Engineering the $325,000 Burger

Dr. Mark Post hopes to bring the dream of cultured meat one step closer to reality when he unveils his high tech hamburger in London. The five ounce burger is composed of 20,000 strips of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory at a cost of $325,000 (provided by an anonymous donor.) From the article: "The hamburger, assembled from tiny bits of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory and to be cooked and eaten at an event in London, perhaps in a few weeks, is meant to show the world — including potential sources of research funds — that so-called in-Vitro meat, or cultured meat, is a reality."

Comments

I hope

[rossdee]

You get lots of fries for that price

(And your coke in a real glass, not a plastic cup)

Re:I hope

[maxwell demon]

But then, it's not made out of animals. So it's clearly vegetarian food.

Re:I hope

[femtobyte]

You get lots of fries for that price

Yep, you get plenty of fries from a parallel research project, codenamed "raise dolphins that grow potato tumors and kill them to make fries," thanks to a generous donation from the Society for the Promotion of Cruelty to Animals.

Re:I hope

[ArcadeMan]

Some people don't eat meat and animal products for health reasons, others for ethical reasons. So I think this will split the vegetarians and vegans into four groups:
- health issues vegetarian
- health issues vegan
- ethical vegetarian
- ethical vegan

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on why one is a vegetarian.

Are you a vegetarian because you won't kill and eat anything that - you assume - has a 'soul', or some defined equivalent?

Or are you a vegetarian because you believe that eating a once- or currently-living form of protein is bad for you physically?

Re:I hope

[ArcadeMan]

I think you mean real coke in a real glass.

Re:I hope

[maxwell demon]

Of course there are also the people who think that any food that has even just come close to a lab is the devil. That group might have a considerable (but not complete) overlap with the ethical vegetarians/vegans.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, wouldn't the ethical vegetarian become ethical non-vegetarians...

This interests me greatly. I have never had meat in my life, for ethical reasons. I'd eat this thing, though.

Re:I hope

[maxwell demon]

Yeah, I also wouldn't accept imaginary coke. Nor complex coke, because it always has an imaginary part.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

For $325,000, you typically get the option of real coke in a line off a stripper's ass, should you ask.

Re:I hope

[Culture20]

And the health-issues variety. "Vat grown meat exacerbates my wifi allergy!"

Re:I hope

[ArcadeMan]

Ethical vegetarians will eat this but still won't eat meat from animals. They would still be vegetarians. This wouldn't be "meat" to them.

Re:I hope

[allaunjsilverfox2]

Um, wouldn't the ethical vegetarian become ethical non-vegetarians...

This interests me greatly. I have never had meat in my life, for ethical reasons. I'd eat this thing, though.

I'm curious if this would one day allow human muscle tissue to be sold. I saw this weird movie where most, if not all diseases were cured, and there was a obsession with celebrities. If they got a virus, it would be sold at a high price. And their vat grown muscle tissue was sold at a local deli.

Re:I hope

[LurkerXXX]

The ethical ones will likely still have issues.

Ever grow tissue culture cells? I didn't think so.

Your going to be feeding them regularly with a media composed of a number of things. One of those things is going to be horse/bovine serum. Lots of blood components went into it. One of the reasons that the burger is so expensive.

Re:I hope

[PolygamousRanchKid]

- ethical vegetarian
- ethical vegan

Things that I eat include:
- edible vegetarian
- edible vegan

Re:I hope

[Anubis IV]

Sure it would. For people who adhere to vegetarianism on an ethical basis strictly founded in the idea that they do not want to contribute to the death and/or suffering of animals, there is no reason why they would have any issues with meat, taken in the absence of animals, nor any reason why they would deny the "meatness" of this material. They're issue isn't with the meat itself: it's with the way that the meat is gathered. Lab grown meat would still be meat and would likely circumvent those objections.

Of course, I recall an episode of Better of Ted where the geeks try to grow meat in the lab. When the tester eventually eats it, they ask how it tastes, and from my recollection, I believe the answer was, "like despair".

Re:I hope

[plopez]

coke is always partly imaginary

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Beans are living forms of protein...

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people don't eat meat and animal products for health reasons

Those people are idiots because not eating meat is unhealthy.

Re:I hope

[guttentag]

But then, it's not made out of animals. So it's clearly vegetarian food.

No, it is made out of animals. From TFA:

But the meat is produced with materials — including fetal calf serum, used as a medium in which to grow the cells — that eventually would have to be replaced by similar materials of non-animal origin.

Vegetarians love fetal calf serum. It just sounds so tasty, natural and cruelty-free!

Re: I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

The ethical vegetarians could be the same as the anti fur people who are also opposed to fake fur because it perpetuates fur as a fashion.
Eating lab meat is perpetuating the consumption of animals and they would prefer all forms of meat consumption to stop.

Re: I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware that BILLIONS of people live perfectly healthy lives without meat right? Oh what am I saying you are a burger eater so your IQ is too low to even understand what I'm talking about.

Re: I hope

[93 Escort Wagon]

You are aware that BILLIONS of people live perfectly healthy lives without meat right?

If you call that living.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

mmmm...sounds yummy ...gAg! *vomit*....fetal calf serum is the next best thing to grandmas home cookin' don't cha know? *urgh!*vomits again*

I'm a vegetarian but even if I ate meat it wouldn't be this .... *stuff* ... more like the free range chickens at the local butchers

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Even less animals than an ordinary burger? Because that's no mean feat.

Re: I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Typing in upper case don't make it true, got any credible sources? Best I found so far was blogs and pro-vegetarian/vegan sites. The very best case was India at 399 million (about 40%) not eating meat, mostly for religious reasons. If you want to add in all the Buddhists worldwide (counting the India ones again) that's another 350 million, still far from even a single billion. Buddhists and Indians are the two highest percentage by far, Every other country is far lower in percent of people that abstain from meat.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Rudy Rucker had an SF novel, where a future entrepeneur named Wendy donated a sample of her muscle tissue, to be grown in vats and sold as food. "wendy meat". hey, if the animal volunteers the food, like the Shmoo from Lil Abner, why shouldnt we eat it? Actually, when i read this, it sounded like the donor did provide his own flesh. i hope they dna-tested it to be sure it was beef. "hey, this tastes like pork!" (human flesh supposedly is closed to pig meat in flavor).

Re:I hope

[Cyberax]

I used to work in a company that grows animal tissue cultures. You certainly CAN grow lots of tissue types without horse serum or any animal-related products. In fact, lots of lab protocols require that.

Re: I hope

[guruevi]

Meat is a relatively expensive source of proteins and other nutrients however eating (cooked) meat does provide a very rich source of those nutrients that require less energy to metabolize which has allowed us to evolve our brain structures to become more intelligent.

We do eat comparatively more meat since the industrial revolution than the cultures before us to the point that we may be eating too much meat, that's true and the poor in some countries still don't have easy access to meat as we do here in the west. However to go entirely vegetarian/vegan as a species would probably not be evolutionary the best way of survival unless everyone has sufficient control over their entire living environment and enough alternative food sources.

A mistake a lot of vegans/vegetarians make is to not replace their protein sources sufficiently (soy, beans ...) which makes them susceptible to having low energy and the associated problems with that (being tired, less mental acuity, less creative, lower resistance...).

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

I would never eat the stuff (ethical vegitarian with zero interest in meat or meat-like substances), but I think it would be great to have it for the regular meat eaters. Eventually this stuff will likely become cheaper than conventional meat, then every fast food restaurant, and convenience food manufacturer will switch. It will probably save millions from a brief and tortured existence in the first year after crossing that price threshold.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Divide and conquer'em!

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

And they scream too, albeit quite a while after they've been eaten.

Re:I hope

[BasilBrush]

My own concern is: how will I know for sure it's fake beef and not fake horse?

Re:I hope

[Lumpy]

I love vegetarians... they go great with catsup!

Re: I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

You could say the same thing about tv, internet, running water, flush toilets, etc.....I think before we worry about broadband for all we should make sure everyone has proper access to bacon.

Re: I hope

[Lumpy]

There is no life and no GOD without bacon.

Honestly, Bacon is life. Bacon is love. Bacon is the creator of all things.

Re:I hope

[Lumpy]

And if you want to have some fun eat uncooked red kidney beans. Note: be sure to stay in the bath tub as you will be projectile vomiting out of both ends.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Celebrity meat?

I would totally eat Natalie Portmanteau with a side of hot grits.

Re:I hope

[Culture20]

Whether or not you buy it from the UK?

Re: I hope

[ArcadeMan]

Oh, a third category. The philosophical vegetarian.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I don't even class vegans as a type.
It is pure lunacy. They base their "reasons" on some absolute nonsense.
You literally cannot remove yourself from animal byproduct, Earth is a closed-system, there are dead animals in that leaf you just ate. It could be a year old, it could be 100 years, it will still be there regardless. You'd have to be deluded to think you could remove yourself from that fact.
People like that are similar to those that "forget" where the trash goes, that it just falls in to some infinite pit of nothingness and don't question it.
Earth is very finite, even on human scales. In fact, especially on human scales now. A person can circle the globe in mere hours now or go to Saturn and punch Titan if they really wanted to. (okay, maybe only richest rich for the latter, but still, doable!)

Vegetarians are fine though. They actually have some sense in them. I know many vegetarians personally. (even if one did only become one to impress his awful now ex-girlfriend, glad that phase is done with, changing for people like that is stupid)

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be on the Atkins diet. Good luck with that heart disease.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

If you get Mad Fake Cow Disease, it's not fake horse.

Re:I hope

[goffster]

Don't forget to "supersize" it.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not an animal! I am a human bean.

