$375,000 Lab-Grown Beef Burger To Debut On Monday

sciencehabit writes "If you take some scientists' word for it, the biggest agricultural revolution since the domestication of livestock is starting on Monday — in an arts center in London. At a carefully orchestrated media event, Dutch stem cell researcher Mark Post is planning to present the world's first test-tube hamburger. Its patty — financed by an anonymous billionaire — is made from meat that Post has laboriously grown from bovine stem cells in his lab at an estimated cost of $375,000, just to prove a point: that it is possible to produce meat without slaughtering animals."

Comments

It tastes like.... Despair?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue the Better of Ted jokes...

Re:It tastes like.... Despair?

[LocalH]

If only I had mod points...

Re:It tastes like.... Despair?

[Anubis IV]

For those who don't get the reference (which I was immediately pulling up as soon as I saw the topic title; sorry for the low quality):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezEMnzmDYZU

Re:It tastes like.... Despair?

[CanHasDIY]

For those who don't get the reference (which I was immediately pulling up as soon as I saw the topic title; sorry for the low quality):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezEMnzmDYZU

Good ol' Ted, taken from us far, far too soon...

"This tastes... familiar..."

Re:It tastes like.... Despair?

[guttentag]

"Producing beef without cows" is old news. I'm unimpressed. Show me evidence that you can produce slashdot without slashvertisements and you've got my money.

Re:It tastes like.... Despair?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, that is Better Off Ted.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1402241/

Billionaire vegetarian/vegan...?

[Anonymous Coward]

...Paul McCartney?!

Beats meat

[bryanandaimee]

Scientist says you can't beat meat. Now that's cultured!

Re:Beats meat

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll taste bland. Cruelty is a flavor enhancer.

Re:Beats meat

[cold fjord]

What an unfortunate title.

Re:Beats meat

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I prefer my baby seal freshly clubbed by another baby seal while the mother is forced to watch.

Re:Beats meat

[DNS-and-BIND]

Citation please.

Re:Beats meat

[bryanandaimee]

Yes, and I think it was missunderstood. I should have gone for something more obvious. How about

Scientist spends $375,000 beating meat in his lab. He says it's cultured.

or

Scientist spends $375,000 trying to beat meat in his lab.

Re:Beats meat

[peragrin]

Have you ever had veal?

I love a good steak, or burger but I stopped eating veal when I saw how those calves were raised.

Re:Beats meat

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take a veal, lobster and foie gras burger any day.

Re:Beats meat

[serviscope_minor]

Good on you.

I stopped eating proper Fois Gras when I found how it was made and I also have stopped eating products derived from battery chickens.

I think it's fine to eat meat, but engaging in unnecessary cruelty to get it is immoral in my opinion.

Re:Beats meat

[JockTroll]

Yeah, I don't like battery chickens either. I prefer to hook them up to AC, stand back, and watch. First they vibrate like crazy, the feathers stand up like a porcupine's quills, then they start smoking and after a while, sometimes, they blow up. Awesome.

Re:Beats meat

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since I seen photos of the Holocaust, I can't bring myself to eat anything but Kosher meat.

Re:Beats meat

[Optali]

Oh, I see a fat little nerd trying to look badass... cute ^_^

Re: Beats meat

[StarFace]

Except that "kosher" has very little to do with the humane treatment of animals. It is more a strange, antiquated notion of basic hygiene that is as dogmatic (and often, absolutely incorrect) in its principles as any other offspring of religion.

I wonder about the taste

[Rato Ruter]

Because part of it stems from the fat the animal grows; part from it's diet; I would even go as far as to say from the landscape the animal was grown in. Will this meat flavor depend on the culture medium it was grown?

Re:I wonder about the taste

[icebike]

Because part of it stems from the fat

Sell now all of the taste is from stems.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[MozeeToby]

Personally I'd be more worried about texture.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Laboratory Meat now with Real Meat Flavour*

Re:I wonder about the taste

[timeOday]

Personally I'd be more worried about texture.

That's why it's a hamburger. The entire point of mechanically pre-chewing cheap meat is to destroy its tough, inedible texture. You can make a somewhat passable simulation of ground beef out of soy beans, for heavens' sake.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Valdrax]

Well, of course, I seriously doubt it will be as tasty or have nearly as good mouthfeel as a burger from a real cow, but this is a very important, early step in a long chain of necessary inventions to truly replace animals as a meat source.

However, if culture medium *does* matter, then that become yet another variable to tweak in producing the tastiest meat, and it's almost certain that we'll be able to improve on nature by, say, eliminating the taste of fear and stress in meat.

We'll also theoretically have the ability to grow sterile meat if we can use sterile inputs. Imagine meat that can stay vacuum sealed on the shelf with no refrigeration for months and still taste fresh!

