[Shaun]

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

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.

At a news conference, Prof Post said he was even planning to ask celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal to cook it.

"The reason we are doing this is not to show a viable product but to show that in reality we can do this," he told BBC News.

"From then on, we need to spend a whole lot of work and money to make the process efficient and then cost effective."

So why use such high tech methods to produce meat when livestock production methods have done the job effectively for thousands of years?

It is because most food scientists believe that current methods of food production are unsustainable.

Some estimate that food production will have to double within the next 50 years to meet the requirements of a growing population. During this period, climate change, water shortages and greater urbanisation will make it more difficult to produce food.

Prof Sean Smukler from the University of British Columbia said keeping pace with demand for meat from Asia and Africa will be particularly hard as demand from these regions will shoot up as living standards rise. He thinks that lab grown meat could be a good solution.
Butcher Demand for meat will increase at a time when it will be harder than ever for farmers to boost production

"It will help reduce land pressures," he told BBC News. "Anything that stops more wild land being converted to agricultural land is a good thing. We're already reaching a critical point in availability of arable land," he said.

Lab-grown meat could eventually become more efficient than producing meat the old fashioned way, according to Prof Post. Currently, 100g of vegetable protein has to be fed to pigs or cows to produce 15g of animal protein, an efficiency of 15%. He believes that synthetic meat could be produced with an equivalent energy efficiency of 50%.

So what is the synthetic burger likely to taste like?

"In the beginning it will taste bland," says Prof Post. "I think we will need to work on the flavour separately by trying to figure out which components of the meat actually produce the taste and analyse what the composition of the strip is and whether we can change that."

Prof Post also said that if the technology took off, it would reduce the number of animals that were factory farmed and slaughtered.

The BBC's Pallab Ghosh reports from Duggie's Dogs hot dog restaurant in Downtown Vancouver

But David Steele, who is president of Earthsave Canada, said that the same benefits could be achieved if people ate less meat.

"While I do think that there are definite environmental and animal welfare advantages of this high-tech approach over factory farming, especially, it is pretty clear to me that plant-based alternatives... have substantial environmental and probably animal welfare advantages over synthetic meat," he said.

Dr Steele, who is also a molecular biologist, said he was also concerned that unhealthily high levels of antibiotics and antifungal chemicals would be needed to stop the synthetic meat from rotting.

[swinearefine]

Gross. Someone was telling me about this last year, suggesting I should eat it because I'm a vegan, but why the ***** would I want to eat flesh, blood, and fat? I like how in the article they say they're doing it because it would be more "efficient" than rearing animals - so slaughtering unfathomable amounts of animals is all fine and dandy, the real problem is that it's a little tedious for people? Nice.

[SharkAttack]

I really thought this was going to be an article on the production of dildos at the local sexual pleasure factory. *peeved*

[Jords]

Dildo is such a funny word.

[GypsyGoth]

Synthetic meat sounds gross, but if it helps get rid of world hunger, then it's a great idea.

[Bollo]

I saw this on the news and they were growing this muscle in petri dishes it looked all horrible and stringy, think I'd rather eat vegetables

[Benjamin]

This actually makes me feel ill.

[Kizzy]

GM crops would cure world hunger...but is it the way forward?...i dont think this is the place for an ethical debate.

[Ramsay]

Sounds yummy

[Me. I Am Salman]

It sounds disgusting IMO

[Maia]

If it stops mass slaughtering of animals then I'm all for it

[Maia]

Not that I'd ever want to eat it, mind.

[arista]

Originally Posted by Mollie.

If it stops mass slaughtering of animals then I'm all for it

Of Course it will Not


This is a Idea to Mass Produce food for Africa and India.

[King Gizzard]

Sounds disgusting but I bet we'd be even more grossed out if we saw what the processed meat process was

[Kizzy]

Nope it will be a cost cutting exersize for maccy Ds, no cows, no farmers to pay... Mmmmm, mechanically reclaimed meat V frankenstein frankenfurters, but which ones the best?....theres only one way to find out....FIGHT!!!!

[lostalex]

I thought it looked delicious. Looked kinda like corned beef that'd been in a crock pot all day.

[Niall]

This is brilliant.

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Mollie.

If it stops mass slaughtering of animals then I'm all for it

Well, that'll never happen. And really, that's what the animals are there for in the first place. We're all animals at the end of the day and there's a food chain. lol