is another concern for meat produced under current production systems.” There are chemical toxicants and industrial pollutants that build up in the food chain, such as pesticides, PCBs, heavy metals, and flame retardants, but there is no food chain with cultivated meat. We could produce all the tuna we wanted, with zero mercury.
When the World Health Organization determined that processed meat was a known human carcinogen and unprocessed meat a probable human carcinogen, it wasn’t even talking about the carcinogenic environmental pollutants. When researchers tested retail meat for the presence of “33 chemicals with calculated carcinogenic potential,” like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), organochlorine pesticides like DDT, and dioxin-like PCBs, they concluded that, in order to reduce the risk of cancer, we should limit beef, pork, or chicken consumption to a maximum of five servings a month.
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