Re:I wonder about the taste

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Put a pat of butter on the patty when you fry it up.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Anonymous Coward]

You can make a somewhat passable simulation of ground beef out of soy beans, for heavens' sake.

No. No you cannot.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Anonymous Coward]

implying inedible texture means "not tasty."

What your mouth does to make food more digestible has little bearing on whether it's enjoyable to eat.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Em Adespoton]

Because part of it stems from the fat the animal grows; part from it's diet; I would even go as far as to say from the landscape the animal was grown in.

Will this meat flavor depend on the culture medium it was grown?

I seem to recall the guy did a TED talk a few months ago where he pointed out this fact -- growing muscle from stem cells has been doable for quite some time; the trick was (and is) to grow all the parts that make it tasty. He still hasn't (or at least hadn't back then) been able to reproduce marbled meat, but he's been able to grow the right proportions of meat, fat, and tissue cells to make a ground beef substitute. I presume he could do the quantities to order, for different tastes. I'd think the culture medium would also have an effect, as it would influence what extra minerals etc. were included.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[InvalidError]

If you want to worry about the taste and texture of synthetic meat, try this one on for size:
http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2011/06/15/shit-burger-japanese-researcher-creates-artificial-meat-from-human-feces-video/

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Animats]

Imagine meat that can stay vacuum sealed on the shelf with no refrigeration for months and still taste fresh!

That's available now. Irradiated meat is available, but not widely sold. There are some tricks to preserving taste, one being to vacuum-pack and freeze to -30C before irradiation.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Kaenneth]

But what if the stress or fear is what makes real meat taste so good?

Carnivores are evolved to eat freshly hunted and killed prey, not sickly weak prey unaware or uncaring that it's about to die.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[mdielmann]

But what if the stress or fear is what makes real meat taste so good?

Carnivores are evolved to eat freshly hunted and killed prey, not sickly weak prey unaware or uncaring that it's about to die.

Maybe surprise tastes better than stress or fear, and that's why many predators try to catch their prey unawares. A quick burst of "What the..." for that extra something special.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[peragrin]

Um no you can't.

Having had ground meat from, many different animals there is a major taste difference between them.

A venison burger tastes different from a steak burger, which tastes different from regular ground chuck.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[liamevo]

Unless your mouth is a meat grinder, he wasn't referring to chewing with your mouth.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Ol Olsoc]

You can make a somewhat passable simulation of ground beef out of soy beans, for heavens' sake.

No. No you cannot.

Yes you can. You might not like it, but as a carnivore who enjoys a cool center rare steak, I can tell you that a lot of those soy protein burgers taste okay. Do they taste exactly like hamburger? nope. But not everything in life has to taste like hamburger. Ice cream for instance.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Ol Olsoc]

http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2011/06/15/shit-burger-japanese-researcher-creates-artificial-meat-from-human-feces-video/

What, that asshole is at it again?

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Anonymous Coward]

'murika

Re:I wonder about the taste

[LordLimecat]

IMHO, soy is at its worst when its trying to be something else.

Its sort of like the uncanny valley. If you come out and say "hi, Im tofu", its fine. If you try to be steak, everyone will know something is wrong (even if theyre not sure what) and it will taste terrible.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[LordLimecat]

Every time someone says "mouthfeel" I have an inexplicable desire to punch something.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[BluBrick]

But what if the stress or fear is what makes real meat taste so good?

Carnivores are evolved to eat freshly hunted and killed prey, not sickly weak prey unaware or uncaring that it's about to die.

Maybe surprise tastes better than stress or fear, and that's why many predators try to catch their prey unawares. A quick burst of "What the..." for that extra something special.

Hardly. They try to catch their prey unawares because it uses less energy and has a better chance of success to creep up 125 yards on a gazelle and then give chase at 25 yards than to simply chase it down from 150 yards.

While the meat industry may strive to do so, I doubt that there is an abbattoir anywhere in the world that has managed to completely remove stress and fear from the livestock about to be slaughtered. On the contrary, I suspect that immediately before the "What the..." moment, there is a great deal of "I smell fear ahead", and "I don't like this, it's all wrong" leading to appropriately natural levels of stress and fear hormones in my tasty burger. This $375,000 burger is probably going to be as flavoursome as a glass of water.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[guises]

I had that problem with convincing my dad to eat meat substitutes - he kept treating them like meat, and expecting them to taste and behave the same way. Ultimately he dismissed the whole category. Ridiculous. A black bean / chipotle veggie burger is fuckin' delicious, it doesn't matter if it doesn't taste like meat.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[guttentag]

Every time someone says "mouthfeel" I have an inexplicable desire to punch something.

Might I suggest a bottle of Fiji water? You may find that the soft mouthfeel of the artesian water translates into a soft fistfeel and spares your knuckles from the consequences of your aggression.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[aaronb1138]

Actually, cows in particular taint the meat with a bad flavor if they are in fear when they die.

