Scientist to create stem cell burger

20 Feb 2012, 5:53 pm   -   Source: AFP
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The world's first 'test-tube"' meat, a hamburger made from a cow's stem cells, will be produced this spring, Dutch scientist Mark Post told a major science conference on Sunday.

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The world's first "test-tube" meat, a hamburger made from a cow's stem cells, will be produced this spring, Dutch scientist Mark Post told a major science conference on Sunday.
  
Post's aim is to invent an efficient way to produce skeletal muscle tissue in a laboratory that exactly mimics meat, and eventually replace the entire meat-animal industry.
  
The ingredients for his first burger are "still in a laboratory phase," he said, but by spring "we have committed ourselves to make a couple of thousand of small tissues, and then assemble them into a hamburger."
  
Post, chair of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, said his project is funded with $A 307,000 from an anonymous private investor motivated by "care for the environment, food for the world, and interest in life-transforming technologies."
  
Post spoke at a symposium titled "The Next Agricultural Revolution" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver.
  
Speakers said they aim to develop such "meat" products for mass consumption to reduce the environmental and health costs of conventional food production.
  
Conventional meat and dairy production requires more land, water, plants and disposal of waste products than almost all other human foods, they said.
  
The global demand for meat is expected to rise by 60 percent by 2050, said American scientist Nicholas Genovese, who organized the symposium.
  
"But the majority of earth's pasture lands are already in use," he said, so conventional livestock producers can only meet the booming demand by further expansion into nature.
  
The result would be lost biodiversity, more greenhouse and other gases, and an increase in disease, he said.
  
In 2010 a report by the United Nations Environment Program called for a global vegetarian diet.
  
"Animal farming is by far the biggest ongoing global catastrophe," Patrick Brown of the Stanford University School of Medicine told reporters.
  
"More to the point, it's incredibly ready to topple ... it's inefficient technology that hasn't changed fundamentally for millennia," he said.
  
"There's been a blind spot in the science and technology community (of livestock production) as an easy target."
  
Brown, who said he is funded by an American venture capital firm and has two start-ups in California, said he will devote the rest of his life to develop products that mimic meat but are made entirely from vegetable sources.
  
He is working "to develop and commercialize a product that can compete head on with meat and dairy products based on taste and value for the mainstream consumer, for people who are hard-core meat and cheese lovers who can't imagine ever giving that up, but could be persuaded if they had a product with all taste and value."
  
Brown said developing meat from animal cells in a laboratory will still have a high environmental cost, and so he said he will rely only on plant sources.
  
Both scientists said no companies in the existing meat industry have expressed interest.
  
 

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Your Comments

Yes Please

Alex - from Adelaide, 3 months ago

I'm interested in the possibility that it could be even better than the real thing - consider a steak that is built of muscle that has never even once contracted - a total absence of sinew or cartilage, fat content carefully controlled to maximise flavour and minimise HDLs and cholesterol, all the while in an ethical environmentally friendly enterprise that could take place in the heart of any major city eliminating transport costs etc. Sounds like a good Karma burger to me.

@Sarah

Kev - from Noraville, 3 months ago

Certainly a sensible idea but I doubt it would realistically be taken up. I can't understand why people smoke or drink but they are going to do it anyway because they enjoy it. I believe the same things stands for meat, I'm not huge on red meat myself but I do enjoy a good burger every now and then. It's unlikely this will ever fully replace the cattle industry since there will certainly be opposition to it from farmers and society in general who don't see how far the benefits outweigh the negatives. People will be against this for the sake of keeping people employed or fear of something they don't understand and will this continue to buy "real" meat in defiance. My point is that while agree I doubt people will lessen their consumption because they enjoy it too much, at least this way far fewer cows would need to head to the abattoir.

I have an idea...

Sarah - from Tas, 3 months ago

How about we just eat less meat? We eat too much anyway...

Silly to be afraid

Kev - from Noraville, 3 months ago

That's ridiculous, it's stem cells! They are given the right nutrients and temp to become the same cells you eat in an everyday burger. To find this disgusting is as absurd as people against genetically altered crops because they don't want to eat genes! This technology is an environmental and agricultural necessity, more room for crops and more room for the environment.

Mrs.

Mary - from Georgia Mts., 3 months ago

Just the thought of this makes me want to barf. I saw a picture of the petri dish earlier and it looked sickening. If this is what the country is coming to, I am glad I am old and will probably be planted before it comes to pass.

Finally!

Kev - from Noraville, 3 months ago

I'm glad this is finally coming about, I heard about it years ago but havnt heard anything in recent times. This is brilliant, cattle farming is expensive, environmentally destructive and requires enormous space to run. Another unethical, inefficient and redundant industry bites the dust. I happily await the stem cell burger.

BIG MAC ANYONE ?

Paul - from QLD, 3 months ago

Look's like McDonalds will have a new Big Mac Burger, COMING SOON :- Two all stem cell patties, cultured special sauce, genetically modified lettuce, cheese, pickles, onion on a sesame seed bun.

Eat up

Him - from Melb, 3 months ago

So what could be worse then the hormone fed beef and chicken and so forth that we get today? Just another way to make mass profits off genetic modifications thank you do much for everything... Or not

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