The Test Tube Hamburger
The world’s first “test tube” meat, a hamburger made from a cow’s stem cells, will be produced this fall, Dutch scientist Mark Post said. 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 fall “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 by an anonymous private investor motivated by “care for the environment, food for the world, and interest in life-transforming technologies.” Experts say mass-producing beef, pork, chicken and lamb in the lab could satisfy the growing global demand for meat – forecast to double within the next 40 years – and dramatically reduce the harm that farming does to the environment.
The world’s first “test tube” meat, a hamburger made from a cow’s stem cells, will be produced this fall, Dutch scientist Mark Post said. 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 fall “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 by an anonymous private investor motivated by “care for the environment, food for the world, and interest in life-transforming technologies.” Experts say mass-producing beef, pork, chicken and lamb in the lab could satisfy the growing global demand for meat – forecast to double within the next 40 years – and dramatically reduce the harm that farming does to the environment.