That being said, I still prefer naturally sourced meat. Lab grown meat is going to lack all the flavor of having lived life. Beef is already hard to get at good quality because we condense a 3-4 year growing phase to 13 months for most.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[AlphaWolf_HK]

The prey is certainly aware when it dies, just some predators make that awareness shorter than others.

I think the shortest time period would be like if you passed a stop sign, and halfway into the intersection you catch a glimpse as somebody else blows right past it and straight into you, followed by approximately 15 seconds of slowly fading to black, with or without struggling. That split second of fear would be the minimum that the prey feels IMHO, with an endorphin and/or adrenaline spike potentially canceling out the rest.

I think it would be exceptionally rare for an instant kill that lacks the feeling that I just described. At least in nature anyways; farm kills almost always involve a captive bolt pistol which truly is an instant kill (animal knocked unconscious immediately and the brain matter swells and crushes itself.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr00arV2XIw

All of those PETA videos about cows being tortured are just propaganda material - doing things those ways tends to make things more difficult and labor intensive. In fact, PETA abuses animals in its care much worse than any slaughterhouse. To be honest, I'm shocked people actually give them money.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-j-winograd/peta-kills-puppies-kittens_b_2979220.html

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, this sounds an awful lot like those people trying to move from Windows to Linux and being appalled because "It's not (like) Windows".

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Anonymous Coward]

it doesn't matter if it doesn't taste like meat.

YES IT DOES.

if the guy wants meat, give him meat, not some organo-hipster-vegan shit on a bun.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how you vegans try, try, and try again to make crap taste like meat. Calling things a "burger" and shaping shit into various forms that look like meat. No it's not a burger. It doesn't matter if it has a bun, lettuce, and tomato.

The fact is your body CRAVES meat. That is why subconsciously people like yourself have to make things look and taste like meat. It's a poor attempt to fool your body, mind, and friends. "Look I'm eating healthy!" In the end it doesn't work though. Your body withers away because you can't even make a solid shit. Being vegan means having the runs(diarrhea) the rest of your life. Of course to limit the amount of times you have to go to the bathroom you basically cut down the amount you eat; hence, always hungry because you don't get the proper nutrition, and acting like a douche around everyone, "I'm so superior to you!" (caveat: they sometimes gorge on rice and other things because they get tired of shitting themselves but then they need an Exlax because they are stopped up, and the shitting starts anew.)

And you wonder why your dad doesn't really like to visit. Did you ever notice how he always wants to go out to eat and he insists on paying, and really doesn't give a shit whether you eat with him or not? He's no dummy. You see he's probably old enough to know what it's really like to be hungry, to starve, and he never wants to be in that position again. That's why it pains him to see you starve yourself, although he probably doesn't say anything about it anymore.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Alioth]

But hamburger ought to taste like hamburger. If you're using substitute hamburger "meat" to make a hamburger, it ought to be like hamburger. It's irrelevant that ice cream doesn't taste like hamburger, because ice cream isn't being passed off as hamburger.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Alioth]

When I see my cats hunt, they aren't looking for a chase (well except for very small prey like mice which they tend to play with). When stalking something large (to them) like a rat or a rabbit they try to sneak up on the target unobserved, pounce and make the killing blow immediately, so the prey doesn't tend to know it's about to die. (They probably do this with larger prey to avoid a great deal of chasing and also the risk of injury when trying to kill a larger animal)

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Ol Olsoc]

But hamburger ought to taste like hamburger. If you're using substitute hamburger "meat" to make a hamburger, it ought to be like hamburger. It's irrelevant that ice cream doesn't taste like hamburger, because ice cream isn't being passed off as hamburger.

But first you have to decide what hamburger tastes like. I had my first veggie burger during a long day of public service work. Earlier in the day, I had a regular burger. This was cooked by a guy who really enjoyed flame action on the grill. The hamburger really didn't taste very good at all. So I went back later in the day, and decided to give the veggie burger a try. It tasted pretty good, and a whole lot better than the "real" hamburger.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm a dedicated carnivore, think that most vegetarians are neurotic, and vegans are almost universally pretentious assholes, but this weird litmus test of everything that seems to be almost universal doesn't mean that thinking that a veggie burger tastes good means anything other than thinking something tastes good.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Ol Olsoc]

I had that problem with convincing my dad to eat meat substitutes - he kept treating them like meat, and expecting them to taste and behave the same way.

You're right. I noticed that soybean plants don't scream like cows do when I shoot them.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[cthulhu11]

"Cultured meat is now grown in medium with fetal calf serum, a supplement made from blood collected at slaughterhouses; scientists have yet to find an alternative that doesn't involve dead animals"

Re:I wonder about the taste

[mdielmann]

Well, it was supposed to be a bit of a joke. Most of the hormonal responses to surprise are the same as fear, just less of them (unless the fear is founded). While some predators go for amazingly quick kills, they do seem to be the exception. (There's a clip of an alligator taking out a young gazelle at a pond in about a second. And then they let it rot for days.) And 15 seconds of fear would seem to get you pretty close to the hormonal maximum, anyway.