Re:I hope

[myowntrueself]

Some people don't eat meat and animal products for health reasons, others for ethical reasons. So I think this will split the vegetarians and vegans into four groups:
- health issues vegetarian
- health issues vegan
- ethical vegetarian
- ethical vegan

Theres also political. I've known many vegans and the ones I've known treat it more like a political movement than a dietary discipline. I guess you might put that under 'ethical' but I think they get so carried away on their ethics that really it becomes political.

Re:I hope

[azcoyote]

Also, some vegetarians just don't like meat or have some aversion to it.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

You are eating fabaceae babies, you vicious monsters! Always taking pride in murdering and eating creatures that cannot escape or fight back...

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most people on the planet eat beans and rice,
They can't afford the meat or they think cows are nice."

Re:I hope

[Ol Olsoc]

Personally I don't even class vegans as a type. It is pure lunacy. They base their "reasons" on some absolute nonsense.

What they are, is people who are trying to convert a predator species to a prey species.

All that said, once this catches on, I plan to eat only factory grown meat products. I've gotten all the hunting and food preparation of natural animals out of my system, and would rather just enjoy them now.

But meat is so darn tasty.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Over 1 served !

Re:I hope

[Samantha Wright]

Early experiments with in vitro meat had no muscle tone. (Past stories here have pointed this out.) The closest natural experience would be eating a fetus—not exactly good steak.

Re:I hope

[Samantha Wright]

What about quaternion coke? What then?

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

You get lots of fries for that price

(And your coke in a real glass, not a plastic cup)

I get that from red robin already for 12 bucks and their fries are all you can eat.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

My own concern is: how will I know for sure it's fake beef and not fake horse?

Do you know that now?

Re: I hope

[Biff Stu]

OK. I like Kevin Bacon. He's starred in some good flicks. I think that Tremors is an under appreciated film, and did you know that he was the one with the "Thank you sir! May I have another?" line in Animal House. He even has that whole Bacon Number thing going for him. But come on, there's a point where being a fan turns into a sick obsession, and I think you're treading dangerously close to that line.

Re:I hope

[ChromeAeonium]

Of course there are also the people who think that any food that has even just come close to a lab is the devil.

And I guarantee those people will say vat grown causes everything from cancer to autism. If we don't watch out this will become the next frankenfood scare

Re: I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Any more idiotic cliches you'd like to regurgitate?

Most of what you have said is demonstrably false...if you want citations, google it or experiment on yourself rigorously.

Until then STFU.

Re:I hope

[ChromeAeonium]

If I recall correctly, awhile back PETA stepped into this and offered some prize for whoever could make commercially viable vat grown meat, and a bunch of PETA members flipped out. I'm not sure what exactly their reasonings were, but they didn't like it.

Re: I hope

[able1234au]

Roger Bacon?

Re:I hope

[ozmanjusri]

What about real human?

Would that be either legal or ethical?

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

For 325,000 I better get a burger that is big enough to become my house.
It also must transform into a car.
Be capable of giving me hummer.

Re:I hope

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Early experiments with in vitro meat had no muscle tone. (Past stories here have pointed this out.) The closest natural experience would be eating a fetus—not exactly good steak.

That can be fixed. One way is by running electrodes through the meat and stimulating the muscle while it grows.

Re:I hope

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

It would be a new perspective on the phrase, "I get to eat X". where X is your favorite star.

Re: I hope

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Especially Chunky Bacon!

Oh yeah and Ruby rules.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I wish they'd concentrate on stripping the carbosugar and gliadin out of plants, rather than grow meat strips.

Re:I hope

[Samantha Wright]

Indeed, which is something that has been done here. Hence the "early" qualifier.

Re:I hope

[aztracker1]

Of course more grazing animals is the cure for desertification.. and in order to achieve that we need either more predatory animals, or more people eating meat to reduce aging populations in a controlled manner... and curing desertification could well be the key to reversing man's influence on global warming.. so... eating meat is entirely ethical, and in fact, it's probably the right thing to do for the sanctity of saving the planet.

Re: I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of what you have said is demonstrably false...if you want citations, google it or experiment on yourself rigorously.

Saying this is surrendering the argument while still trying (but failing) to look like you aren't surrendering.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree fully with your sentiment but need to clarify that the term you should use is omnivore, not predator. And instead of telling any vegan that disagrees with you to shut their mouth, you can tell them to open it - in front of a mirror. Human teeth are absolute proof that we've evolved to eat everything - we are hunter gatherers, after all. And on some level vegans acknowledge our need for meat since they take food supplements...

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

For that price you should get a glass full of real cocaine.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Your problem is that you're attacking a straw man version of veganism.

Re:I hope

[AdamWill]

You forgot '- think that eating seafood and the occasional hamburger counts as vegetarian'

Re:I hope

[WillKemp]

[......] people who adhere to vegetarianism on an ethical basis strictly founded in the idea that they do not want to contribute to the death and/or suffering of animals [......]

Those people are deluding themselves - unless they're vegans, that is. Dairy production causes just as much death and suffering as meat production - and considerably more than the production of some types of meat (kangaroo, for example).

Re:I hope

[hawkinspeter]

I don't eat meat because I don't trust farmers and the food industry to not muck around with it.

Re:I hope

[WillKemp]

Your problem is that you're attacking a straw man version of veganism.

And your problem is you're replying to an anonymous coward - a complete waste of time and energy!

Er... hang on...

Re:I hope

[dbIII]

Funny thing is "quorn", which is factory grown fungus, seems to have a big enough vegetarian following that I've seen it at the major supermarket chains and it's the most artifical food in the place. I presume that the same people that are eating that wouldn't have much of a problem with vat grown meat.

Re: I hope

[dbIII]

Which made me astonished when Elk Lasagna was withdrawn from sale due to it possibly containing traces of bacon. It just makes me think about bacon lasagna.
However: http://xkcd.com/418/

Re:I hope

[davester666]

or fake dog if it comes from China!

Re:I hope

[secondhand_Buddah]

And of course:

- religious vegetarian
- religious vegan

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

This product would be an ethical vegan's/vegitarian's worst nightmare...tissue culture in-vitro can only be supported with medium supplemented with fetal bovine serum, usually harvested from an unborn fetus at the slaughterhouse. Unless an alternative approach was taken here (if one even exists), I don't see a future for vat-grown meat products. It's probably why the burger is so damn expensive, because FBS is itself expensive, retailing for $200 for a half-litre, not to mention the aseptic, bacteria-free and virus-free, environment required to culture the cells. Vegans would likely weep at the thought of the untold number of harvested bovine fetuses that would have been sacrificed to culture the substantial number of cells required to make up a 5 oz hamburger patty. $325,000 could have been better spent elsewhere, what's the average cost of raising a steer from calf to auction compared to this, this is pure insanity!

Re: I hope

[FishTankX]

I'm pretty sure it would be easier and cheaper to raise animals and let them do their thing until they perish from natural causes than this and probably a higher quality of meat would result.

Re: I hope

[Ironhandx]

Besides which, its no where near billions, and those that try to live a vegan lifestyle, particularly those of european desecent, usually have to stop before they literally kill themselves.

Pesco-Vegetarianism is the closest thing that most anyone of european descent can actually move to without drastic detrimental health-related side effects.

Believe it or not, the folks living in Southeast Asia have had a shortage of meat for so long that they've evolved a digestive system that makes much better use of plant material. Even as such, they are NOT vegetarians by and large, they simply consume a relatively large quantity of plants as a percentage of their diet in comparison to a normal european diet.

Re:I hope

[dunkelfalke]

Fake horse tastes better, I guess

Re:I hope

[loufoque]

From my experience, most vegans are actually just people who don't like the taste of meat. It's like those people that overcook it because they don't like the taste.

Re:I hope

[Salgak1]

. . .and the lousy hunters. . . . (evil grin)

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, vegetarian's stink, they're farting more and their farts smell of rotten egg. Oh, and they tend to look weak and ill (bad skin).

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

All real meat takes 'like despair' - the despair of the innocent creatures who were tortured to death to obtain it.

Re:I hope

[Vintermann]

"Health issues vegan" doesn't really exist. If it was for health reasons, why avoid even a drop of honey, or leather in your boots? Yet if you don't avoid that, you're by definition not vegan.

The entire term vegan was invented specifically to distinguish ethical vegetarians from people who merely didn't eat animals or animal products. It means ethical vegetarian, basically.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm vegetarian since birth.

I don't have any health or ethical reasons. It's just how my life played out. I've tried meat, I don't like the taste. Yes, even bacon!!!!

Would I eat this burger?

No. For the same reasons I don't eat meat flavoured quorn, I simply don't enjoy the taste.

Just wanted to get that view point out there as I spend a disproportionate amount of my life defending vegetarianism* from being split into oversimplistic and unnecessary sub-groups.

* actually defending myself from people who assume (quite rudely) that I'm either a health freak or consider myself ethically superior. It's amazing how butt hurt people get when think of vegetarianism as some existential crisis for themselves.

Re:I hope

[Vintermann]

It's unlikely that your meat is grazed at all, let alone that it came from a wild population in an overgrazed area.

Re:I hope

[TheCarp]

I would have no ethical concern; except in relation to the original cell source. Once the cells are growing in a vat, they are just cells. The only ethical concern from that point is the protection of the original donor identity, since the genetics of the meat will be his. Perhaps a wide range of donors would be preferable?

Could you imagine the contracts that could arise out of that? Would it be legal to pay a flat fee, with a bonus based on taste tests after the first batch (would that be unfair...compensating people based solely on their genetics? Royalties? What about derivative products? Will a package of hamburg come with a shrink wrap license forbidding me from making copies?

