Test-Tube Burgers Coming Soon

ananyo writes "A burger made entirely from lab-grown meat is expected to be unveiled by October this year. But costing in excess of $250,000, it's not going to be flying off supermarket shelves quite yet. The lab meat is produced using adult stem cells, which are then grown on scaffolds in cell-culture media. Because such lab-assembled muscle is weak, it has to be 'bulked up' by exposing to electric shocks. The researchers, based in the Netherlands, had already grown goldfish fillets in 2002, then fried them in breadcrumbs before giving them to an 'odor and sight' panel to assess whether they seemed edible." While I'm not overly enthusiastic about this Dutch attempt at growing burgers, it is a huge step-up from the Japanese effort.

Comments

Re:Excited

[equex]

Nothing wrong with killing animals for food. But if they can make it just as good (or even better) in the lab, I'm all for it.

Or... Just Eat Less Meat

[lobiusmoop]

In the West we could all do with eating a bit further down the food chain really - Red meat is known to linked to bowel cancers.

Mind you, I'm Scottish, so can't really preach about good diet really :)

Re:Excited

[Anrego]

Oh but they will be replaced by an anti-synthetics group.

At least it will be a different ringing in the ears.

it's going to be covered in ketchup anyway

[jsepeta]

so who cares how it tastes?

adult stem cells

[romanval]

They mean adult cattle... but my first thought: it's made of people!

Re:Using this technique

[icebike]

I don't know why but this concept gives me the creeps because we don't really understand all there is to know about genetics.

And this is different in what why when compared to meat from Cattle or Pigs, or Lettuce, or tomatoes? We really don't know all there is to know about ANYTHING, and we never will. Yet I bet you eat these things with impunity.

Interestingly enough, Tomatoes are one of the first bio-engineered foods. Originally no bigger than a berry, it had already been engineered by indigenous farmers in South America to be about the size of a large grape when the Spanish arrived. Only after it was spread to Europe was it widely cultivated, crossbred, and selected until it reached its current size. Every once in a while someone decides to make tea out of tomato leaves. Bad Idea. And we don't know All there is to Know about tomatoes yet, but we eat them by the ton.

This "We don't know all there is to know" is just another version of the rallying cry There are some things science can't explain! which is thrown out by the "back to the earth" crowd any time anything challenging is presented.

I haven't decided if this an example of the Fallacy of False Dilemma, or the Fallacy of the Appeal to Ignorance, but its pretty annoying in any case.

Re:Using this technique

[Dogtanian]

If they could come up with a food substitute that was purely for sensation / making you feel full, and we all just took pills to actually get nutritional content.. I'd be all for it.

I dunno, they did something similar to that with chewing gum in the early 1970s that was supposed to approximate a three course meal. If I remember correctly, it ended up badly with the blueberry pie dessert course.

I think they made a hard-hitting movie dramatisation of it...