Re:I wonder about the taste

[Anonymous Coward]

You're going to get a hurtfeel in your buttfeel from my footfeel!

Don't care.

[Seumas]

As a meat-eater who feels bad eating cows and pigs (I have seen how smart pigs can be) and doesn't eat some things like rabbit and duck simply because of the animal, I have to say that I don't see myself ever eating this. It will take a lot to ever convince me that something synthetic can taste the same as something that was alive and running around with blood pumping through its brains and a nervous system that spent time outdoors.

On the other hand, if they can also alter it so that it has 98% the taste of the real thing and, say, maybe 30% of the fat and calories . . . . then I might be swayed into accepting it.

I mean, as long as we've dispensed with any general health concerns overall.

Also, if I'm allowed to eat test-tube meat, why can't I eat a test-tube baby?

Re:Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because test-tube meat doesn't have a test-tube brain or nervous system

Re:Don't care.

[Threni]

> It will take a lot to ever convince me that something synthetic can taste the same as something that
> was alive and running around with blood

No, it will take as long as it takes to bite it and taste it. You'll be able to make a snap judgement immediately.

Re:Don't care.

[MozeeToby]

It will take a lot to ever convince me that something synthetic can taste the same as something that was alive and running around with blood pumping through its brains and a nervous system that spent time outdoors.

If they succeed won't it take... one bite? Maybe one double blinded bite if you don't trust yourself to be objective?

Re:Don't care.

[Seumas]

So would it be acceptable if I -- I mean, some anonymous philanthropist -- commissioned brainless test-tube babies?

Re:Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a meat-eater who feels bad eating cows and pigs.

and

Also, if I'm allowed to eat test-tube meat, why can't I eat a test-tube baby?

Wow you are all over the place aren't you? Feel sorry for cows and pigs, but wanting to eat human flesh? Even if grown from a culture, there is something so very wrong with that on so many levels..

Re:Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember that God invented cows to make grass fit for human consumption!!!!

Re:Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

baby shaped meat patties...hmmmm
personally i will take boob shape ones if i have a choice.

Re:Don't care.

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Also, if I'm allowed to eat test-tube meat, why can't I eat a test-tube baby?

You can but then you have to wait 18-20 years and marry it.

Re:Don't care.

[Seumas]

Hey, I asked why it would be acceptable/ethical to do one and not the other. I didn't say I wanted to actually do it.

Re:Don't care.

[Seumas]

I don't think that is the case, because I think there will remain in most people this knowledge that it "is not from a real cow" which will affect the taste. Maybe not objectively (as in, the Pepsi/Coke taste test), but in the same way that someone is certain they can discern the flavor of a $100/bottle wine and a $500/bottle of wine, until you give them a taste test where they can't tell the difference. This is why I think it would be something that current generations would have a hard time accepting, but future generations would simply take as matter of fact.

Re:Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd personally be completely fine with that, but never underestimate the irrationality of people.

Re:Don't care.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

So would it be acceptable if I -- I mean, some anonymous philanthropist -- commissioned brainless test-tube babies?

We usually want to prevent it (or at least detect it in time for a relatively early termination, rather than a "Give birth to ghastly alien baby, watch it die" scenario, which is the alternative); but the fact that anencephaly occurs from time to time in humans suggests that there might actually be a (comparatively) accessible mechanism for inducing it artificially in an early-stage embryo.

I can't imagine anybody, ever, getting a signoff from the IRB do to it with humans; but it'd be interesting to know if doing this with animal fetuses might be more economically viable than doing 'pure' tissue cultures. Animals are, after all, pretty well adapted to growing tissue when provided with food, and anecephalic animals aren't exactly capable of suffering. I wonder how long you can keep one growing on life support...

Re:Don't care.

[ae1294]

Hey, I asked why it would be acceptable/ethical to do one and not the other. I didn't say I wanted to actually do it.

I donno but honestly I think you're on to something... Billionaires become Billionaires because they have no souls and are sociopaths. I bet they would pay huge amounts of money to eat babies. Sounds like a great startup idea to me!

Taste the future...

Re:Don't care.

[interkin3tic]

A test tube baby wouldn't be very much meat. More interesting question is "will silly people ban the eating of lab-grown meat of human origin."

With IPSC you could take a skin patch, wait a month or two, then get enough of meat derived from you to eat.

Hey, if you were a hot dog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself? Because I sure as hell will. I'll be so delicious.

And no, I won't be doing it just to quote that SNL sketch.

Re:Don't care.

[hort_wort]

Also, if I'm allowed to eat test-tube meat, why can't I eat a test-tube baby?

