32 replies to this topic

[Waser Lave]

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-16972761

Dutch scientists have used stem cells to create strips of muscle tissue with the aim of producing the first lab-grown hamburger later this year.

The aim of the research is to develop a more efficient way of producing meat than rearing animals.

At a major science meeting in Canada, Prof Mark Post said synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat by up to 60%.

"We would gain a tremendous amount in terms of resources," he said.

Professor Post's group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick.

They are off-white and resemble strips of calamari in appearance. These strips will be mixed with blood and artificially grown fat to produce a hamburger by the autumn.

The cost of producing the hamburger will be £200,000 but Professor Post says that once the principle has been demonstrated, production techniques will be improved and costs will come down.

"The reason we are doing this is not to show a viable product but to show that in reality we can do this," he told BBC News.

"From then on, we need to spend a whole lot of work and money to make the process efficient and then cost effective."

So why use such high tech methods to produce meat when livestock production methods have done the job effectively for thousands of years?

It is because most food scientists believe that current methods of food production are unsustainable.

Some estimate that food production will have to double within the next 50 years to meet the requirements of a growing population. During this period, climate change, water shortages and greater urbanisation will make it more difficult to produce food.

Prof Sean Smukler from the University of British Columbia said keeping pace with demand for meat from Asia and Africa will be particularly hard as demand from these regions will shoot up as living standards rise. He thinks that lab grown meat could be a good solution.

"It will help reduce land pressures," he told BBC News. "Anything that stops more wild land being converted to agricultural land is a good thing. We're already reaching a critical point in availability of arable land," he said.

Lab-grown meat could eventually become more efficient than producing meat the old fashioned way, according to Prof Post. Currently, 100g of vegetable protein has to be fed to pigs or cows to produce 15g of animal protein, an efficiency of 15%. He believes that synthetic meat could be produced with an equivalent energy efficiency of 50%.

So what is the synthetic burger likely to taste like?

"In the beginning it will taste bland," says Prof Post. "I think we will need to work on the flavour separately by trying to figure out which components of the meat actually produce the taste and analyse what the composition of the strip is and whether we can change that."

Prof Post also said that if the technology took off, it would reduce the number of animals that were factory farmed and slaughtered.

But David Steele, who is president of Earthsave Canada, said that the same benefits could be achieved if people ate less meat.

"While I do think that there are definite environmental and animal welfare advantages of this high-tech approach over factory farming, especially, it is pretty clear to me that plant-based alternatives... have substantial environmental and probably animal welfare advantages over synthetic meat," he said.

Dr Steele, who is also a molecular biologist, said he was also concerned that unhealthily high levels of antibiotics and antifungal chemicals would be needed to stop the synthetic meat from rotting.

[James]

Yum. Shmeat.

Artificial meat with artificial flavor and artificial coloring is the artificial way to go guys!

[Boggart]

I find that amazingly cool. I'd eat it.

[Waser Lave]

I eagerly await the next product of the Soylent Corporation.

[Turnip]

That's pretty neat! I'm sure all of those "gotta be 100% natural NATURE ALL THE WAY" people aren't going to like the sound of this, though x3 Hopefully they'll start dealing with it sooner rather than later!

These strips will be mixed with blood and artificially grown fat to produce a hamburger by the autumn.

Uhm is it bad that I imagined hamburgers growing on trees from that sentence??

[Boggart]

Well I wouldn't eat a hamburger probably... but maybe if they were somehow able to make something just be pure lean muscle.

I'm an advocate of genetically modifyin EVERYTHING

[Kauvara]

I suppose it would be pretty neat because then all the poor little cows and chickens and piggies would stop getting mutilated.....but at the same time it's just weird. A lab burger. Huh. I could get used to it, I guess, as long as it was healthy and didn't mutilate my bowels instead.

[trizzle]

Professor Post's group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick.

Mmmm-mm that's one filling meal right there Haha just kidding, this is a really cool development. I wonder if they'll ever make it cost-effective.

