Artificial Meat

Lab Grown Meat

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Artif­i­cal Meat: How is it made and what does Islam say? What you need to know when you con­sult the Ulama?

 

مصنوی گوشت کیا ہے اور کس طرح بنتا ہے؟ علماء سے مسئلہ کس طرح دریافت کریں؟

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Test-Tube Turkey: Ruling on Meat Grown in Labs

Introduction

Year­ly, 150 bil­lion ani­mals are slaugh­tered for their meat, and the glob­al meat demand for the pro­ject­ed nine bil­lion pop­u­la­tion is expect­ed to grow up to 60% by 2050, lead­ing experts to ques­tion the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the meat sup­ply and its envi­ron­men­tal impacts.¹ In vit­ro meat could be the future of food] In response, researchers have found a way to grow meat with­in a lab envi­ron­ment that does not require the slaugh­ter­ing of any ani­mals and solves the envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges of con­ven­tion­al meat pro­duc­tion. A research in the jour­nal Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy found that such lab-grown meat, also referred to as clean meat or cul­tured meat, requires up to 45% low­er ener­gy, 96% low­er green­house gas emis­sions, 96% low­er water use, and 99% low­er land use than the cur­rent meth­ods of com­mer­cial meat pro­duc­tion.²

Sci­en­tists suc­cess­ful­ly grew suf­fi­cient meat in labs in 2013 to prod­uct a burg­er, although it cost near­ly $330,000, but the advance­ment in the tech­nol­o­gy has since brought the price down to near­ly $11, and it is expect­ed to be avail­able for con­sumer con­sump­tion at com­pet­i­tive prices with­in the next two years.³ As the gov­ern­ment debates on whether such lab-grown meat may be labeled as “meat,” Mus­lims need to under­stand whether such meat derived from ani­mals that were not slaugh­tered, nei­ther Islam­i­cal­ly nor oth­er­wise, is halal.

Growing Meat in a Lab

In order to grow meat in the lab, sci­en­tists extract stem cells from a liv­ing ani­mal and place them in an envi­ron­ment that allows it to grow and repli­cate up to a tril­lion mus­cle cells. The basic process is as follows:

1. Extract stem cells from a liv­ing animal;
2. Place the cells in a nutri­ent-rich medi­um that feeds the cells and allows them to grow and repli­cate up to a tril­lion mus­cle cells;
3. Exer­cise the cells with elec­tric cur­rents to increase mass; and
4. Har­vest the meat and per­form oth­er fur­ther pro­cess­ing, as need­ed⁴

Giv­en that the first lab-grown burg­er con­tained 20,000 cow mus­cle cells, it is evi­dent that a sin­gle stem cell extrac­tion from an ani­mal has the poten­tial to cre­ate a lot of meat.⁵ More­over, it is pos­si­ble to con­sume meat none of which was ever part of a cow and was entire­ly lab-grown.

Although the ini­tial lab meat involved cells from cows, researchers have begun grow­ing meat from oth­er ani­mals, as well, such as chick­ens and turkeys. For exam­ple, after extract­ing cells from a chick­en, sci­en­tists feed the cells with water and nutri­ents, such as vit­a­mins, min­er­als, pro­teins, and sug­ars, such that the har­vest­ed cells can grow suf­fi­cient­ly to form a chick­en ten­der with­in four to six weeks, the same peri­od a chick reach­es adult­hood with­in the poul­try indus­try.⁶

Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, the extract­ed cells from the ani­mal are alive post-extrac­tion, which begets the ques­tion of whether the Sharia would clas­si­fy it as alive, as well, or would it rule it as dead meat. This impacts not only the per­mis­si­bil­i­ty of the lab-grown meat’s con­sump­tion, but also the sta­tus of its purity.

Extraction from Living Body Parts

The Mus­lim jurists explic­it­ly dis­cussed the con­cept of an extrac­tion from a liv­ing ani­mal based on the famous hadith and juridi­cal prin­ci­ple, “What­ev­er is cut from an ani­mal while it is alive, then [the sep­a­rat­ed por­tion] is dead.”⁷

Thus, if a part of an ani­mal sep­a­rates from it in such a man­ner that the ani­mal con­tin­ues to live post-sep­a­ra­tion, then the sep­a­rat­ed por­tion con­sti­tutes may­tah (car­rion).⁸

How­ev­er, this applies in those parts of the ani­mal that are con­sid­ered to have life in them in the first place, as death can­not apply where there was no life to begin with. The jurists explic­it­ly men­tioned that cer­tain parts of an ani­mal, such as wool, may be extract­ed while it is alive, and these parts would not be con­sid­ered dead, as there was nev­er any life in them. Life only applies with­in that which is nor­mal­ly con­sumed, i.e. meat and what falls with­in its rul­ing, such as the skin.⁹ Hence, any oth­er part of the ani­mal, if extract­ed from it while alive, does not fall under the rul­ing of maytah.