A valid concern. Just my layman guess is that human tissue would provide maximum nutrition for a human to eat. How would you like to go to a lab to get a few of your tastiest cells sampled and cloned to be made into food tailored just for you? Mmm! I'm hungry now! Dinner time here. I'll have a me burger.

Re:Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You see, it's a full human being with a soul the instant the ingredients are mixed in the test tube.

Even if it doesn't have a brain, is condemned to a very short and utterly unaware life, lacks a heartbeat and will surely die outside of the test tube.

I know this because I learned bioethics from a Texas high school textbook.

Re:Don't care.

[hebertrich]

it's just as disgusting as pink slime .. ill stay far far far away , Plain and simple : it's disgusting , did i mention it's disgusting ? Cause i really think it's totaly disgusting .

Re:Don't care.

[Em Adespoton]

I don't think that is the case, because I think there will remain in most people this knowledge that it "is not from a real cow" which will affect the taste. Maybe not objectively (as in, the Pepsi/Coke taste test), but in the same way that someone is certain they can discern the flavor of a $100/bottle wine and a $500/bottle of wine, until you give them a taste test where they can't tell the difference. This is why I think it would be something that current generations would have a hard time accepting, but future generations would simply take as matter of fact.

I think you overestimate people; most people are only peripherally aware that a McDonald's hamburger contains elements that at one point belonged to a living bovine. We've actually got really good as a western culture at disassociating food picked up at a store/eaten at a restaurant with the living things it came from. In short, the future is already here.

Of course, what you ARE going to have is a major backlash from the farming conglomerates who will see their profits vanishing. Hopefully they'll attempt to re-establish the connection between living animals and meat on your plate -- that way we consumers win either way.

Re:Don't care.

[judoguy]

Taste isn't everything. Even now I prefer organic grass fed beef to hormone and anti-biotic saturated corn fed factory cows.

There can be a huge range of processes building this beef in the future. If current processed food is a model, this stuff could turn out to suck big time. Not because of physical necessity but corporate/government decisions.

Re:Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the meat you eat comes from animals that never spent a moment of their lives outdoors "running around". And though i agree it is unlikely they will be able to produce a synthetic meat that tastes as good as what can be had from a real animal, I am certain that they will be able to produce a product that is at least as good or better than the kind of grade e slop that get served by fast food places.

Re:Don't care.

[hedwards]

One of the problems with that is that things tend to build up. The only reason why Mad Cow was a problem was that it wasn't just one generation of cow being fed to another, it went on for several generations, leading to a build up in prions. Normally, the prions wouldn't be common enough to cause the sorts of problems that are seen with mad cow.

Re:Don't care.

[hort_wort]

My gosh, this is the second time I've gotten a reply on here that taught me something after years of use. Thank you, sir.

Re:Don't care.

[Opyros]

Hm, you've just come up with a modest proposal...

Re:Don't care.

[Miamicanes]

> Of course, what you ARE going to have is a major backlash from the farming conglomerates who will see their profits vanishing.

Or they'll replace racks of chick-filled trays with racks of cultured meat once it becomes more profitable, if only as a premium high-margin item.

The big thing that's going to keep this from ever becoming cost-effective is the electricity it's going to take to exercise it by contracting the fibers over the course of their "life". Remember, most of what we call "meat" is REALLY "muscle", with incidental amounts of fat. Flabby muscle doesn't taste the same as exercised muscle. That's 90% of the reason why cows raised for meat are allowed to roam mostly out in the open instead of being kept in pens as veal. Pigs and chickens in close quarters will climb over each other and spend their lives trying to avoid getting trampled. Cows are just too big & heavy for that to work. They HAVE to be allowed to roam around for exercise. Otherwise, half of them would kill the other half long before they were old enough to slaughter.

As for opposition from "farmers", think about it for a minute. The poultry industry has basically perfected large-scale vertically-integrated corporate factory farming. The likelihood that any cultured meat could be even remotely cost-competitive with it is basically "nonexistent". That leaves beef, where there's a clear divide between ranchers and slaughterhouses. If ranchers decide it's more profitable to culture meat instead of ranch it, there's nothing the slaughterhouses can do about it. If slaughterhouses decide it's more profitable to culture meat than kill it, there's not much the farmers can do about it. More importantly, the states where ranchers are powerful aren't quite the states where slaughterhouses are powerful, so there's not going to be any kind of "united front".

The truth is, ranchers don't *like* sending animals to be slaughtered any more than the people who own the slaughterhouses *like* killing them. If they could cost-effectively get away with herding cattle into a robotic slaughter chamber, closing the soundproof doors, pressing the "go" button, and walking away to watch neatly-packaged meat emerge (regardless of the horrors that might occur inside the chamber), they'd do it in an instant.

Cultured meat will never replace good steak, and can't possibly be cost-competitive with factory-farmed poultry. That leaves hamburger & sausage as potentially-viable markets. My guess is that someday, nouveau-vegetarians will be able to enjoy guilt-free cultured hamburgers & sausage that's certified to be slaughter-free, and everyone else will eat hamburgers & sausage that are some cost-effective combination of ground beef/pork and cultured beef/pork.