[Neoquest]

I couldn't imagine them actually getting it cheap enough to even be a contender when compared with the cost of our current hamburgers/meat.

[luvsmyncis]

Professor Post's group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick.

That muscle sounds a lot like Boggart's penis.

I eagerly await the next product of the Soylent Corporation.

Times is hard, you know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTOHl9nD6B0

[kittycat]

If it ever becomes healthy, sustainable, and more affordable, good for them.

[Drakonid]

I'd probably eat it, but it wouldn't taste the same without the slaughter...

[TamerVirus]

Great for when the cows go extinct!

[Nymh]

Cool using stem cells to produce synthetic animal meat

It's like three controversial topics rolled into one

I wonder if these stem cells come from people ...

I bet after all the "antibiotics and antifungal chemicals" needed to keep the meat from rotting it'll look like this

[Keil]

No cancer/painful bowel movements? No problem!

I'd seriously eat them. They really can't be worse than the concoction that McDonalds feeds us now. After reading Fast Food Nation, I've never eaten from a Fast Food Restaurant for a whole two months.

[Dangocat]

I'd eat them, but probably only after they've been in the market for a while and no one's had health issues. It's probably more environmentally friendly than eating regular meat...which is the only thing I don't like about meat to begin with (well, I love meat, I wish I could give it up/cut down on it more )

[Leaf]

Zombie Apocalypses here we come!

[Sunset]

I'd probably eat it, but it wouldn't taste the same without the slaughter...

Agreed,.. LOL jk but seriously for some reason the picture made me more disturbed then the thought of slaughter. Probably just my messed up little head but I mean it's so un-natural and as said if people would just cut down on the meat a little it could have the same effect as if this were to work... which it wont i don't think.

[ae19]

There is nothing more disgusting than the way that we currently obtain meat. People who think eating a hamburger grown in a lab is weird or find it gross might not be familiar with current factory farming practices which basically guarantee an animal will spend most of its life packed wall-to-wall with other animals and covered in its own and other's shit. Fuck yeah, I'd eat the lab-grown hamburger. Although I've never much enjoyed hamburgers to begin with...

[Drakonid]

There is nothing more disgusting than the way that we currently obtain meat. People who think eating a hamburger grown in a lab is weird or find it gross might not be familiar with current factory farming practices which basically guarantee an animal will spend most of its life packed wall-to-wall with other animals and covered in its own and other's shit. Fuck yeah, I'd eat the lab-grown hamburger. Although I've never much enjoyed hamburgers to begin with...

How is it disgusting?

[Rainie]

There is nothing more disgusting than the way that we currently obtain meat. People who think eating a hamburger grown in a lab is weird or find it gross might not be familiar with current factory farming practices which basically guarantee an animal will spend most of its life packed wall-to-wall with other animals and covered in its own and other's shit. Fuck yeah, I'd eat the lab-grown hamburger. Although I've never much enjoyed hamburgers to begin with...

I wouldn't necessary say that it's disgusting how many farmers raise animals in small areas (so that more of their energy will be used to grow); it's cruel, but I wouldn't describe it as gross/disgusting

&

I'd eat them, but probably only after they've been in the market for a while and no one's had health issues.

^

Edited by Rainie, 21 February 2012 - 06:26 PM.

[Bone]

I wouldn't necessary say that it's disgusting how many farmers raise animals in small areas (so that more of their energy will be used to grow); it's cruel, but I wouldn't describe it as gross/disgusting

I find the fact that the animals we eat live their lives wallowing in mountains of excrement and eating flesh of their own species disgusting. But maybe that's just me.

[Drakonid]

Then again, using said excrement and rotten plants to grow veggies is ok.

[Bone]

Then again, using said excrement and rotten plants to grow veggies is ok.

Yeah, because it doesn't reflect a drastic difference in the quality of the final product or a drastic difference from its natural environment.

[Drakonid]

And you say that with your agronomy degree hanging on your wall.
It can easily alter the environment without proper rotation.
Finally, sucks for you guys, but cows over here are not bred like that.