Ruling on Lab-Grown Meat

The rul­ing on lab-grown meat depends on the source of the cells, the most pop­u­lar and old­est being mus­cle stem cells. Based on the prin­ci­ple men­tioned in the above sec­tion, mus­cle stem cells are from amongst the parts of an ani­mal that have life with­in it and, con­se­quent­ly, will be con­sid­ered impure and imper­mis­si­ble if extract­ed from an ani­mal with­out slaugh­ter­ing it accord­ing to Islam­ic guide­lines. The extract­ed cells, even though alive accord­ing to sci­ence, are con­sid­ered dead accord­ing to the Sharia, and the same applies to the cells that repli­cate from it. There­fore, regard­less of whether the lab-grown meat con­tains the ini­tial extract­ed cells or only the repli­cat­ed ones, the Sharia regards it as may­tah, impure, and imper­mis­si­ble (ḥarām) to con­sume because the Islam­ic slaugh­ter­ing process to puri­fy this meat nev­er took place.

How­ev­er, once an ani­mal is slaugh­tered accord­ing to Islam­ic guide­lines, its cells are not con­sid­ered alive and, as such, do not car­ry the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being dead. There­fore, if cells are extract­ed from an Islam­i­cal­ly slaugh­tered ani­mal, then any meat grown in the lab through such cells is per­mis­si­ble, even if the con­sumed meat does not con­tain any por­tion of the orig­i­nal cells. Hence, if a com­pa­ny wants to pro­duce halal lab-grown meat using mus­cle stem cells, it may do so by extract­ing the stem cells from an Islam­i­cal­ly slaugh­tered ani­mal, assum­ing it does not use any oth­er ingre­di­ents in the process that would ren­der it imper­mis­si­ble, such as the use of bovine fetal serum.

Fur­ther­more, a new­er approach involves extract­ing induced pluripo­tent stem cells (iPSC) from the tip of a dropped chick­en feath­er.¹⁰ Chick­en feath­ers, as per the prin­ci­ple explained in the pre­vi­ous sec­tion, do not car­ry the pos­si­bil­i­ty of life, and any cells extract­ed there­from and the meat sub­se­quent­ly grown from it do not fall into the cat­e­go­ry of may­tah.¹¹ Hence, the meat grown from such cells, assum­ing it con­tains no oth­er imper­mis­si­ble ingre­di­ents, is halal.

Conclusion

Although the efforts to address the increas­ing meat demand and its envi­ron­men­tal impacts are praise­wor­thy, it is nec­es­sary that Mus­lims only avail of avenues that align with Sharia laws. The cur­rent pro­ce­dure of extract­ing mus­cle stem cells from a live ani­mal with­in the lab-grown meat indus­try does not con­form to the Sharia laws that would ren­der meat pure and per­mis­si­ble. Rather, such lab-grown meat is both impure and imper­mis­si­ble. How­ev­er, com­pa­nies have large com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in the Mus­lim world through a small change in extract­ing ini­tial mus­cle stem cells from an Islam­i­cal­ly slaugh­tered ani­mal instead of a live one. Addi­tion­al­ly, the use of induced pluripo­tent stem cells, such as from chick­en feath­er, meets the Islam­ic guide­lines for permissibility.

The lab-grown meat indus­try is in its infan­cy and there exists a high prob­a­bil­i­ty that pro­ce­dures will con­tin­ue to evolve as the indus­try matures. Hence, this res­o­lu­tion must be viewed with­in the scope of the pro­ce­dures defined here­in, and a fat­wa on any spe­cif­ic brand of lab-grown meat should be request­ed from a rep­utable Darul Iftaa, which will ana­lyze the company’s pro­ce­dures under the light of the prin­ci­ples men­tioned above and issue the appro­pri­ate ruling.

Final­ly, it behooves the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty to look not only at the per­mis­si­bil­i­ty of their food, but to also con­sid­er health and mod­er­a­tion. While the meat indus­try inves­ti­gates ways to increase meat pro­duc­tion, the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty should raise aware­ness of eat­ing a more bal­anced and healthy diet, one that is not con­sis­tent­ly depen­dent on meat.

And Allah knows best.

Mufti Abrar Mirza
Mufti Abdul­lah Nana
Mufti Sohail Bengali

6th Rabīʿ al-Thānī, 1440 – Decem­ber 14, 2018