We'll probably get to have some entertaining theatre when various sects of Judaism gets around to arguing about the 21st-century definition of "Kosher" in the context of meat that was technically never slaughtered, and might even see something truly perverse, like Kosher cultured meat guaranteed to be cloned from the cells of humanely-slaughtered animals (vs non-slaughtered animals), and a huge media orgy someday when Kosher cultured beef ends up getting served to a NewVegan who ordered cultured beef cloned from cells harvested from calves released into nature parks (where they're promptly killed & eaten by bears, cougars, wolves, and (in Florida) pythons).

Re:Don't care.

[Miamicanes]

Pink slime looks disgusting, but the truth is, if you were given a hamburger containing pink slime (with the usual artificial flavors and processing), and another hamburger made from low-quality pure ground beef, you'd probably think the one made with pink slime tasted better. At the very least, in double-blind taste tests, you'd probably give the pink slime burger a 4 or 5 out of 5 for "authentic barbecue flavor" and "savory texture", and say the all-beef (low-quality) burger was dry & tasteless. You'd be amazed/horrified if you knew about the miracles things like artificial smokehouse flavoring and MSG can work on your tastebuds.

The only reason why they don't sell artificial flavorings like the ones added to Burger King's hamburgers at grocery stores is because consumers would abuse them and consume levels a thousand times beyond any amount ever approved for direct human consumption by the FDA (or even tested for safety, period). I forget who it was, but some university actually did some studies with test kitchens and people allowed to prepare their own foods, just to see how much artificial flavor real people would put into their own food if they were allowed to. The researchers were *horrified*. One described it as being like giving a pound of crack to an addict & wishing him a Merry Christmas. People literally went *nuts* with the stuff. Supposedly, one lady actually basted her finger with the stuff, started to suck it, and got so caught up in the moment, she accidentally BIT IT badly enough to end up at the hospital.

It's the same reason why it's damn near impossible to get cats who've grown up with dry food to voluntarily switch to premium wet food. A cat who's grown up eating "kitty crack" will literally *starve himself* to death before voluntarily eating real tuna if you try to switch them "cold turkey" (yes, I know pure tuna isn't nutritionally-complete... I was using it as an example of something I literally tried to get my cats to eat at one time as an experiment after they rejected multiple brands of premium cat food. They wouldn't even look at it until I crumbled ground-up dry food over it, at which point they licked the dryfood-powder from the top).

Re:Don't care.

[epyT-R]

If they're putting msg in these fake meat and veggie burgers, I'm staying away.. that shit gives me horrid headaches, along with many other additives.

Re:Don't care.

[Frankie70]

It will take a lot to ever convince me that something synthetic can taste the same as something that was alive and running around with blood pumping through its brains and a nervous system that spent time outdoors.

Or you can taste it and see instead of waiting to be convinced.

Also, if I'm allowed to eat test-tube meat, why can't I eat a test-tube baby?

You are allowed to eat meat - hence you are allowed to eat test tube meat.

You are not allowed to eat babies - hence you cannot eat test tube babies.

Is this clear enough?

Re:Don't care.

[DigiShaman]

Or they'll replace racks of chick-filled trays with racks of cultured meat once it becomes more profitable...

Obviously McDonald's Chicken McNuggets would be prior art.

Re: Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you hunted it yourself, the meat you eat was never running around, as it grew up in a farm where it didn't even have space to turn around.

As for synthetic burgers tasting the same as real ones, they cannot possibly tastes worse than pink slime, and many people seem to like that one.

Re:Don't care.

[HJED]

FYI organic produce usually tastes better than non-organic, so your example and argument kinda of conflict...

Re:Don't care.

[HJED]

I suspect that they will eventually be able to produce higher quality meat then what is affordable right now, purely because this gives much more control over the development of the meat. I suspect that it wouldn't beat very high quality meat (E.g. Wagu beef) however. In the short term it will taste like crap though

Re:Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming the artificial flavorings in the study you mentioned were not MSG or smokehouse flavoring, as both are fairly common spices available at the grocery store. By themselves, they don't have much of a taste.

Not a proof at this time

[gweihir]

As so many other stunts, this one may just never become economically feasible. Unless and until it is, nothing has been proven whatsoever, except that stupid people with too much money can scale things that do not scale well up to levels nobody sane would ever try.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[Anonymous Coward]

As so many other stunts, this one may just never become economically feasible. Unless and until it is, nothing has been proven whatsoever

I think this is what is known as Proof of Concept, which says "it is possible." So something has certainly been proven.

Making it cheaper is certainly possible, although it may take decades or centuries rather than years.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.