Re:I hope

[geekymachoman]

> And I guarantee those people will say vat grown causes everything from cancer to autism. If we don't watch out this will become the next frankenfood scare

If the food is grown 'naturally' then people will not speak about cancer, autism, obesity etc. There's a big difference between this and GMO.
The "frankenfood" is banned in EU and couple of more countries, for a reason (not just the political one), they would ban diet coke as well.. if it wasn't so popular already.

But you don't care about that, do you.

Re:I hope

[tburkhol]

Ethical vegetarians will eat this but still won't eat meat from animals. They would still be vegetarians. This wouldn't be "meat" to them.

These cells are grown in a soup with a high concentration of fetal bovine serum. ie, the fake meat is fed mostly from real meat. There's no reduction in harm to animals in this stuff. Probably a relative increase: it likely takes 2-5 liters of FBS to grow that much cell mass, and a 40 pound fetal calf only has so much serum.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

There are also the ecological vegetarians/vegans!

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Tip: Do not try try this with castor beans (even if you did consider what happened with the kidney beans 'fun').

Re: I hope

[serviscope_minor]

Pesco-Vegetarianism is the closest thing that most anyone of european descent can actually move to without drastic detrimental health-related side effects.

Vegan is difficult, but it's not especially hard to be vegetarian without ill effects.

Re: I hope

[Aerokii]

Most of what you have said is demonstrably false.

So... go ahead and demonstrate it- or would it be too much work for YOU to google, or experiment on yourself rigorously?

Re:I hope

[omnichad]

Because there's plenty of people who do things like eat vegetarian just to have an identity and a common interest with other people.

Re:I hope

[omnichad]

Why would anyone waste time developing a growth medium if the meat itself might not have a viable future? You work on one step of the chain at a time. If this meat is worth anything, then it makes sense to come up with your own growth medium.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's really just "ethical veg*". Just a different driving ethic than a PETA veg*.

Re:I hope

[krovisser]

That's cute and all, but GM crops are the future. You can't feed 70 bazillion people on normal crops.

Re:I hope

[Evtim]

Without any research (how /. like:) I'll make a statement - I cannot imagine medical condition where you have to turn vegan. On the contrary - IMO, the vegans are 99% politically/ideologically motivated and in fact such diet might harm you...

I am so "green" that grass gets blue of envy but I never agree with 1. let's all go vegan, 2. let's all eat insects and 3. never even say the word "nuclear" girls andd boys. Such people are not green; they only think they are.

Re:I hope

[Kelbear]

Are you sure you're not thinking of vegetarians? Vegans are a different category with a whole lot more restrictions than a vegetarian, and for different reasons.

Re: I hope

[MachineShedFred]

Because there is clearly a correlation between omnivores eating both meat and plants, and lower IQ, right?

Pot, meet kettle.

Re:I hope

[Kjella]

Well if our plane crashes deep in the snowy mountains with some passengers killed on impact with no rescue in sight and it's either eat or starve to death, I'll be happy to bury you under a tombstone that says "Here lies a true ethical vegetarian". Just kidding, actually I'll wait for you to die and eat you too. While I haven't eaten human meat there's a lot in the don't ask, don't tell category that tastes just fine until you hear what it is...

Re:I hope

[loufoque]

It's the same reason in both cases: craziness.

Re: I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

All I can say is the despair tastes pretty damn good.

Re:I hope

[avandesande]

Heck, maybe you could market it based on donor identity? Beyonce rump roast anyone?

Re:I hope

[cthulhu11]

All the cultured meat I've read about so far is grown in an animal product medium so there isn't much point. When that changes they can let me know.

Re:I hope

[mrchaotica]

I am a meat popsicle.

Re:I hope

[coyote_oww]

Of course, I recall an episode of Better of Ted where the geeks try to grow meat in the lab. When the tester eventually eats it, they ask how it tastes, and from my recollection, I believe the answer was, "like despair".

In this context, that extra 'f' is pretty important. For those who haven't watched this excellent show, Ted is not the name of the synthetic beef.

Re:I hope

[Gr8Apes]

I know, we'll call it Soylent Green.

Re:I hope

[Gr8Apes]

I'm of the "GM might be ok if" variety. The biggest part of that "if" would be the banning of introducing external genetic information into an organism. Doing potentially naturally occurring mutations is one thing, bringing in genetic information from other organisms.... probably not a good idea in most cases.

Re:I hope

[Hognoxious]

If you wait for them to die the blood coagulates in the veins.

Er, so I heard.

Re:I hope

[Hognoxious]

It's a mushroom's cousin and a truffle's nephew, what's unnatural about that?

Re:I hope

[jedrek]

That reminds me of an encounter I had with some vegan drinking a soy latte while I was talking to a friend about a new burger place I went to that had great, locally sourced beef, pork and vegetables. She launched into some spiel about how beef is bad for the environment since on the same acre you can grow 10x more soya or whatever. I replied saying that may be true, but here in Europe we're not lacking in arable farm land, and it might be shocking to learn, but importing coffee from South America and soy from Asia isn't exactly ecologically neutral either, is it? We didn't get along after that.

Re:I hope

[adisakp]

Early experiments with in vitro meat had no muscle tone. (Past stories here have pointed this out.) The closest natural experience would be eating a fetus—not exactly good steak.

Maybe they could apply electro-stimulus to the muscle cells when they are grown in-vitro so they contract and build up muscle fibers?

Re:I hope

[Samantha Wright]

You're pretty late to the show here—they do. Emphasis on the "early".

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot two of the largest, if not the largest, groups:

- Morally superior vegetarian
- Morally superior vegan

Re:I hope

[Darinbob]

You can supersize it for one cent more though...

Re:I hope

[Anubis IV]

Yeah, I had just woken up from a nap, and my lack of correct grammar and spelling was quite apparent. E.g. "They're" instead of "their" and "of" instead of "Off". Oh well.

Re:I hope

[Curate]

It's people!

Re: I hope

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm glad we're in agreement on that. Vitamin B(acon) is essential to human health.

Re:I hope

[dbIII]

Well I initially presumed like the above poster that factory grown fungus would be distasteful to the type of people that frequent health food shops but it appears that I was wrong and a lot of people are buying the stuff. Maybe that will translate to vat grown meat.

Re:I hope

[dbIII]

Actually the "food miles" thing can get a bit silly when you consider things like it takes less energy expended to produce cheese in New Zealand and ship it around the world to the UK than it does to make it locally. Climate can save you a lot of energy. Of course in other cases there is no saving and shipping is just an added cost.
Almost nothing we do is ecologically neutral just like no form of electricity generation is "clean". It's just a tradeoff of benefits and consequences, should be obvious but some loonies and scum in advertising pretend there are things with zero consequences.

Should I throw up now?

[toygeek]

Or should I wait until after I order a McVitro?

Re:Should I throw up now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Common additional "ingredients" in your "normal" burger:

* puss
* feces
* lead and other hazardous materials
* human hair
* insect parts
* insect larva
* bacterial waste
* lots of other disgusting things

And you want to complain about something grown in a nice clean lab?

Re:Should I throw up now?

[Anonymous Coward]

What, and lose all those flavors that define the essence of a McMeatSlurry burger?

Re:Should I throw up now?

[interkin3tic]

Wait until you see what the future will hold. Specifically, there's a lot of meat we don't eat now not because it's not tasty, but because of economics, scarcity, volume, or ethical concerns. These limits will no longer be necessary. Think platypus bolonga.

At some point, someone will offer you hamburgers made out of induced pluripotent stem cells generated from fibroblasts harvested from your own skin. You'll be able to eat a "youburger."

Re:Should I throw up now?

[Lumpy]

My normal burger? nope. Because I know the cow that I am eating and I know the butcher that killed it and processed it.

That crap sold at restaurants? Yes. But then that stuff is not real cow meat, It doesn't even taste like cow meat.

Re:Should I throw up now?

[ChunderDownunder]

puss?

We're eating cats now?

Re:Should I throw up now?

[demonlapin]

Portions of every one of those things are on your toothbrush, too. Welcome to life on Earth.

Re:Should I throw up now?

[dbIII]

Roof rabbit.

Re:Should I throw up now?

[Samizdata]

wendymeat. Just saying.

Re:Should I throw up now?

[rmdingler]

It's a tad stringy and a bitch to cook (think brisket), but the only palatable difference between smoked felis silvestris catus and grilled medium rare ribeye is about three days hungry.

All your psots are belong to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Frist psot!

At $325K a burger that is not reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Reality is affordability.

Re:At $325K a burger that is not reality

[Anonymous Coward]

If reality means affordability, then expensive things don't exist.

Since expensive things do exist, your comment is obviously wrong.

Please think before you post.

Re:At $325K a burger that is not reality

[NettiWelho]

Yeah, just because the first computer took millions to build and maintain didn't make it real.

Re:At $325K a burger that is not reality

[maxwell demon]

Also the expensive things are affordable. Not for everyone, of course, but for the upper 1%.

Re:At $325K a burger that is not reality

[JustOK]

I only use virtual machines

Re:At $325K a burger that is not reality

[gl4ss]

since they labeled it so expensive, we can't even know if it tastes like meat or if it provides sustinence.

Japanese

[Frosty Piss]

The Japanese will love this - while it's expensive. When it gets cheap, expect McDonald's to start quietly using it...

Re:Japanese

[iggymanz]

if it tastes as good as dead animal muscles and has equivalent or better nutritional value, I'm all for it

Re:Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be a very cardboard and dry burger - all meat tissues, no fat.
Japanese would prefer something of quality and not just because something is expensive. They have their Kobe beef. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef

Re:Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd imagine it would have significantly better nutritional value. More often than not the meat you get served or buy at a store has been washed in ammonia. While this does indeed kill a lot of harmful bacteria, it also kills helpful bacteria and nutrients.

Re:Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

When it gets cheap, expect McDonald's to start quietly using it..

Should we expect vat grown horse from Burger King?

