by Dr. Joseph Mercola, Mercola:
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- The Department of Defense is funding research on lab-grown “fake meat” rations for soldiers, partnering with BioMADE to develop synthetic food products for military use
- Critics argue this initiative is unethical, comparing it to treating soldiers like lab rats and questioning the nutritional value of these artificial food products
- The production process for lab-grown meat involves genetically engineered microbes and faces challenges such as potential contamination and the use of questionable cell lines
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- Despite claims of environmental benefits, studies suggest lab-grown meats may have a higher environmental impact than traditional beef production when considering the entire production chain
- Health concerns arise as these lab-grown meats are classified as ultraprocessed foods, which have been linked to increased risks of cardiovascular disease and other health issues
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has partnered with the BioIndustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem (BioMADE) to produce lab-grown foods intended to feed the nation’s military. The public-private partnership, which is largely DOD funded, released a project call in May 2024 looking for proposals in a number of focus areas, including “sustainable food production.”1
Under this category, the Sustainable Logistics for Advanced Manufacturing (SLAM) project includes a call for innovations in food production that “could include, but are not limited to, production of nutrient-dense military rations via fermentation processes, utilizing one carbon molecule (C1) feedstocks for food production, and novel cell culture methods suitable for the production of cultivated meat/protein.”2
Ultimately, the partnership sets up military members as lab rats who will be fed synthetically grown, ultraprocessed junk foods in lieu of a healthy, whole-food-based diet.
DOD Plans to Feed Soldiers Fake Meat
The biotech industry is rolling out a “tsunami of fake foods”3 that are being positioned as environmentally friendly and health-promoting alternatives to real foods like meat and dairy. Lab-grown meat may one day represent 80% or more of the “meat” consumed worldwide,4 a dramatic departure from the way humans have eaten for centuries.
The DOD describes BioMADE as “a nonprofit created by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC).” In 2020, it awarded the outfit $87 million in funding for a new Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII):5
“Through a close relationship with DOD and the Military Services, BioMADE will work to establish long-term and dependable bioindustrial manufacturing capabilities for a wide array of products.
Anticipated bioindustrial manufacturing applications include the following products: chemicals, solvents, detergents, reagents, plastics, electronic films, fabrics, polymers, agricultural products (e.g., feedstock), crop protection solutions, food additives, fragrances, and flavors.”
However, the DOD also funds innovation grants, each of which has a $2-million limit up to a total budget of $500 million — funding that earmarked at least in part for BioMADE’s development of lab-grown fake meat products.6 In fact, in March 2023, BioMADE announced that its federal funds budget ceiling had increased from an initial $87.5 million to over $500 million.7
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) condemned the idea. Ethan Lane, NCBA vice president of government affairs, said in a press release:8
“It is outrageous that the Department of Defense is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to feed our heroes like lab rats … American troops deserve to be served that same wholesome, natural meat and not ultraprocessed, lab-grown protein that is cooked up in a chemical-filled bioreactor.
This misguided research project is a giant slap in the face to everyone that has served our country. Our veterans and active-duty troops deserve so much better than this.”
Former U.S. Special Forces member Martin Bailey further told the Daily Mail:9
“I think the government should focus on letting the military protect our nation from enemies, foreign and domestic, sometimes, but you know, that’s what the military is there for. They’re not there to be experimental lab rats … why doesn’t the government feed experimental meat product that, you don’t even know what it is, why don’t they feed that to, let’s say, homeless people?
Well, there’s a reason they don’t, because that would be completely unethical. So why is it ethical to stick it down the throat of our military service members?”
‘Fermentation’ Processes for Lab-Grown Meat Are Far From Natural
In a process completely removed from nature, biotech companies are using precision fermentation based on genetically engineered (GE) microbes to create synthetic food products in a lab. Like other lab-grown meats on the market, BioMADE’s “nutrient-dense military rations” produced “via fermentation processes” will be made using processes far removed from the natural fermentation that occurs in the production of wholesome foods like yogurt.
In precision fermentation, GE microbes such as yeast and bacteria are fermented in brewery-style tanks under high-tech, sterile conditions. But serious problems have already emerged.
To make fake meat, cell lines are taken from a living organism. They’re then manipulated to grow quickly and consistently. “What are cells that proliferate quickly? Either cancers or fetuses. They have cells that proliferate very quickly,” Dutch investigative journalist Elze van Hamelen says.10 For lab-grown meats, biotech is cryptic about what types of cell lines are actually used.
Contamination in cultured meat is another serious issue. It must be controlled down to 2 parts per billion, van Hamelen says, “because as soon as there is a contamination … it becomes riddled with bacteria, and you don’t have a cell culture, you have a bacteria culture.”11
An expose in Wired points to a number of the technological challenges that van Hamelen also speaks of,12 direct from employees at Upside Foods, one of two companies allowed to sell cultured meat in the U.S. Wired reported:13
“One former employee says that between the factory opening in November 2021 and the summer of 2022, they saw dozens of attempts to use the bioreactors to produce sheets of tissue, but they rarely resulted in usable meat. At times, production runs were ruined by contamination that meant the meat was unsuitable for turning into a product, the former employee says.
Former Upside employees describe how batches of meat growing in the custom-made bioreactors would frequently be ruined by contamination and have to be incinerated. ‘Once they had any indication it was contaminating, they would try to just stop the run, get the cells, and get any results out of it that they could,’ says a former employee with knowledge of the process.”
Meanwhile, despite the pharmaceutical-style manufacturing, lab-grown meat isn’t considered a pharmaceutical product, which means no human testing is required. “If this is brought to market, it’s a human experiment,” van Hamelen says14 — one that apparently the DOD is willing to test out on its own military.
