Meat Grown in a Lab to be Sold to Public Soon

Lurking in a petri dish in a laboratory in the Netherlands is an unlikely contender for the future of food. The yellow-pink sliver the size of a corn plaster is the state-of-the-art in lab-grown meat, and a milestone on the path to the world's first burger made from stem cells. Now, if this isn't enough to turn you vegetarian, nothing can. Lab-grown meat...yummy!!

Dr Mark Post, head of physiology at Maastricht University, plans to unveil a complete burger – produced at a cost of more than £200,000 ($315,817 Cdn) – this October.

He hopes Heston Blumenthal, the chef and owner of the three Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire, will cook the offering for a celebrity taster as yet unnamed.

The project, funded by a wealthy, anonymous, individual aims to slash the number of cattle farmed for food, and in doing so reduce one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Personally, I'm not surprised that (s)he elected to remain anonymous.

"Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years and right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock," Post said.

"You can easily calculate that we need alternatives. If you don't do anything meat will become a luxury food and be very, very expensive."

The recipe for meat grown in the lab. Image courtesy: Guardian graphics

Livestock contribute to global warming through unchecked releases of methane, a gas 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, Post said the burger would be a "proof of concept" to demonstrate that "with in-vitro methods, out of stem cells we can make a product that looks like and feels and hopefully tastes like meat". I'm salivating already.

Post is focusing on making beef burgers from stem cells because cows are among the least efficient animals at converting the food they eat into food for humans.

"Cows and pigs have an efficiency rate of about 15%, which is pretty inefficient. Chickens are more efficient and fish even more," Post said. "If we can raise the efficiency from 15% to 50% it would be a tremendous leap forward."

Post and his team of six have so far grown thin sheets of cow muscle measuring 3cm long, 1.5cm wide, and half a millimetre thick. To make a burger will take 3,000 pieces of muscle and a few hundred pieces of fatty tissue, that will be minced together and pressed into a patty.

Each piece of muscle is made by extracting stem cells from cow muscle tissue and growing them in containers in the laboratory. The cells are grown in a culture medium containing foetal calf serum (whatever that is), which contains scores of nutrients the cells need to grow.

The slivers of muscle grow between pieces of Velcro and flex and contract as they develop. To make more protein in the cells – and so improve the texture of the tissue – the scientists shock them with an electric current. Maybe I'm alone here; but, I don't want to eat anything that's been electrocuted first.

Post said he could theoretically increase the number of burgers made from a single cow from 100 to 100m. "That means we could reduce the number of livestock we use by 1m," he said.

If lab-grown meat mimics farmed meat perfectly – and Post admits it may not – the meat could become a premium product just as free range and organic items have.

He said that in conversations with the Dutch Society of Vegetarians, the chairman estimated half its members would start to eat meat if he could guarantee that it cost fewer animal lives.

Meat grown in the laboratory could have several advantages, because its manufacture is controlled at each step. The tissue could be grown to produce high levels of healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids, or to have a particular texture.

Because the burgers are made from animal stem cells, researchers could make products from more exotic animals. "We could make panda meat, I'm sure we could," Post said.

He believes it will be a relatively simple matter to scale up the operation, since most of the technical obstacles have already been overcome. "I'd estimate that we could see mass production in another 10 to 20 years," he said.

Soggy Pork In a Supermarket Near You By 2014

Meat produced in a laboratory could reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with real animals. Photo: MARTIN POPE Telegraph

This is not the first time I have mentioned this; and, it probably won’t be the last: I am so glad that I am a vegetarian.

The latest in “disgusting things they want me to put in my body” is soggy pork. Yes, you read that right – soggy pork. Now, doesn’t that sound yummy? I’m guessing it will be renamed before it hits the supermarkets.

What is soggy pork – exactly? You may be sorry you asked. Soggy pork is meat that is grown in a laboratory from a few cells grown in a broth of other animal products.

Telegraph explains:

“The scientists extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig and then put them in a broth of other animal products. The cells then multiplied and created muscle tissue. They believe that it can be turned into something like steak if they can find a way to artificially "exercise" the muscle.”

What is the meat like now? Mark Post, professor of physiology at Eindhoven University, said: "What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue. We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there. This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it. You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals.”

While no one has enough information on the nutritional value of the meat to comment on its potential health risks yet – of which I’m sure there are more risks than benefits – the meat will be marketed in a little under five years.

However, many are pointing to the huge environmental benefits that are expected to be gained. One of the most infamous of the worldwide greenhouse gas emissions is methane. And where does that methane come from? Cows; and, the world has plenty of them. Guesstimates put the amount of the entire world’s methane released by cattle to be about 20% - this is more than all the world’s automobile emissions.

Factory farms like this one may be a thing of the past if soggy pork catches on.

Why are we trying to eliminate the cattle industry if the few cells used come from a pig? The meat may have been grown from a few pork cells; but, it can be made to taste like beef. So, scientists and researchers are looking at this soggy pork as a way to reduce cattle herds worldwide. In addition to being artificially-engineered; now, it will be artificially-flavoured as well. Mmmmm…boy!!

I’m not sure which is more unappetizing – the “grown under laboratory conditions” label or the ability to customize the taste of your artificially-grown meat.

Proponents are pointing to the fact that not only will these methane emissions be spared; but, forests will remain standing instead of being eradicated for ranches. There would be a drastic reduction in the water needed to bring this meat from lab to market. It would almost certainly reduce animal cruelty.

It was supported by animal rights campaigners. A spokesman for Peta said: “As far as we’re concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there’s no ethical objection.”

However, the Vegetarian Society said: “The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust.” Excuse me; but, doesn’t the fact that it’s animal cells brewed in a cauldron with other animal products make it non-vegetarian by very definition.

A survey commissioned by the Food Standards Agency revealed people had concerns about long-term health risks and the environmental impacts that may come with genetically modified products. Not surprising to me, it also showed that shoppers want clear labelling to show if a product has been genetically modified. We have a right to know!! It’s my body; I’ll make the decisions about what is safe for it.

Genetically Modified supporters, while acknowledging the risks associated with “engineered” food, say it benefits the Third World. That’s even more disgusting than the soggy meat.

And just when you thought the “disgusting” bits were all over – there’s one more bit. This project is being funded by the Dutch government and a sausage company and follows on the heels of the creation of artificial fish fillets made from goldfish muscle cells. Filet-o-goldfish anyone?

Via TreeHugger and Telegraph.