Re:Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll keep using meat flavored cardboard.

Re:Japanese

[peragrin]

nutritional value is easy enough. However taste is another matter. If you have ever had ground steak, ground burger, and ground venison, you can taste the difference. muscle that has been grown invitro I expect will have it's own unique taste, Electrical stimulus exercises isn't the same as an animal running through a field.

Re:Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

This was on TV in the UK last year. The scientist had grown enough cow muscle fibres to make the first tiny piece of meat. He and a nutritionist cooked and ate it. They reported that it tasted like chicken. Apparently, it is the juices in real muscle tissue that provide the flavour. Artificial meat lacks these juices so it doesn't taste of anything very much.

This latest development sounds like he's just scaled it up a bit.

All his experiments have proved so far is that the type of protein isn't terribly important. He might do better making artificial juices that taste like beef juices. These could be added to mycoprotein such as Quorn.

Re:Japanese

[CastrTroy]

Since it seems that this is all from one type of cell, I imagine it doesn't taste that good. Real meat has not only muscle tissue, but fat tissue, connective tissue, blood, and many other things included in it. Which probably brings up a nutritional question as well. They still haven't made baby formula that has all the same stuff as a mother's milk, and doctors still say that breast fed babies are better off. I don't imagine that this will be able to completely replace all meat and still keep us healthy. I also don't think it will taste that great without added flavourings.

Re:Japanese

[peragrin]

while your correct about mother milk, the real benefit of a mothers milk is compatible antibodies that jump start the immune system.

Re:Japanese

[interkin3tic]

Quietly? I think it will be marketed explicitly and will sell well. Not everyone is repulsed by the concept. They'll need to keep such meat labs more sterile than your average slaughterhouse: if they don't, the meat cells will be overrun by bacteria. And the final product will be more consistent, you have no chance of getting bone or brains or intestines or tendons in there. If you don't want to, that is. I guess haggis wouldn't be the same.

Re:Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the racist mod?

Re:Japanese

[OhANameWhatName]

expect McDonald's to start quietly using it

Who did you think funded the research?

Re:Japanese

[Your.Master]

You might still need that with the vat-grown stuff.

Re:Japanese

[DasSquid]

The main issue with Kobe beef is that... well... it is all marketing. I live in Japan and I import meat from Australia, I know the industry well. The cultural difference between here and Australia in regards to agriculture is mind blowing. In Japan, tradition is king. If you do not do what your region/your family tells you, then the price of your cow will plummet, I've been to the cattle auctions here and they really are an interesting artifact.

As per the wiki article, the Tajima cow is the only cow considered for this meat, what it fails to mention is that the Tajima is just an Angus, and indeed an Angus that is brought up in conditions I do not agree with. They are brought up in a very small area, not allowed to exercise so as to get that delicious marbling. After visiting these farms I feel much better about how my cows are brought up in Australia, with one cow having an average of 2 acres as opposed to 20 square feet.

Anyway, rant aside Kobe beef just isn't all that good in comparison to the other meats available in Japan as they're all the same damned breed being brought up exactly the same, Japanese tradition just dictates that it's more expensive and 'better'.

Re:Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I have to agree with the senitment that the Japanese are a bunch of fucking idiots. They believe anything their culture dictates

But then my ex is a japanese so I might be biased. Worst choice ever.

Re:Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely PETA

Re:Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the antibodies provide early passive immunity - it's actually *antigens* in mother's milk that helps jump start the baby's immune system...

Re:Japanese

[dbIII]

nutritional value is easy enough. However taste is another matter

That's why this has been going on for decades and every few years we hear of another milestone reached. Meat is complicated.

Re:Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

But then my ex is a japanese so I might be biased.

Renaming her from girlfriend.jpg to exgirlfriend.jpg still doesn't make her real. Maybe you should grow her in a lab, like this hamburger.

Re:Japanese

[Dogtanian]

Electrical stimulus exercises isn't the same as an animal running through a field.

To solve that they'll arrange for the meat to be grown around a metal endoskeleton that stimulates the "muscles" and is then programmed to run around a field.

This bovine cyborg will be known as Robocow, and will last until one goes mad and tries to assasinate Sarah Connor.

After trapping it in a Burger King and "flame grilling" it to death, our heroes will rest... while, in the background, out of the flames steps the metallic endoskeleton and starts chasing after them again. Though eventually it gets bored of that and starts chewing grass instead.

Re:Japanese

[omnichad]

The only things that get washed in ammonia are what make up pink slime, which is rapidly declining in use. And that's only ground meat made from waste trimmings. A big hunk of steak is not going to come anywhere near ammonia. And wash is a rather poor choice of words. Exposed to vapor is more like it.

Re:Japanese

[omnichad]

Just wait until the in-vitro cow meat has its own "Matrix" to run and play in.

Re:Japanese

[MachineShedFred]

Bring on the vatburgers! It's not like McDonalds is using high-grade meat anyway - their patties have the consistency of wallboard.

Re:Japanese

[freeze128]

If you make a kickstarter project for this, I'll back it.

Re:Japanese

[rmdingler]

As far as we presently know, you are safely correct. I suspect however, like many relatively recent nutritional discoveries (betacarotene, lysine, and the watermelon seed), there are nutrients in food & mother's milk that we've yet to isolate and identify. Vitamins ARE supplements, and ought to be treated as such.. there is no substitute for a healthy diet.

a couple of problems

[iggymanz]

the nanny-state mentality that is gripping government first world countries will soon forbid the growing of beef-life tissue because of its increasing the risk of arterial clogging, etc.

the second is a quality consideration, I will accept nothing less than the flavor and texture of the very finest beef cuts in vat cultured tissue. else I will continue to support the inhumane raising and slaughtering of cattle. Also, I reserve the right to throw tissue cultures on the grill over charcoal, concerns of carcinogens be damned.

Re:a couple of problems

[maxwell demon]

It's a burger, not a steak. I guess that's for a reason.

Re:a couple of problems

[westlake]

the nanny-state mentality that is gripping government first world countries will soon forbid the growing of beef-life tissue because of its increasing the risk of arterial clogging, etc.

When the state is paying the medical bills for tens or hundreds of millions of people why shouldn't it have a say in the sale and marketing of products which increase its costs?

Re:a couple of problems

[MikShapi]

You already live in a nanny state. It's just that your nanny state is lobbied by and promotes the interests of those who lace their food with sugar. Which is "only" 70% of food in a rich neighbourhood, and 100% of food in a poorer one. How many choices do the people in those neighbourhoods have? None really.

See this : http://www.youtube.com/playlist?annotation_id=annotation_286965&feature=iv&list=PL39F782316B425249&src_vid=h0zD1gj0pXk
(they only really start saying something in the second bit onwards)

Or the viral lecture if you want more depth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&feature=youtu.be

You already live in a nanny state mate, and the nanny's all but forcing you into obesity. You were saying?

Re:a couple of problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, at least in America, we believe that everyone has "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness". You cannot extend life by removing liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it's up to the individual to choose (a common medical ethics issue). Eating the food that we enjoy is essential to both our culture and happiness. As for cost, it's even cheaper to just euthanize people when they start experiencing medical problems, so the government could do that instead if they're willing to alienate us from our basic human rights.

Relevant comic

Re:a couple of problems

[Anonymous Coward]

not so much... but Big Beef will lobby against it.

Re:a couple of problems

[demonlapin]

Ah, but what products are those? Don't be so sure the mandarins of government are right or incorruptible. I lost nearly 25% of my body weight when I quit eating carbohydrates in any more than trivial quantities (under 30 g/day). Obviously, I ate a lot of meat. Is a hypertensive, near-diabetic, 42-inch-waist guy "healthier" than a normotensive, normoglycemic, 35-inch-waist guy who eats more meat?

Re:a couple of problems

[Samantha Wright]

Regarding obesity: the importance of sugar to it is a pretty stale attitude. Current work indicates that the intestinal microbiome is the major responsible factor in obesity; it's not the same as simply eating too much and being overweight. Obese people gain weight faster than others, probably because they lack the ability to get rid of a harmful bacterium that isn't normally so common in the environment. This bacterium most likely gets in due to unsanitary conditions in factory farming, so the cost-saving potential of a well-developed in vitro meat industry could very well eliminate this plight.

Re:a couple of problems

[dunkelfalke]

Anecdotes are a dime a dozen and prove nothing.

I lost over 50 kilos when I stopped eating too much meat and I eat a lot of carbohydrates.

Re:a couple of problems

[iggymanz]

The state does not provide for my medical bills; I have to pay high insurance rates to a private company and also that part of the bill which insurance does not cover. So the state certainly has no right to stick their nose in my business.

Re:a couple of problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the state is not paying for anything, we are. Or where does the government money comes from?

Re:a couple of problems

[demonlapin]

My point is: are you healthier weighing less, with better health markers all around, but eating the "wrong" foods, than eating the "right" foods, but having horrible health markers?

Re:a couple of problems

[dunkelfalke]

that depends on too many variables.
might be that the health markers are only because you are young yet and will deteriorate quickly when you get older.
might be that horrible health markers would be even worse if you stop eating right foods.

Re:a couple of problems

[Anonymous Coward]

In general, you're healthier weighing less no matter whether you eat the "right" or "wrong" foods, as the Twinkie Diet guy pointed out.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

Re:a couple of problems

[demonlapin]

Unusual results, to say the least. Not impossible, of course; he's living proof. Complication: calorie-restriction diets in almost all cases do not work long-term. My penultimate diet was a calorie-restricted one in which I consumed 800-1200 calories a day (as a muscular 6' tall man who is told that I appear ill if I weigh under about 190 lbs). I can wear the same clothes I wore then now, but I eat ad libitum from carbohydrate-free sources, and I've maintained that weight for over a year without further effort. Works for me. You? Don't know. I do encourage people who want to lose weight to give low-carb a month's try if they never have. The first two weeks, most people are breaking a heavy sugar addiction, so they feel like crap. Once that's gone, it's a different ball game - I have far more energy off carbs than I had with them, though I'm also not trying to be an Olympic sprinter. If, after three or four weeks of really strict adherence, you haven't gotten anywhere, then your metabolic defect (the one that's making you fat) is probably not carbohydrate related.

