Would you feel better about eating your burger if you knew no cows had to die for your dinner? Researchers in The Netherlands got you covered. They're growing actual beef in a petri dish using bovine stem cells. And they hope someday you can trade in a veggie patty for a beefy burger served without an extra side of controversy.
Mark Post, a professor of vascular physiology at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, outlined his experiment at a February conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver. Post says he wants to find a way to keep feeding the planet's growing population of meat-eaters while reducing the environmental costs of more livestock. "Meat consumption is going to double in the next 40 years or so, so we need to come up with alternatives to solve the land issue," Post said.
Post says they're still a lot of work to be done since they won't have a sample big enough to cook for eight more months. No one's been able to taste the lab-meat yet, but they plan to add lab-fat for flavor, which will grow in a separate petri dish. Post says his anonymous money source will get to choose the (lucky?) person who gets to take that first taste in October. All told, that one burger will price out at about $330,000.
If you're just not ready to eat laboratory experiments, you've got time to get used to the idea. CNN says making stem cell burger production more efficient than regular burgers is still years away. With their current resources, Post says mass production would never be possible. Even if they had unlimited resources, it would still take 10 to 20 years.
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