For $1 you can get a fast food burger that looks like it was grown in a petrie dish. Or for about $400,00 you can get one that was.
Dr. Mark Post, a professor of physiology based in the Netherlands, is developing lab-grown meat, made entirely from the stem cells of a cow. His cost to produce the first ever burger of its kind has reached six figures, but the pay-off could be huge.
This isn't some Top Chef nuclear gastronomy stunt. Post hopes his discovery will be a solution looming ecological and agricultural crises.
"Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years and right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock," Post told The Guardian. "You can easily calculate that we need alternatives. If you don't do anything meat will become a luxury food and be very, very expensive."
Post's process involves growing sheets of cow muscle extracted from stem cells harvested in fetal calf serum. Still with me? The muscle sheets, once grown, are minced with fatty tissue and turned into a patty.
Depending on the taste, which is still undocumented, it could be a major breakthrough for meat-eaters. We're already filtering through genetically modified produce in our grocery store, and the processed ingredients in your standard McRib is a lot more Sci-Fi than any cow stem cell. It also sounds a lot more delicious than the poop burger, a Japanese lab's attempt to tackle similar agricultural problems with the help of processed sewage. No thanks.
In addition to the ecological benefits of stem-cell grown meat, the ability to harvest beef in a controlled lab setting can cut down the threat of mad cow and other deadly diseases borne in overcrowded farms and processing plants. Even the Star Wars burger can't promise that.
Once Post's stem cell burger is perfected, the mad genius intends to try out more meat products in his laboratory kitchen. "We could make panda meat, I'm sure we could," he said in an interview.
Baby steps, buddy. We're still getting over fetal calf serum.
Copyright © 2012 Yahoo Inc.
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