Old MacDonald has a farm, and on that farm he has some chicks and goats. But MacDonald's animals are not there to be eaten. They are highly specialized production units - the results of many years of scientific work, and extremely costly.
Yes, they look just like any other chicken or goat. They behave and act exactly like their forefathers, but in fact they are living factories of proteins and enzymes too complex to be manufactured by traditional chemistry. The animals have been genetically engineered in ways that make their cells generate the complex molecules.
These precious compounds can then be extracted from the eggs or milk - and can be added as an ingredient in one of the countless new medical treatments that have been developed since genetic research gained serious momentum.
To Old MacDonald it was a major changeover from one type of farming to another. It is no longer a matter of producing large volumes of cheap crops. Now, he is a supplier of highly specialized, top-quality products and consistent, documented trustworthiness is the keyword. His farm produces less than 20 kilos of protein a year - which is already more than most other farms. Nonetheless, his financial situation is better now than ever before.
MacDonald's younger brother, Allan, is also a farmer. He produces meat - or rather, something very much like meat. As a young man, Allan wanted to be a farmer like his father before him, but he could not put up with the poor reputation that traditional farming had acquired - especially not that of large-scale pig producers such as his father. Water pollution, the smell and not least the constant animal welfare scandals, medication, etc. were not what he wanted his farm to be associated with.
Around 2015, scientists had developed the field of human tissue production to the point of being an established and relatively common method of treatment. Starting with only a few cells, entire cell cultures could now be grown into skin, cartilage, membranes and, increasingly, into entire new organs like livers or kidneys. Using cells from the patient, who would eventually have the tissue re-operated into his own body, scientists could be sure that the cell type would be a perfect match thereby preventing the patient's immune system from destroying any foreign tissue.
Once the health authorities had approved this type of treatment, it was obvious to proceed using the technique to produce animal tissue for use in the food industry. This lead to a dramatic change in terms of cooking and food preparation - comparable in scope to what happened when potatoes, tomatoes and corn were first brought to Europe from the then newly discovered Americas.
Today, the meat on most dinner tables is artificially made. If you want a good old-fashioned, juicy steak you'll still have to pay for the real thing, though. Scientists are still faced with the problem of growing large volumes of solid muscle tissue. They have not yet managed to make blood vessels sprout and support large chunks of muscle in a manner suitable for profitable mass-production.
In most traditional recipes, however, that is not a problem - small lumps of muscle fibers are perfectly okay in meatballs, spaghetti sauce, hamburgers, sausages, etc. As far as inexpensive convenience foods are concerned, most consumers wouldn't be able to tell the difference from artificial and real meat - and only very few are willing to pay the difference.
As far as fish is concerned, artificial meat is basically the only option left for everyday cooking. It will be another 15 years before the first fishing quota will be granted following the global ban on industrial fishing introduced in 2022. Marine biologists still have their doubts as to which species of fish will be sufficiently reconstituted at that time to allow large-scale industrial fishing again.
Cannibalism
The advantages of artificial meat are obvious. As Allan MacDonald likes to say: "The shift to producing artificial meat was like changing from being part of the problem to becoming part of the solution".
There is hardly any pollution, and financially, it is a far more lucrative method of production. Producing a single kilo meat from a living cow requires an input of 4-10 times as many calories in terms of feeding stuff. In the production of artificial meat, however, everything is reprocessed into muscle fibers. So it's an easy choice, price-wise and morally - in a world with 8.5 billion mouths to feed.
Also, no animal will suffer when we eat artificial meat. Many vegetarians do not hesitate to eat the artificial meat - because it was never part of a living, breathing creature.
In recent years, a slightly controversial dietary belief has emerged - cannibalism. It started out as an artistic provocation on the part of Devdas Aiyat from India, who declared that he would never again eat artificial meat that was not grown from his own cells. Much to his surprise, the idea won widespread acceptance and today you can find small "self-eater" societies in most countries with members claiming that meat from their own cells is the perfect diet to satisfy their nutritional needs.
Basically, artificial meat tastes - almost - exactly like the cells from a living animal. Making meals interesting does require a few additions, however - but they come in plenty today.
At the start of the millennium, most ordinary dinner tables would offer nothing more than salt and pepper for spices. Today, we see af rapidly growing selection of flavoring agents allowing us to adjust the taste, texture and crispness of the fibers to our own personal liking. Despite the solid sales, we have probably only seen the tip of the iceberg of this new market. Every week sees the introduction of new flavors, new theme-mixed additives, etc. which the news media reviewers will invariably analyze and appraise. It is in the preparation of the artificial food fibers that present day chefs prove their worth.