Re:a couple of problems

[Anonymous Coward]

else I will continue to support the inhumane raising and slaughtering of cattle.

Thank you, selfish inconsiderate clod, for thinking only of yourself, encouraging brutality and caring not for the rest of the inhabitants of this earth.

Re:a couple of problems

[Anonymous Coward]

> Unusual results, to say the least. Not impossible, of course; he's living proof.

Only unusual in that he stuck to his diet. Most people cheat, or lose track. Most healthy people don't have metabolic defects.

> Complication: calorie-restriction diets in almost all cases do not work long-term.

Evidence? Most calorie-restriction diets don't work for people who don't stick to them.

Re:a couple of problems

[demonlapin]

Most healthy people don't have metabolic defects.

Er, yeah.

The CowboyNeal burger can't be far away...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only engineered Neal is available - they ate the real one already.

So...

[centipedes.in.my.vag]

Does this meat technically qualify as vegetarian, as no animal was killed to make it?

Re:So...

[femtobyte]

Given the wide range of positions that fall under the broad banner "vegetarian" (do you eat eggs? dairy? fish?), there is no one correct "technical qualification". Likely, vegetarians closer to the "fundamentalist vegan" side will consider this an unacceptable animal product, while vegetarians closer to the "I still sometimes have a BLT because bacon tastes so good" school will embrace the concept.

Re:So...

[kwerle]

Yes*

* Unless you don't think so.

I don't eat meat because I find animal food farming in this country (the US) abhorrant. I don't eat well treated food animals (free range, wild hunted, etc) because I find it simpler to draw the line at "I don't eat meat".

I'm looking forward to commonly available vat-grown beef. Once the price point hits a reasonable level, I think I will partake. Other people won't feel the same way.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

After you stop eating if for a while, bacon no longer tastes good, I can assure you. It also stinks to hight heaven.

Re:So...

[BTWR]

I haven't eaten bacon in 21 years, and it still smells DELICIOUS.

Re:So...

[demonlapin]

Eat better bacon.

Re:So...

[demonlapin]

I don't eat well treated food animals (free range, wild hunted, etc) because I find it simpler to draw the line at "I don't eat meat".

It's your choice, of course, and I totally understand why you would say that while in public (it does simplify the explanation), but there's no reason to deny yourself those things at home. I have a local source for pastured chickens. They're delicious.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

not here, i have bacon once every eight months or so at a particular gathering of friends and it is a hell of a treat.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

The previous AC meant that if you don't eat a certain piece of meat for a time it will rot.

Re:So...

[loufoque]

What is an animal?
This piece of meat is certainly animal tissue.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a vegetarian because eating dead flesh grosses me out, growing dead flesh in a jar isn't going to qualify as vegetarian to me.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are only a few categories..

Lacto - Vegetarian - Milk
Ovo - Vegetarian - Eggs
Lacto/Ovo - Vegetarian - Milk, Eggs
Vegan - No animal derived products

Anyone that eats bacon or fish on the side is not a vegetarian under any known definition apart from their own.

Re:So...

[omnichad]

What about the fetuses who died to give their blood serum to make the growth medium?

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did you get this list from? Did you just make it up? I personally know people who call themselves "vegetarians" and eat milk, eggs, and any kind of fish.

I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[FudRucker]

GMO agriculture by a fascist system (Monsanto and govt) HFCS in one form or another is in almost everything, now this (lab grown meat), i seen enough of this planet and i want off

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

i seen enough of this planet and i want off

The solution is self-evident.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is to create meat that requires less resources and no slaughter. GMO agriculture increases crop yields, just like selective breeding has for millennia. Stop being a crank or just kill yourself.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Wargaaarbl fascists WARGAAARBL!

Kill yourself.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[dingen]

Why are you so negative about lab grown meat? No more animal suffering, a lot less impact on the environment, what's not to like?

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

and a delicious source of free-range meat products.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[aardvarkjoe]

GMO agriculture by a fascist system (Monsanto and govt) HFCS in one form or another is in almost everything, now this (lab grown meat), i seen enough of this planet and i want off

The upside is that you're still going to be able to have burgers without having to figure out how to herd cattle in space.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

The incoherency of all that makes me wonder if they really are putting something in our food.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Extremus]

I guess both of you have a point. I can summarize the issue stating the obvious: the techniques (on vitro beef, GMO, etc) are not the problem; the problem consists of the organizations controlling these techniques (Monsanto, etc). And the problem is this: monopoly.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[ArcadeMan]

Just talk to the dolphins, they're almost ready to launch.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[zephvark]

What's not to like is, it's grown outside an animal. Even with live animals, there is a tremendous variation in meat quality, both in the ways it appeals to you and in the nutritional value, depending on a great many factors. How did they live and what did they eat? I am somewhat skeptical that these miniscule chunks of flesh, brought up in isolation on some sort of artificial broth, are likely to entirely reproduce the flavor, texture, or nutritional value of the real thing. Maybe some decade real soon now. Maybe.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[maxwell demon]

GMO agriculture increases crop yields

Unless and until we get unpatented GMO crops, and no more lawsuits against farmers who got cross-pollination from GMO crops, I'll be against GMO crops, regardless of its other merits or non-merits. Buying GM crops means supporting an abusive industry.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[dingen]

Obviously lab meat will have to live up to the standards of real meat. But once it's edible, I don't see any other complications.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you so negative about lab grown meat? No more animal suffering, a lot less impact on the environment, what's not to like?

What's not to like? Well the I don't like the lack of animal suffering. The suffering makes the meat taste better.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Growing the meat on artificial broth in a controlled environment will allow much better control over the flavor, texture, and nutritional value than growing the meat on a cow in an uncontrolled environment.

It'll take some time to get it exactly right, but in an ideal world you should end up getting much better quality and consistency from cultured meat than you could from a cow.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[guttentag]

and a delicious source of free-range meat products.

No, you have that backwards. This meat is "range-free," not "free-range."

Shimata, I just realized how the food companies are going to market this.

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[crmarvin42]

Don't jump to conclusions. Every attempt I've ever heard of at cultured meat, or any other tissue for that matter, has been highly dependent upon nutrient solutions derived from living animals. Many are based on animal blood, some on liver or other tissue. I'd bet far FAR more animals went into this over prices burger than would have been necessary for the McDonalds my family had for lunch yesterday.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[timmyf2371]

I would be concerned at the increased unemployment as farmers, abattoir workers and everyone else involved in the production of real meat are replaced by lab technicians and scientists.

On a more personal note, will the taste be the same? For medical reasons, I must follow a gluten free diet - and despite wider availability and better quality of food than in the past, they still haven't been able to come up with something exactly the same "real" bread. Why would it be any easier to replicate the taste of a fine steak?

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[excelsior_gr]

Actually, the suffering makes the meat taste worse :

Here the animal is subjected to severe anxiety and fright caused by manhandling, fighting in the pens and bad stunning techniques. All this may result in biochemical processes in the muscle in particular in rapid breakdown of muscle glycogen and the meat becoming very pale with pronounced acidity (pH values of 5.4-5.6 immediately after slaughter) and poor flavour.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Science has proven that baby seal tastes better when freshly clubbed to death with a second baby seal.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[dzfoo]

Plus it's kind of icky.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[interkin3tic]

The organizations controlling the techniques are only allowed to do so because government and citizens allow them to get away with it. It's not necessary to the advancement of food technology. It's actually really weird that we're allowing this to happen with fucking food, while we don't tolerate monopolies on technology that is far less essential to life. Like, we investigated MS for monopoly and anticompetitive practices, but no one is going to starve to death if windows is the only OS out there.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[transporter_ii]

Carnivorous animals usually feed on grazing animals (not that they don't "eat their own" from time to time, they *usually* don't have a steady diet of eating other carnivorous animals). I've seen this explained that these animals are instinctively choosing foods that contain nutrients they need. In this case, they are getting the nutrients second hand through animals that eat lots of grass.

Why so negative about lab grown meat? Because meat is more than just proteins. There are other nutrients in it. What the animal eats that you eat, makes a difference, believe it or not.

With the finding of vitamins, it was thought that diet didn't really matter; we can just take a pill if our food is missing some nutrient. How is that working out for us?:

Vitamins and supplements could do more harm than good in some cases, according to a new report in Consumer Reports.

The report, in Consumer Reports' September issue, investigates 10 unknown dangers associated with taking vitamins, minerals, herbs, and nutritional supplements. More than half of all Americans take supplements, and the supplement industry has grown to a $27 billion industry.

But supplements aren't necessarily risk-free, according to Dr. Jose Mosquera, medical adviser for Consumer Reports. While patients may believe supplements are safe because they are natural, he says not all supplements are truly all-natural.

   

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

You left out the best part: tastier meat. Theoretically, McDonalds could start using filet mignon for its burgers because it's just as cheap as any other type of beef to grow in a vat. Panda Express could start using artificial panda meat if they wanted to. No longer would we be limited by the logistics of animal husbandry!

That said, early generation vat-grown meat is going to be expensive and have inferior taste. You'll also have purists who only want authentic prime black angus tenderloin. But, as a near carnivore, I'm looking forward to what the future of this technology will bring. (Especially because I'm skeptical about the future population levels of various delicious fish and want to ensure I can enjoy them in my old age.)

