Coming soon, the test-tube burger: Lab-grown meat 'needed to feed the world'
- We need a courageous person willing to be the first to taste it, says professor
Last updated at 8:44 AM on 27th June 2011
The first ‘test-tube’ hamburger is only a year away, scientists claim.
They believe the product, beef mince grown from stem cells, could pave the way for eating meat without animals being slaughtered.
The Dutch scientists predict that over the next few decades the world’s population will increase so quickly that there will not be enough livestock to feed everyone.
As a result, they say, laboratory-grown beef, chicken and lamb could become normal.
The scientists are currently developing a burger which will be grown from 10,000 stem cells extracted from cattle, which are then left in the lab to multiply more than a billion times to produce muscle tissue similar to beef.
The product is called ‘in vitro’ meat.
Mark Post, professor of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who is behind the project, said: ‘I don’t see any way you could rely on old-fashioned livestock in the coming decades.
HOW THE BURGER IS MADE FROM STEM CELLS
This is how the process will work for hamburgers made from stem cells.
- A sample of the cell is taken from a healthy cow.
- 10,000 stem cells are extracted from the sample.
- Cells divide and billions grow under laboratory conditions in a dish.
- Young muscle cells are grown on a a 'scaffold' that puts tension on them to bulk them up.
- Muscle fibres are minced and turned into burgers.
‘In vitro meat will be the only choice left.
‘We are trying to prove to the world we can make a product out of this, and we need a courageous person who is willing to be the first to taste it.
‘If no one comes forward then it might be me.’
He told Scientific American magazine that he thought the first burger could be made within 12 months.
In 2009 scientists from the same university grew strips of pork using the same method. They admitted it was not particularly appetising, being grey with a similar texture to calamari. Fish fillets have been grown in a New York laboratory using cells taken from goldfish muscle tissue.
Even if the initial results do not taste quite the same as proper meat, scientists are convinced the public will soon get used to it, especially if they do not have a choice.
A colleague of Professor Post said: ‘When we are eating a hamburger we don’t think, “I’m eating a dead cow”. And when people are already far from what they eat, it’s not too hard to see them accepting cultured meat.’
The real thing: |In future beefburgers will be produced from stem cells made in laboratories
The world’s meat consumption is expected to double by 2050 as the population increases.
Holland is currently leading the world in the production of artificial meat, and the Dutch government has put £1.5million into the research. The scientists involved believe that the test-tube burger is only the first stage in a food revolution that might be able to solve the problem.
Researchers at Utrecht University have calculated that an initial ten stem cells could produce 50,000 tons of meat in two months.
An Oxford University study found that this process would consume 35-60 per cent less energy, 98 per cent less land and produce 80-95 per cent less greenhouse gas than conventional farming.
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