Lab-grown meat is first step to artificial hamburger

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

19 February 2012 Last updated at 20:29 GMT

Lab-grown meat is first step to artificial hamburger

By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News, Vancouver

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%.

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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.

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Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16972761

[Enrique]

1. eventually our phones will be able to produce meat

hopefully not in my lifetime.

[DJ13]

2. Coming soon to the grocery stores?

[Warpy]

3. I'd welcome it

I was a veg head for years, but only because I feel better when I don't load down with meat. Now I eat it very sparingly, using it as one of many flavors in a mostly veg dish.

I've always found it emotionally distasteful to have to dispatch other sentient creatures to feed off their muscle and innards, even though I realize this is the way the planet was designed to work. However, being able to put my half pound of ground something or other into the posole verde knowing it never suffered fear or pain would be more emotionally satisfying.

So bring on the Soylent, folks. I'll be thrilled to see it happen in my lifetime.

[SDjack]

4. Where's the bacon?

Do they expect us to eat lab beef without lab bacon? And, is lab meat less carcinogenic than animal meat?

[DJ13]

6. I think thats called

"Spam"

[Ian David]

5. Sign me up! Om nom nom! n/t

[customerserviceguy]

7. Makes no less sense than high fructose corn syrup. n/t

[denverbill]

8. Somehow this reminds me of the mad cow problem.

Scientists were convinced that feeding cattle reprocessed cattle remains wouldn't be a problem. After all, whatever food the cattle eat is just broken down into it's constituent proteins, fats, etc, so what's the problem. It was a long time before prions were discovered and found to be causing mad cow disease in cattle and in people.

I know this is different, but there are still the problems associated with cloning, for example. A cloned animal (the early ones anyway, not sure about more recent tests) died much younger than it's clonee because the cells were predisposed to die at the age of the clonee. You could get around that in food by continually replenishing the source cells, but what other new problems may be found? Will the lack of an immune system lead to problems with bacteria, viruses, and cancers? Who knows?

It seems to me that if something just doesn't sound quite right, there is probably a good reason for that. Don't feed cows to cows and don't grow meat in a lab.

[Historic NY]

9. these strips will be mixed with blood & artificially grown fat....

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.

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. 3D printing will be making human body parts

using this process, plus food replicators aka star trek. Welcome to the 21st century.
Its here and its coming if we like it or not.

The singularity is near.

[bananas]

17. good point - they could use these on Mars and the Moon

where there won't be a large area for grazing.

[Posteritatis]

11. Entirely unoffended; I think this is fantastic. (nt)

[Skinner]

12. Hard to get past the "ick" factor.

But environmentally this sounds like it might be a good thing.

[byronius]

13. Excellent. Very exciting.

[Phoonzang]

14. Yeah, sign me up...when it's not like 13,000 dollars a burger.

Until then, I'm going to eat meat from poor, helpless animals.

[Motown_Johnny]

15. Muscle is one part, now they need fat cells

and blood would be good for color


Just growing bloodless fatless muscle is one step but not anywhere near the finished product

[Shankapotomus]

16. It would solve the whale hunting problem

Just clone whale meat.

[ZombieHorde]

18. I think part of the whale-hunting problem involves saving face.

I think the public conflict, which is obviously highly entertaining for many, is making the end of whaling more difficult than it normally would be.

[Shankapotomus]

19. Entertaining is right

I mean if it was solved through cloning what would they do for the next season of Whale Wars?

[HopeHoops]

20. We already have artificial hamburger - it's called "fast food".