Bioprinting Could Mean Meat Without Slaughter

Andras Forgacs, co-founder of Modern Meadow and Organovo, pioneers in tissue engineering and bioprinting, presented on lab-cultured meat recently at Solve for X, a forum for burgeoning technology. Forgacs announced that there is technology in the works that can grow slaughter-free meat and leather from cell aggregates. In addition to using 99 percent less land and 45 percent less energy than traditional farming, the facilities could “be located in or near urban centers … significantly shorten[ing] the supply chain,” he detailed. Successful samples of leather and cultured meat have been achieved, and while the cost of cell aggregated 3D bioprinting is still high, he counters that if bioprinting is done on a larger scale, costs will go down.