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

No more animal suffering, a lot less impact on the environment, what's not to like?

One of the reason this stuff is so expensive is that it's grown in a soup of fetal calf serum. Extracting the serum from fetal calves is generally a terminal procedure, and my guess is there's at least one calf worth of serum used to grow that many cells.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[ChromeAeonium]

Unless and until we get unpatented GMO crops

Monsanto's first genetically engineered soy goes off patent next year. However, since conventionally bred crops are commonly patented, do you oppose conventional breeding as well?

and no more lawsuits against farmers who got cross-pollination from GMO crops

Good news, that never happened. No one has even been sued for cross pollination, although they have been sued for doing things like spraying Round-Up on seeds from cross pollinated plants to get the transgenic traits without paying for them. The difference is like the difference between finding a stray DVD on the ground and burning off a thousand copies.

Criteria met.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[oobayly]

... although they have been sued for doing things like spraying Round-Up on seeds from cross pollinated plants to get the transgenic traits without paying for them.

So you're saying that it's ok to sue somebody for using a chemical that they would normally use on non-GM crops, just because the seeds happen to be cross-pollinated? Does that still stand if the farmer has no idea that the seeds were cross-pollinated? My dad is pretty intelligent, but I doubt he's got the knowledge or equipment to determine whether the seeds will cause him to be sued.

The difference is like the difference between finding a stray DVD on the ground and burning off a thousand copies.

Oh, I get it, you're saying that spraying Round-Up on a single cross-pollinated seed causes them to multiply massively.*

* One ridiculous comment deserves another.

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[loufoque]

Not only do you eat McDonald's for lunch, you bring your family there?
Do you want your children to be obese and have health problems?

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

And hacking up an animal that has been killed with a bolt gun after living in less-than-idyllic conditions and pumped full of antibiotics isn't? Future generations might see eating animals as bizarrely icky.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Flamebait? "Hey, that guy's talkin' bad about Earthlings — get him!"

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[cffrost]

Stop being a crank or just kill yourself.

Is killing himself the way by which he becomes uncranked, or do you want him to see the error of his ways (and perhaps shed a single tear) as he squeezes the trigger?

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[cffrost]

Not only do you eat McDonald's for lunch, you bring your family there?
Do you want your children to be obese and have health problems?

Do poor people simply dislike money?

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[crmarvin42]

So, what if I were to tell you that I have a PhD in nutrition, or that it was the first time we'd eaten there in over a month? Would you then realize how stupid that comment was?

A McDonalds meal doesn't make you fat or give you health problems. An unhealthy diet (defined as what you consume on average) can do those things, and McDonalds can be part of an unhealthy diet. However, McDonalds can be part of a healthy diet. The key is to moderate your nutrient intake so that it is appropriate given your typical level of activity. Since you don't know my activiy level, what I ordered at McDonalds, what else I ate that day, the frequency with which I eat at fast food joints, or my age (or that for any of my family members) then how can you be so arrogant as to assume you know whether or not my decision to eat 1 meal at McDonalds was a poor one?

As a nutritionists, I wouldn't feel capable of making a determination with such a lack of context, and you my friend are no nutritionist.

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[loufoque]

So, what if I were to tell you that I have a PhD in nutrition, or that it was the first time we'd eaten there in over a month?

That still wouldn't justify crippling your children's life by exposing them to junk food.

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[crmarvin42]

And what, pray tell, are your qualifications?
How many years have you devoted to understanding nutrition professionally?
What peer-reviewed scientific sources do you use to inform yourself as to what is and isn't a healthy diet?

I notice a distinct lack of response to the meat of my post (no pun intended). Address those points or admit you are an ignorant troll who believes your gut to be better informed than the best science available.

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[loufoque]

And what, pray tell, are your qualifications?

Bearer of common sense and good taste.

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[crmarvin42]

Common sense is fraught with false positives, confirmation bias, and other logical fallacies.

Here are some examples of "common sense":

It was common sense that the world is flat for longer than it has been known to be a globe
It was common sense that bleeding and leaches were sound medical treatments at one time
it was common sense that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites only a handful of generations ago
it was common sense just a decade ago that we wouldn't see a black president in my life time.

All of these "common sense" beliefs were shown to be false based on EVIDENCE. Either provide some real evidence or just shut-up and crawl back under your bridge.

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[loufoque]

Common sense is fraught with false positives, confirmation bias, and other logical fallacies.

So is the pseudo-science you wasted three years of your life writing a thesis in.
Do we really need to continue this discussion? I don't really see the point.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[Tim_sama]

The downside is that without herding cows in space we won't have Firefly in real life.

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[crmarvin42]

You don't even know how long it takes to get a PhD in nutrition and you are trying (badly) to argue nutritional science with me? Unbelievable! For the record, a MS traditionally takes 2 years and the PhD traditionally takes an additional 4 years, for (stay with me now) 6 years.

as to your baseless assertion that my degree is pseudo science, I received my degrees from Purdue University, which is nationally recognized for its nutritional science programs. It is the antithesis of pseudo-science, unlike your appeals to "common sense"

your right, there is no point in continuing. You are convinced, in the absence of any evidence, that you know the truth and no amount of evidence to the contrary will be adequate to force even a kernel of doubt into you. I've asked for evidence repeatedly and the best you've come up with is "Because I said so".

good day

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[ChromeAeonium]

So you're saying that it's ok to sue somebody for using a chemical that they would normally use on non-GM crops

Round-Up is an herbicide. Some GMOP crops are immune to it, so it would kill the non-GMO plants but not the GMO ones. If you get cross pollinated, grow out the seeds, spray them with Round-Up, then propagate those, you know exactly what you are doing.

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[loufoque]

In the countries whose academia I'm familiar with, PhD grants, in all the science disciplines, are 3 years, with the occasional extension to a 4th year for late students. AFAIK it is the same in the US. Of course I wasn't counting the Master's degree, since that's unrelated.

The fact that your education comes from a well-renowned university is irrelevant, since a lot of prestigious universities also teach psychology and other cognitive and social sciences, which are obviously not real science either.

If I may give you some advice, stop being so butthurt about people on the Internet saying things that don't really matter.

Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[CrashPoint]

And what, pray tell, are your qualifications?

Bearer of common sense and good taste.

In other words, absolutely nothing whatsoever. You have surrendered the argument unconditionally.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[rmdingler]

Mod Transparent up.

Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore

[xhest]

In space, a screaming cow cannot be herd. Thank you. I'll be here all week. Try the (cultured) veal.

Dune

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of the Axolotol tanks and the slig meat that's considered a delicacy in that universe.

Reminds me of an old joke

[symbolset]

Q: How can you know why somebody is a vegan?

A: Don't worry. He'll tell you.

Re:Reminds me of an old joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he's led a life of people making up crap jokes in his name... *sigh*

Re:Reminds me of an old joke

[Zeromous]

Hey guys, did you hear? Anonymous Coward is a vegan!

The dream? Really?

[BrookHarty]

When I dream of a juicy hamburger its sure the hell ain't cultured meat.

Re:The dream? Really?

[50000BTU_barbecue]

So, you only eat meat from wild Aurochs you caught yourself? How is modern agri-business farming not cultured? From selectively breeding only the "best" animals, to force-growing them with anti-biotics and raising them in CAFO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAFO

Yup, not cultured at all.

Re:The dream? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know? Does the dream involve the whole process of producing the burger?

Re:The dream? Really?

[Jartan]

When I dream of a juicy hamburger its sure the hell ain't cultured meat.

Eventually there could be several advantages over your "real" burger actually.

1) No need to grind it up. Grow it in the proper shape/texture and cook.
2) You can cook it as rare as you like.
3) Get the exact amount of fat you want so your burger is in fact juicy.
4) High quality cuts might be mass producible.

Re:The dream? Really?

[CrashPoint]

I don't think #1 applies. The texture of ground meat comes from physical damage done to the fat and tissues (and from the subsequent mixing of the two). You'd still have to grind it. Trying to grow "pre-ground" meat would be like trying to grow a broken bone.

Consequently, #2 wouldn't apply either, unless the meat was ground in a completely sterile room and stored in vacuum-sealed containers or something.

Re:The dream? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

A vacuum? Eating raw beef is fine. Don't be a sheltered pussy. Don't judge the worlds eating on America's filthy food standards.

Re:The dream? Really?

[CrashPoint]

We're talking about ground meat here, Einstein. Not a steak. Far more surface area exposed to bacteria. If you think that's safe to eat raw, you've pretty well forfeited any high ground for criticizing anyone else's food-safety standards.

Re:The dream? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

seconded, i eat lots of raw beef, horse, and chicken here in japan. provided they are serving product reserved for raw consumption (some people died a few years back from a chain restaurant selling cheap, dangerous raw beef as the good stuff) there is no risk.

Re:The dream? Really?

[slim]

Just eat it very soon after grinding. Steak Tartare.

Re:The dream? Really?

[loufoque]

Sorry, but that still doesn't count as culturing.
A dictionary could have told you as much and spare you the public shame.

Re:The dream? Really?

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Agri, wait for it, culture.

Re:The dream? Really?

[Zeromous]

Steak Tartare is scary to about 99% of the population.

What they don't realize (and you don't seem to either), is the reason it is acceptable and safe is because it is a steak (unexposed), ground and served immediately. The grinder is cleaned fully after preparation.

Tartare is not stored and comes from steak to your plate. You would never do this with pre-prepared beef.

Re:The dream? Really?

[serviscope_minor]

Steak Tartare is scary to about 99% of the population.

I don't think it's scary because of food hygine issues, I think it's mostly scary because people don't like the idea of eating a plate full of raw meat. To be honest I understand. I've tried beef from well done to really very rare. Once it drops below a certain level of cooking, I find I don't like the texture as much and the taste is not as pleasant. Given the dropoff happens quite fast, I very much doubt I'd like steak tartare at all.

