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Scientists Create Artificial Meat
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that scientists have created the first artificial meat by extracting cells from the muscle of a live pig and putting them in a broth of other animal products where the cells then multiplied to create muscle tissue. Described as soggy pork, researchers believe that it can be turned into something like steak if they can find a way to 'exercise' the muscle and while no one has yet tasted the artificial meat, researchers believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat in as little as five years' time. '"What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue. We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there," says Mark Post, professor of physiology at Eindhoven University. "You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals." Animal rights group Peta has welcomed the laboratory-grown meat, announcing that "as far as we're concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there's no ethical objection while the Vegetarian Society remained skeptical. "The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust.""
As a foodie, all I have to say is that a large part of the taste of a good steak comes from the FAT content of the meat, and that _pure_ 'cultivated' muscle tissue would make for a terrible steak, and an even worse hamburger.
Until they manage to grow a well-marbled piece of meat, they won't be any better than a tofu burger.
...but the NY cut or Filet mignon aged beef marinated over 24 hours cooked by a professional with the right blend of herbs spices...
As a classically trained chef I can tell you that marinating filet mignon for 24 hours is a terribly bad idea. With such a small amount of connective tissue and fat it would be mushy and over seasoned. Although I do agree with the rest of your post. :)
I hate to tell you this, but "add a gene" isn't the simple solution. The simple solution, which also covers BSE-infected meat, salmonella outbreaks, and any other food safety issue, involves implementing a tracking system from farm to table. It's not difficult, and should have been done years ago. In fact, Canadian produce farmers already have nearly 100% tracking of their goods, while the US is at 5%. It's good for consumers, and it's good for producers.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
Because an animal spends a lot of time doing energy inefficient things like walking around, keeping itself warm, growing bones and brains and other useless parts. Only the fact that you can focus on the good parts will already give a profit. Btw, this technology is hardly new. I read about it years ago in our university newspaper (I am a student of the Eindhoven University of Technology). And at that time they also promised that there would be sausages in a couple of years. It sounds a bit like nuclear fusion
It's the second law of thermodynamics.
Any type of living tissue is ALWAYS using more free energy than it will produce.
It requires energy input to do any of its processes (pushing against chemical gradients, synthesizing complex organic molecules, etc). The net value of energy that you could collect through any type of muscle contraction is always less than the amount of energy you had to put in to cause that muscle to flex. Actin and myosin fibers sliding over each other require ATP to change their conformations properly, and ATP is created through biochemical metabolic pathways that are not 100% efficient. You always lose energy to heat. That's why you need to eat everyday.
It's the very essence of entropy.