Still, activists are in a war of extinction against the modern world, so they are confident they will eventually win, either with allied progressive politicians like Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. banning products, or by regulating them so they are unaffordable, like California Governor Gavin Newsom has done with energy, home insurance, and healthcare.
Unaffordable may not be the best tactic if a new proof-of-concept study can be viable at scale. The researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem say their cow cells can be immortal without genetic engineering like GMOs (ruining Gaia, say activists) or Mutagenesis (certified organic, say activists). Chicken cells have famously been immortal. In a 1912 Journal of Experimental Medicine paper, Dr. Alexis Carrel and colleagues at the Rockefeller Institute isolated heart tissue from a chicken embryo and those kept regenerating until 1946, thanks to fellow M.D. Albert Ebeling and the American Cyanamid Company.
There was no reason to think it couldn't be permanent and the race was on. It turned out to be more of a challenge than it might have seemed in 1912. After a few generations, animal cells enter a state of senescence - they stop dividing. That is a good thing in the young, it is why the prognosis for cancer is often good and why wounds heal faster. In older cells, nature sets in and either they mutate due to cosmic rays or just bad luck, but as they accumulate over time, cell division halts.
It came to be called Peto’s paradox. Large animals have far more cells yet somehow become more resistant to renewal.
The scientists isolated cells from Holstein and Simmental cows and regenerating them and by 60 doublings senescence had set in, but they kept experimenting. After 240 cell generations, they began spontaneously generating again. DNA repair resumed and mitochondria regenerated, thanks to activation of telomerase and PGC1α the cells were able to to 'reset their biological clocks.'
Source
Overcoming that means this is a big win because the process didn't involve genetic engineering, there is no science reason for activists to object. Yet history shows they will. Despite claiming "GMOs" were the problem, groups like Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace have also blocked RNAi, CRISPR-Cas9, and every other scientific effort that is not a Genetically Modified Organism. Yet, as stated, certifying Mutagenesis, literal chemical and radiation baths to force random mutations, as Organic.(1) Greenpeace keeps filing lawsuits and promoting hysteria to prevent Golden Rice from being approved, even though it would help prevent blindness in black and brown children.
Science is not a constituency, so science is only invoked when it already matches political goals. The right-wing said Global Warming was stupid, if the effects were unclear it should be called Climate Change, so the left took that over, and then the right stole anti-vaccine beliefs from the left despite the Trump administration giving emergency authorization to the COVID-19 vaccine that switched anti-vaxxers from left to right; a move which caused former NRDC lawyer and now HHS Secretary Kennedy to embrace President Trump.
That means it will be a real challenge getting approval and then market acceptance in the United States and Europe. I am a fan of meat but I don't care about the process any more than I care about a Big Organic marketed ear of corn versus a regular one at a farmer's market or grocery store. When it comes to caring about people, cost is what matters, so I wish them well in creating a future where poor people can still afford to eat meat. A world that far too many activists want eliminated.
Citation: Pasitka, L., Cohen, M., Regenbaum, S. et al. Spontaneous immortalization of bovine fibroblasts following long-term expansion offers a non-transformed cell source for cultivated beef. Nat Food (2025). https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-025-01255
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(1) It must be noted that GMOs were created by an American company and Mutagenesis by a European one. It may be only correlation that European NGOs, funded by European governments, know to 'play ball' and only block the science of foreign competitors. It can't be scientific because GMOs are far more precise than Mutagenesis and therefore safer, if activists claim safety is their concern.
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