Seoul: A team of scientists in South Korea is injecting cultured beef cells into individual grains of rice, aiming to potentially revolutionize global food consumption.

Team leader and professor Hong Jin-kee believes their innovative "meaty rice" could offer a sustainable and ethical source of protein, with applications ranging from famine prevention to feeding astronauts in space.

The dish resembles a regular bowl of rice but has a distinctive pink hue and emits a subtle buttery aroma, derived from the inclusion of cultured beef muscle and fat cells.

According to Hong, "Using cultured meat allows us to obtain animal protein without the need for livestock slaughter," emphasizing the eco-friendly and humane aspects of their research at Seoul's Yonsei University.

Companies globally have endeavored to commercialize meat alternatives, including plant-based and cultured meat, driven by ethical concerns surrounding industrial livestock farming and environmental issues associated with greenhouse gas emissions.

Hong, with expertise in organoids and biomedical sciences, selected rice for his research because it is a primary protein source in Asia.

Currently, the process is time-intensive: rice grains are coated with fish gelatin to aid adhesion, injected individually with beef cells, and cultured in a petri dish for up to 11 days.

According to Hong, rice possesses a "slightly porous structure," which, once injected with beef cells, provides an ideal environment for uniform cell growth from within.

Hong's "meaty" rice boasts eight percent more protein and seven percent more fat compared to regular rice.

While Hong and his team are still refining the scaling process, he aims to have his creation approved as emergency relief food in two African countries.

He emphasized the significance of even a slight increase in protein content for those limited to just one meal a day, stating, "It becomes incredibly important."

As of now, South Korea has not approved any cultivated meat for consumption. However, in 2022, the country announced plans to invest millions of dollars into a "foodtech" fund, with cell-cultured meat identified as a priority research area.

Cultivated meat is sold in Singapore and the United States, but Italy banned it last year citing a need to safeguard its livestock industry.

Some scholars say potential ethical concerns with cultured meat include the sourcing of the initial animal cells.

It is difficult to be "certain about the safety of the serum used in culture media, and the antibiotics and hormones added during the culturing process", Choi Yoon-jae, a former emeritus professor at Seoul National University, wrote in a column on the website Chuksan News.

According to Hong's team, their hybrid rice method significantly reduces protein's carbon footprint by eliminating the need to raise and farm animals.

For every 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of protein produced, it releases 6.27 kilograms (13.8 pounds) of carbon dioxide, he estimates -- eight times less than traditional beef production.

Cultured meat has long been "presented as a climate solution compared to traditional livestock", said Neil Stephens, a lecturer on technology and society at the University of Birmingham.

But the sector faces challenges such as needing to be "produced at scale, and cheap, with low energy needs and environmentally friendly inputs," he told AFP.

"The 'meaty' rice might have an advantage over some other cultured meat products", as it is a hybrid product "mixing animal cells with plant material -- the rice -- making cheaper and less energy intensive," he said.

"This said, it would still need to prove its environmental credentials at scale -- and convince people to eat it. Both might be a challenge."

Global consultancy AT Kearney has predicted that by around 2040, only 40 percent of global meat consumption will come from conventional sources -- and the whole industry will be upended.

"Products such as milk, egg white, gelatin and fish can be created with similar technology," it said in a 2019 report.

Hong passionately believes that biotechnology can change the way humans consume food for the better.

For example, he said, an older person with sarcopenia -- muscle loss -- could eat lab-grown meat produced solely with muscle cells, not fat, to help ease their specific condition.

The world is on the cusp of an era where "more biological information becomes available and we need to meticulously control our food", he said.

This could mean, he said, that a future AI-infused kitchen could assess a person's health through a blood analysis, then instruct a robot to prepare the most suitable breakfast. AFP