I do not think I'm particularly unique in this regard.

Re:The dream? Really?

[slim]

What they don't realize (and you don't seem to either), is the reason it is acceptable and safe is because it is a steak (unexposed), ground and served immediately.

That's why I said "just eat it very soon after grinding".

Re:The dream? Really?

[houghi]

2) You can cook it as rare as you like.

We already do that here in Belgium. It is called steak tartare and is basically raw chopped meat sometimes together with a raw egg.
No need to have anything artificial.

Re:The dream? Really?

[CrashPoint]

Remember that the context of this conversation is meat grown in a lab/factory setting.

If it's ground at the plant, it's going to be in transit and storage way too long to be suitable for raw consumption (again, unless it's vacuum-sealed or something).

If the meat is shipped "whole" and then ground right before cooking, then that's no different than traditional hacked-off-the-cow meat, so Jartan's statement that the lab-grown burger is safer to eat rare is still incorrect; the risk level is identical at best.

About the only way I can think of where ground lab-grown meat would be safer to eat raw (compared to good old dead cow) would be if it could be grown at home, since the meat would have the shortest possible exposure time.

All that said, I'm a fan of the concept, and I hope it can be made workable on a large scale.

Tastes like...

[Culture20]

From Better Off TED: http://youtu.be/ezEMnzmDYZU

The price is perfectly realistic, really...

[Type44Q]

The price is perfectly realistic, really; in fact, it's quite well thought-out. By the time these are ready for large-scale roll-out, inflation will have caught up nicely.

Re:The price is perfectly realistic, really...

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, wake me up when they figure out how to turn chicken embryos into eggshells containing beef, and they name it "buck-beef". Until then they're just fooling around.

It might have been cheaper..

[gallondr00nk]

If they followed the lead of other UK burger manufacturers and they used horse meat instead.

Re:It might have been cheaper..

[maxwell demon]

Well, maybe they just claim it is cultivated beef muscle, and it actually is cultivated horse muscle. :-)

Re:It might have been cheaper..

[Belial6]

It is possible that this meat would quickly be a species of it's own. It may start out as beef, but it will have extremely strong evolutionary pressures (if they don't outright change the genetic code) and there won't be any pesky ethics issues of killing off any tissue that doesn't exhibit the traits being selected for.

vegetarians

[cdxta]

Is it vegetarian approved?

Obligatory

[guttentag]

Ted: "We're talking about growing meat in a lab without cows."
Linda: "Ugh! That's creepy!... Right?... Oh, I see, we're doing that."

Artificial Beef Taste Tester: "It tastes... familiar..."
Ted: "Beef?"
Taste Tester: "No..."
Linda: "Chicken? We'll take chicken."
Taste Tester: Shakes his head
Ted: "What does it taste like?"
Taste Tester: "Despair?"
Ted: "Is it possible it just needs salt?"
Taste Tester: Shakes his head very slowly

Better Off Ted, Season 1 Episode 2

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss this show so much. :(

Is this the best way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be easier to engineer and process, for example, soy beans to make it taste more like ground beef?

Re:Is this the best way?

[cbhacking]

Taste, texture, and have the nutritional charactersitics of beef? Not without engineering them well past anything you could properly call a soybean anymore...

Re:Is this the best way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't expect beef fit for burgers.

There is no fat which comes with lots favors, "moisture" and textures. When you make a burger, you are supposed not to use extra lean beef at all.
All muscles and no blood vessels /juices in it, so it would be white meat.

I won't be surprised if it came out like unfavored tofu patties with texture of imitation crab. Hope they have a good marinate and garnishes.

Speaking as a meat eater...

[multiben]

I feel that eating meat which was not once running through the fields, robs me of the deep sense of superiority I get from being at the top of the food chain. Who knows how long we may remain here (alien invasion or pending zombie apocalypse)? I say let's enjoy our dominant position while we have it and not waste our time on defenseless lab meat.

Re:Speaking as a meat eater...

[plopez]

If you think you are top of the food chain don't tell the bacteria, or fungi, or a host of other organisms that feast on humans both live and dead.

Re:Speaking as a meat eater...

[blue trane]

Were you a slave-owner in a previous life?

Re:Speaking as a meat eater...

[multiben]

It's not my fault if my employees fail to negotiate good working conditions.

Re:Speaking as a meat eater...

[KiloByte]

Yeah... I feel pity for vegetarians, for they don't know the deep carnivore pride you feel when your kitten brings home his first bird...

Re:Speaking as a meat eater...

[serviscope_minor]

robs me of the deep sense of superiority I get from being at the top of the food chain.

Interesting. So, you feel inferior to mosquitos then?

Re:Speaking as a meat eater...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think mosquitos eat whole humans, except in Finnland in "summer".

Bacon ftw.

[Nyder]

First they replaced my natural flavor with imitation, and I ate it anyways.
Second they replaced sugar with corn syrup, and I kept on getting fatter.
Then they replaced my natural crops with genetic modified crops, and I kept eating.
Now they are trying to replace my natural cow grown meat with vat grown meat? WTF?
When will this stop? We are very close to losing bacon in the name of progress.

Think of the bacon, this must be stopped.

Re:Bacon ftw.

[Anonymous Coward]

First they replaced my natural flavor with imitation, and I ate it anyways.
Second they replaced sugar with corn syrup, and I kept on getting fatter.
Then they replaced my natural crops with genetic modified crops, and I kept eating.
Now they are trying to replace my natural cow grown meat with vat grown meat? WTF?
When will this stop? We are very close to losing bacon in the name of progress.

Think of the bacon, this must be stopped.

On the plus side, you wouldn't have to worry about mad cow disease. Mad Scientist disease, maybe....

Re:Bacon ftw.

[labnet]

Think of the bacon, this must be stopped.

Ten years ago we had Steve Jobs, Johnny Cash, and Bob Hope. Now we have no Jobs, no Cash and no Hope. Please God don't let Kevin Bacon die!

Re:Bacon ftw.

[Anonymous Coward]

Natural cow grown meat? Dream on ...

Re:Bacon ftw.

[guruevi]

Or whatever bacteria/virus decides to develop itself in those vats of meat...

Re:Bacon ftw.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they are trying to replace my natural cow grown meat with vat grown meat? WTF?

Who would "they" be? Are you crazy?

Re:Bacon ftw.

[Scarletdown]

On the plus side, you wouldn't have to worry about mad cow disease. Mad Scientist disease, maybe....

And as a plus side to that on top of it all, PMS can finally get renamed to what it should have been called in the first place.

Of course you'd order...

[Deadstick]

...a cup of Kopi Luwak with it.

Re:Of course you'd order...

[rmdingler]

Well done. Like a ruined steak. Just as I assume the vatburger would taste.

Good News

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news for supermarkets:

No horses were harmed in the production of this BEEFburger...

What about human flesh?

[plopez]

Does eating synthetic human tissue make you a cannibal? (cue the creepy cannibalistic zombie apocalypse music in 3... 2.... 1...)

Re:What about human flesh?

[jbeaupre]

There was a short story in Analog long ago that touched on that. A husband-wife team were famous for selling the best and most exotic cloned meat. He was the scientist, she was marketing. In a competitive industry, everyone was trying to out do each other.

In the end, he confessed to his wife that their latest blockbuster was cloned from a sample taken from her ass.

I LOVE BACON

[Anonymous Coward]

Bacon dghsdgsdfgsdfgsdgf Bacon hgfhfdgshgfhgfh Bacon Bacon fghfghgfhfghfghfghfghsfgh Bacon fghsdghdgdrgdarg..........Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon

Re:I LOVE BACON

[ArcadeMan]

http://baconsalt.com/

Re:I LOVE BACON

[loufoque]

I happen to have some of this myself.

Re:I LOVE BACON

[mrchaotica]

Just FYI, Baconnaise (from the same company) is not good. I recommend using regular bacon and regular mayonnaise instead.

Already knew it was reality

[msobkow]

Haven't you seen the pictures of featherless chickens on crackbook with the claim that KFC can't call it chicken any more because it's grown in a vat? :P

Re:Already knew it was reality

[msobkow]

Modded down? For what? Making a joke?

This place ain't what she used tur be...

Re:Already knew it was reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't quit your day job. Or better yet, quit your day job and use Dice.com to find a new one.

Kobe Beef

[Anonymous Coward]

All in all I Prefer the $100 Kobe Beef Burger.

is it...

[Anonymous Coward]

kosher?

But, but......

[frootcakeuk]

...... who gets to eat it?

all beef patty

[PopeRatzo]

How much worse can it be than what you get at McDonald's?

Re:all beef patty

[Anonymous Coward]

How much worse can it be than what you get at McDonald's?

And who do you think this "anonymous donor" is?

great news for the environment

[hibji]

If vat grown becomes a reality. Beef production produces huge amounts of methane which is a big contributor to climate change. You don't have to be animal welfare nut to advocate for this development.

Re:great news for the environment

[OhANameWhatName]

Beef production produces huge amounts of methane which is a big contributor to climate change

Sorry, got to call bullshit on that one.

Re:great news for the environment

[ChunderDownunder]

Cattle do belch methane and there have been studies to select low emission pasture.

But agreed, climate change has been written off as a vegan socialist conspiracy by various conservatives and the suggestion that we should eat meat from a science lab only fuels that belief.

On the other hand eating less beef and feasting on animals with, from the grazing perspective, a lower carbon footprint (e.g. goat curry, kangaroo steaks) mightn't be such a bad thing for the environment.

Re:great news for the environment

[hibji]

So what exactly are you calling bullshit on?