On an unrelated note, what's with all these people who think we'll have electronic computers in the home? They'd have to build one (or more) rooms just to hold it, spend millions of dollars, and replace dozens of vacuum tubes every day. The electronic computer is nothing more than something stupid people with too much money build that can never scale well and nobody sane would ever own.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[MightyMartian]

The first electronic computers took up entire floors of office buildings, consumed insane amounts of power, required ridiculous amounts of maintenance per running hour for just a few thousand calculations per second. It wasn't really economically feasible to imagine anything but the largest governments or academic or commercial interests ever being able to afford one, and yet, 70 years later, one of its descendants sits in my pocket, with a processing and memory capacity millions of greater than those first behemoths.

ENIAC cost about $6 million USD in current monetary value to build, and my iPhone probably costs $100 to $200. The whole point is that the first try at anything is going to be atrociously expensive and likely inadequate in many ways and yet, all things begin somewhere.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[gl4ss]

eniac was worth every dollar in practical utility value... dunno if the same can be said about this.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[MightyMartian]

The rewards that await anyone who could mass produce lab-grown meat would be pretty substantial. Proof of concept demonstrates that it can be done, now someone can work out how to do it cheap. Right now, it's a gimmick. In fifty years, well, I have a feeling that for a lot of folks in the industrialized world, this may be a major source of protein.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[hedwards]

The problem with that is things like this require scale in order to bring the costs down. But, if people aren't interested in eating enough of it to make it cost effective, the price won't come down. And if the price doesn't come down, it's going to continue to be viewed as disgusting pink slime.

In other words, you wind up with a catch-22 and ultimately there's no particular reason to go for this. There's plenty of other areas where we could help the environment and eating a small amount of meat as a part of your diet does help the environment out.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[LordLimecat]

Usually how these issues resolve is some company with "vision" decides that this is the future, and invests a lot of capital into making it work. If their vision is right, and demand can be created, they will profit, and the technology will improve. If its wrong, they will fade into obscurity.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[hedwards]

That's not at all the same thing. Computers, even then served a purpose, but this pink slime doesn't serve a purpose. Meat of any origin shouldn't be making up a large part of your diet anyways. And the planet can definitely support enough livestock for us all to eat 10-30% of our diet from meat.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[gweihir]

So? ENIAC was not a "stunt", but a needed tool. It was significantly better than what it replaced, and that also includes cost per calculation. This "beef" is a far, far more expensive "substitute", that is of worse quality in addition. So it is not worthwhile doing it now and it may never be. ENIAC was very much worthwhile doing in th economic sense and in the sense that something comparable was needed and missing.

Your comparison is so stupid, it is staggering. I think you have not understand even the smallest part of my statement. Instead all you seem to have to offer is some fuzzy, pathetic and wrong sense of "new is good".

Re:Not a proof at this time

[gweihir]

So your "feeling" is all you have? Are you also expecting flying cars to be the norm, intelligent robots and a sustainable colony in Mars? Look up the "Dunning-Kruger Effect" sometimes, I have a "feeling" you are a prime example of it.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[rtb61]

In this case it sounds like it will be much easier to genetically modify algae into producing fibre, protein structure and taste similar to beef. Varieties of kelp should provide the basic structure for a full range of low allergy edible products, mimicking the most used food products of flour, dairy, meat, fruit and vegetables.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[serviscope_minor]

Well, by your logic, the first transistors were pointless.

They were slow, hard to make, unreliable and not even remotely robust: by the end of WWII, they had developed valves that could be fired from an AA cannon and these were used to make the startlingly effective proximity fuzes.

In other words, the transistors were a complete stunt and worse in almost every measurable way.

Totally pointless really. You can see that because they never amounted to anything.

--
Send from my Manchester Mark I

Re:Not a proof at this time

[HJED]

The fact this alone requires far less land then raising animals traditionally mean that it has practical utility. Theoretically this stuff could be produced in far higher quantities than the planet could support for traditional methods. It goes part of the way towards solving world hunger, if that's not "practical utility value" I don't know what is.

Re:Not a proof at this time

[gweihir]

And again, complete fail to understand. You are comparing apples and orange and do not even notice it.

The first transistors were not created at huge cost, they were created as research. Afterwards, they became very quickly cheaper than valves, and my guess is that were so initially (first industrial offerings) if you do TCO and not just the initial cost. But that requires some real understanding, which I doubt you have. And they were superior to valves in a number of ways and inferior in others. It takes understanding valves and transistors to see that, a type of knowledge you obviously do not have. Also, the aim of doing transistors was not to _replace_ valves, it was having a mechanism that works under conditions were valves do not work or work very badly. These technologies do serve different goals. Quite obvious, but again, you have to understand valves and transistors to see that.

Incidentally, there are a number of applications where valves are still superior to transistors or transistors are completely unusable while valves do work. Again, if you had any real understanding of these technologies, you would know that.

$375,000...

