Lab-grown meat is first step to artificial hamburger

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BBC:

The first strips of muscle have been grown in a project to develop a new way to produce meat

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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.

Read the whole story: BBC

Comments

Disgusting!

February 20, 2012 by Chris (United Kingdom ), 12 weeks 5 days ago

This is a disgrace! Unnatural, un-Godly, and it's only a matter of time before new diseases are spawned because people will consume these things. How on earth can the human body be exposed to something like this without long term scientific testing being carried out on the health-related concerns

If slaughterhouses and animal

February 21, 2012 by Jim Adams (United States ), 12 weeks 5 days ago

If slaughterhouses and animal cruelty seem more natural and "Godly" things to you, I'd hate to know what God you believe in! Science is probably the only chance that this world has of not over-consuming itself.

The use of "such" science has

February 22, 2012 by Chris (United Kingdom ), 12 weeks 4 days ago

The use of "such" science has not been tested, how on earth can you advocate the consumption of synthetic biology without knowing the affects on human health?? Slaughterhouses might seem inhumane to you, but watching innocent people die from some incurable disease in 20 years from now because the testing wasn't sufficient is more terrifying to me! In the UK alone 7.2 BILLION TONNES of food is thrown away each year. Food waste that could feed an entire starving nation! Distribution of food is the key to helping those in need and enabling us to flourish as a human race. Not through creating fake meat to feed to the poor without knowing what affect it will have on their health and on human DNA

Nice to meet you

February 22, 2012 by Jim Adams (United States ), 12 weeks 4 days ago

Fear mongering, religion, muddling the waters by throwing in a few unrelated subjects that just sound good. And what do we have? Another confused conservative soul.

The subject at hand here is meeting meat demand in years to come while correctly managing energy and production resources on this planet. What's your solution? More slaughterhouses?

Fear mongering? GM foods have

February 22, 2012 by Chris (United Kingdom ), 12 weeks 4 days ago

Fear mongering? GM foods have already been linked to serious health issues, this takes it to a whole new level! It is "fake meat" that falls within the realm of synthetic biology. Bear in mind that some of the worst diseases known to man have been linked to an inbalance of certain elements/chemicals within the human body and a mutations of DNA. Consider neurological diseases for instance, ALS has been linked with glutamate inbalances. CSF tests check for certain proteins breaching the brain/blood barrier as they try to identify causes for things like Parkinson's, MS, etc. How do you know what sort of chemical inbalances this "fake meat" can cause in the human body?

Just because I used the term "un-Godly" don't try and turn this into a religious argument. Apply your religious intolerance elsewhere and deal with the matter at hand: without long term testing we cannot allow synthetic meat to be consummed by the general public, it is too dangerous! As for meeting the demand for meat in years to come? Did you even read my last post or did you just decide to try and insult me with your fanatical political views guiding you? £7.2 billion worth of edible food is wasted every single year in the UK alone. The UK is merely a country of 60 million, imagine how much is unnecessarily wasted globally. There needs to be a world wide agreement on the distribution of food as "aid". That will resolve the problem of starvation so to answer your question, no, more slaughter-houses are not needed, just a better organization of food distribution. And even if more slaughter houses were needed, as long as animals are slaughtered in a humane manner, then the consumption of meat is not immoral. If you think so then you are in the minority because most people around the world are not vegetarians. I would happily "slaughter" hundreds of thousands of chickens if it meant that just 1 starving person is saved! Thankfully that isn't necessary, a better "food distribution" method is all that is needed because there's already enough food to go around.