Burger Time: Test-Tube Taste Test

More:

“Here’s how the world’s first synthetic meat tastes,” Lindsay Abrams, Salon

“Test-Tube Burger: Lab-Cultured Meat Passes Taste Test (Sort of),” Arielle Duhaime-Ross, Scientific American

Lab-Grown Burger

A 5-ounce hamburger will be served up in London next week at a cost of nearly $400,000. Fries cost extra.

The precious patty of burger meat will be “in-vitro” beef, laboratory- grown from a cow’s stem cells. “Right now, we are using 70 percent of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock,” says meat manufacturer Dr. Mark Post of Holland’s Maastricht University. “You are going to need alternatives. If we don’t do anything, meat will become a luxury food and will become very expensive.”

Laboratory Hamburger

The world’s first in-vito meat hamburger will be ready this fall, according to Mark Post of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. He spoke last Sunday at the AAAS meetings in Vancouver, in a symposium called “The Next Agricultural Revolution: Emerging Production Methods for Meat Alternatives.”

Dr. Post has been growing the patty from cow stem cells and plans to put it to the ultimate scientific test: it will be cooked and eaten. The team hopes famed chef Heston Blumenthal will broil that burger and some other open-minded celebrity will eat it. Don’t look for lab-grown burgers in the drive-thru lane any time soon; it’s costing over $400,000 to make the first one.