Can artificial meat save the humankind?

For nearly a decade, the public has been informed about new, innovative ideas for producing meat in a test tube. “Artificial meat” if you prefer, “laboratory meat” or “in vitro meat”, appears in these messages as an alternative to beef, mutton, pork, poultry and even aquaculture. An ethical, safe, and ecological alternative, and the monstrous costs of the first portions of such artificial meat are explained by the assurance that the prototype must always be expensive, and as production and the approval of the technology increases, prices will become more affordable for the average consumer. In this article, which is a follow-up to our previous text (ŻW, 2020, 95, 74-80), we present the logic of a start-up business interested in the technology of producing artificial meat and its recent noticeable drift towards meat substitutes of plant origin rather than in vitro cultures. In addition, we discuss selected aspects related to the safety of both the consumer and the natural environment. The article concludes with a statement made by French scientist at INRAE Jean-Louis Peyraud in 2017: ”A world without animal husbandry is just a utopia in the short, medium, and long term. It is high time we went back to a more realistic, evidence-based approach.