Cattle don't produce significant methane? Is the EPA not authoratative enough for you?
http://www.epa.gov/rlep/faq.html

Or that methane causes climate change? I can't really help you if you believe climate change is a hippie conspiracy, but maybe this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/evidence/methane.shtml

Human beings causes a huge, measureable impact on the environment in may other ways, it is not a leap of logic to believe in anthropological climate change.

Re:great news for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

That whooshing sound you heard was not a cow fart.

Re:great news for the environment

[dbIII]

Since cattle are relatively expensive in terms of resources it's going to "fix itself" in the next few decades as they simply get too expensive and beef gets priced out of a market full of chicken, fish and pork. That's why I'm eating a lot of beef while I still can. I'm not so sure I have a steak in the future.

Re:great news for the environment

[serviscope_minor]

So what exactly are you calling bullshit on?

I think you may have missed the joke. It is bullshit in the most literal sense of the word.

Re:great news for the environment

[omnichad]

**woosh***, then THUD!

Re:great news for the environment

[rmdingler]

Crafty.... I Sea what you did there.

Opposite Land

[pubwvj]

Food manufactured in a lab for factory production. This is even further down the spectrum of the absurdity of processed foods and the exact opposite of what we need. This will be far more energy intensive and economically controlled.

Stick with natural, pasture raised meat.

Re:Opposite Land

[Anonymous Coward]

This will be far more energy intensive and economically controlled.

How?

Re:Opposite Land

[pubwvj]

Factory and lab production are far more energy intensive than natural production.

We graze livestock on pasture. Solar energy in. Meat out. Very minimal use of petroleum products or other manmade energy. It's a simple easy system that uses our available resources efficiently.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum you have Confinement Animal Feeding Operations, factories and laboratory production which require enormous inputs of petroleum products and energy for powering machinery, producing fertilizer, transporting raw materials, moving air, water and wastes, etc. All of these are energy intensive production.

The former, pasture raising, lets it self well to small farms. The latter, CAFOs, factories and labs, are the domain of Big Business and central economic controls.

Get involved in food production and this all becomes very obvious.

I miss that show.

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's exactly what I thought of when reading this.

Will it get vegans to stop whining?

[johnny5555]

One can only hope.

looking into the crystal ball

[Anonymous Coward]

i can see ... see ... seeeee..... yes!: a McMars drive-thru!
side note: it WILL blend!

FDA driving the shift to "defined-medium" culture

[Guppy]

I used to work in a company that grows animal tissue cultures. You certainly CAN grow lots of tissue types without horse serum or any animal-related products. In fact, lots of lab protocols require that.

Cyberax is correct, and the main driving force behind the shift has been the FDA; they've been pushing hard for chemically-defined culture media, with elimination of serum-type materials whenever possible. Although bio-pharm materials are closely examined for both known and unknown pathogens, their concern is that animal derived substances may yet harbor pathogens too novel to be detected by conventional methods. We're used to defined media for microbes being simple and cheap, but the ones used for mammalian cells are more complex and frequently must be tailored to each particular cell lineage, with comparatively exorbitant costs.

In any case, if you've got the capability to do large-scale mammalian cell culture, you'd be a fool to use it for a product that sells for dollars-per-pound, when that capacity could be put to work performing contract manufacturing of bio-pharmaceuticals that sell for for thousands-of-dollars-per-gram.

Re:FDA driving the shift to "defined-medium" cultu

[Cyberax]

Lots of tissue media (and enzymes) are so expensive because there's no large-scale demand for them, so vendors have to recoup their R&D by jacking up the prices. I know for a fact that a couple of very expensive enzymes used in preparation of DNA libraries are sold with 20x markup. Yet it's barely enough to get even because it took tens of millions of dollars to develop them.

Re: FDA driving the shift to "defined-medium" cult

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't the large scale of production bring the price to weight ratio down regardless of what was being produced?

Not exactly meat free

[ahem]

From the article: "starting with a particular type of cell removed from cow necks obtained at a slaughterhouse."

There was also a mention that there's an ongoing need for animal products to produce the growth medium.

There's work going on to be animal independent, but for now this meat is also slightly murderous.

Re:Not exactly meat free

[ModernGeek]

This is why I expect vegetarians, or at least the extreme vegans to protest it. A lot of them protest milk/etc as it is created with "animal labor".

This was supposed to happen in September

[Anonymous Coward]

Missing deadlines, much?

Did I hear...

[grumpyman]

Anonymous McDonor?

No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'd rather have my burger from a Santa Gertrudis steer raised in Texas, California or Hawaii.

How futile!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that any industrial process for turning solar energy into meat can beat the efficiency of the grass/cow combination honed over millions of years, I have a bridge you might be interested in buying.

At any rate, this must be the most stupid approach for fighting hunger presented so far since processing vegetable matter into meat is quite inefficient. Starving people are better served with rice than hamburgers.

A long way to go but worth the journey

[Palamos]

The cause is a good one as it's ethically and environmentally the right direction but to succeed the end game has to be something that unquestioningly tastes, feels, looks, cooks, etc. like good quality meat as we have enough substitutes that don't hit every button. Once we get there we will have more land for vegetable matter and may have a chance of feeding the world's population with enough variety, including protein, to keep them healthy. However, we must learn from history, both recent and less so, that if we let money be the most significant factor in deciding the quality of our food and who gets to eat what, then it will not deliver what's needed. This has to be government funded without patents, licences, tie-ins etc. so that the best product will rise to the top and not the best margin.

Fallen Dragon

[RivenAleem]

A good book in its own right, it has a great scene where the protagonist is given real meat to eat instead of the vat grown he's eaten all his life. He's quite horrified at the thought of having eaten "dead meat". A small but interesting part of the story.

In The EU - Horsemeat Reigns

[Anonymous Coward]

You can but in anything and claim anything - EU is proof of that - just don't get caught.Rat sold as Lamb in China.
Rotten pork, treated in Vietnam- refreshed, as they say.
Pressure rendered meat off bones, and unspeakable chunky bits go into pies.. gota be cheaper than petre dish flesh.

Cheese

[zoomshorts]

can I get cheese on that?

Soylent Green

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't, because law makers will outlaw it being listed on the package, and that is the give away. "If they aren't doing anything wrong, then they have nothing to hide"; Isn't that the phrase law makers and law enforcers always try to use on us?

With all the Bullshit around Pink Slime, Monsanto and other GMO products in recent years, there is no way I would ever touch it. I will start going directly to a butcher.

I bet those that make the stuff (and know all the details of how it's made) won't be eating it on a regular basis.

Now you can enjoy Soylent Red, Yellow and the new Soylent Green.

It's PEOPLE! ! !

[DoctorBonzo]

InVitroBurger is PEOPLE ! ! !

Human meat

[morgauxo]

Where did the original sample come from? Was the animal completely destroyed or was it just a small biopsy that would grow back. Was the animal awake? Was it properly numbed at least? Finally... did the animal give consent? Can an animal give consent?

See! The real ethical vegetarians won't eat lab grown beef. They will eat lab grown human! it's the only meat source than can give consent!

Today we are men!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

1. Meat tastes terrible. It's the fat that tastes good. Go make a burger from steak tartar, no cheese, if you don't believe me.

2. Red meat, because of carnetines and gut bacterial, may be causing the lion's share of heart disease problems.

So we've been fooled by science fiction for 80 years. Meat is a useless substrate to convey delicious fats to the mouth, and give you something to chew on while savoring them. And it's a hideously unhealthy substrate.

Some tofu burger, but with beef fat, is probably the way to go. Lack of fats is why tofu, like plain baked taters, taste...boring, to be kind to both.

Re:Today we are men!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Oh I forgot my point -- my point was science fiction has long had lab-grown meat for people. Except it won't have fat, which will have to be added, making the entire creation of meat pointless. You might as well create something better for you and add the fat to that.

Fuck off..

[GigaBurglar]

Kids on this planet starve because the IMF won't drop interest rates on loans given to western installed dictators - who are now dead or in exile. There are some 30m homeless in the US and this is qualified as news? An expensive burger? I'm not trolling here - I'm seriously saying fuck you - I hope you fucking choke.

Re:Fuck off..

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're not trolling, then you're a moron. Because if you're being serious, then you are demonstrating that 1) you don't understand what this story is about and 2) you have a childishly simplistic way of looking at the situation of the world and its problems.

So for your sake, let's hope you are trolling.

why not lab-grown fat?

[Khashishi]

AFAIK, most of the flavor comes from the fat, not the muscle. Add some lab-grown fat to a nice soy-burger and I bet it will taste a lot more meaty than lab-grown muscle, which will probably turn out to be a dry, tasteless, block of protein.

Terrible idea with today's tech.

[MassiveForces]

Growth media is made out of a lot of different compounds, much of which is extracted from animals. For example, the media will be between 10 and 20 percent fetal calf serum. And the quantities of media needed will be huge, it will have to be changed out every week to grow and keep alive until harvesting and will probably take 2 weeks to grow to confluency.

So in effect this is going to be the world's most unvegetarian animal intensive hamburger.

Cattle holocaust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Artificial meat.
Result?
No need to raise cattle.
Death of hundreds of millions of cows.
Few found in nature.
Happy, vegetarians?

Only the best for the Ceiling Cat

[Douglas Goodall]

A burger that special must be for something really important, like has cheeseburger for ceiling cat.

$325K?!

[Anonymous Coward]

where are they serving it?? on the moon??

RobM

[Anonymous Coward]

McDonald's new McMuscle.

Science Club

[mgcarley]

Something like this was featured on "Dara O'Briain: Science Club" - I think it was episode 3 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p39dw

Make it health

[hobarrera]

Great! Now we just have to make it healthy (or at least healthier than other food), and there'll be an actual reason to eat that hugely overpriced food!