[Anonymous Coward]

could have fed a lot of people regular cows. Or anything else for that matter.
Just sayin'.

Re:$375,000...

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: research costs money!

Re:$375,000...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh...

This just in: Some research doesn't need to be done and is a waste of money!

Re:$375,000...

[Em Adespoton]

could have fed a lot of people regular cows. Or anything else for that matter.
Just sayin'.

How much does a regular cow really cost?

At least with his $375,000 you've got most of the costs all in one place; this is almost exactly what it costs with the current no-scale inefficient techniques he used. Probably (but not necessarily, depending on the resources needed) be significantly cheaper than animal-grown meat when scaled up to the same volume and the inefficiencies in mass production limited.

Re:$375,000...

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy cow, feed it hay, get vaccinations, sell cow for around $800-$1000, maybe more depending on quality of the beef. Nothing even close to $375,000 and I doubt the cattle ranchers are selling them at a loss.

Re:$375,000...

[Em Adespoton]

Buy cow, feed it hay, get vaccinations, sell cow for around $800-$1000, maybe more depending on quality of the beef. Nothing even close to $375,000 and I doubt the cattle ranchers are selling them at a loss.

Hate to break it to you, but cattle ranchers are heavily subsidized (water, methane cleanup, vaccinations, hormones, feed/land, abattoir, shipping) -- these costs just don't come out of their pockets -- but with the lab meat, there are no subsidies; all parts of the tissue growth have to be paid for by the same person.

Re:$375,000...

[Jarik C-Bol]

Those costs indeed do come out of their pockets. You are sadly quite wrong as to the actual ranching industry, having been spoon fed disinformation somewhere. Coming from several generations of ranching, I can assure you, of the things you listed, some are figments of your imagination, and the ones that are real are not subsidized at all. Ranching is a difficult, expensive, and time consuming process. Farming (for grains and plants) on the other hand, is quite subsidized.

Re:$375,000...

[epyT-R]

No, there'll just be a ton of 'intellectual' property liens on it instead that'll drive up the price..

Re:$375,000...

[HJED]

Yes and when this technology matures it could be used to feed a lot more people artificial cows than can currently be feed with regular cows. (Given land usage and how costs scale with mass production)

Re:$375,000...

[Em Adespoton]

Those costs indeed do come out of their pockets. You are sadly quite wrong as to the actual ranching industry, having been spoon fed disinformation somewhere. Coming from several generations of ranching, I can assure you, of the things you listed, some are figments of your imagination, and the ones that are real are not subsidized at all. Ranching is a difficult, expensive, and time consuming process. Farming (for grains and plants) on the other hand, is quite subsidized.

As I said, the susbidies are not paid by the ranchers themselves -- the costs are all absorbed upstream. I've spent my own time in the ranching industry, and have ho problems with it for the most part, and do not see ranchers as people being propped up by the government. But there's more to ranching than what the ranchers have to immediately deal with.

The US western expansion was built on the backs of ranchers (and gold miners, but only in a minimal sense); as such, it was built to support them (sadly, this is not actively the case anymore, but the structure still exists).. I'm not saying that ranchers get it better than others -- pretty much everything in North America that is natural resource-based is heavily subsidized in this global economy. The one benefit that ranchers have that is not subsizided is grazing land (they get cheap land, but it's a present resource). So, for grazing cattle, the subsidy is significantly less. Would it help if I airquoted subsidy? We're not talking "government pays ranchers to offset costs" here, we're talking "ranchers don't have to pay the full costs of production because many of those costs are already being absorbed by others."

However, most of the world doesn't have land. This means that if you live in, say, Japan, you can't graze your cattle (or really have them anywhere) -- so the production costs between lab-grown meat and ranch-grown meat (and even factory-grown meat) begin to tip in favor of the lab-grown meat.

When the midwest aquifers are dried up and/or the demand for habitable land skyrockets, ranching is going to get a LOT more difficult and expensive than it currently is. Starting the production of lab-grown alternatives now means that by that point, we'll have alternatives.

Nice

[Animats]

Good result.

Yes, it's expensive now. It's a prototype. Aluminum once cost more than gold.

Re:Nice

[Seumas]

I like the concept of 100% taste-prep-whatever compatible meat being created without any harm to animals or the environment whatsoever. It's a net-benefit for society. Benefits animals, the land, and probably overall would help take a universal step-forward in our consciousness in a sort of "now we don't harm animals because we can avoid it" kind of way.

I just wonder how hard it will be to make that switch, even if the food pans out to be perfect. I mean, would "this was a real animal" honestly make a difference anymore? Would it be a delicacy? Would it signify class? Or would it be a thing that old people like us demand (real beef), but the next generation just takes for granted that you don't eat living animals, because test-tubes?

Re:Nice

[Threni]

Yes, the current cost is meaningless. I once had a £60,000 keyring. It was a prototype graphics chip - a one off, produced for testing. We had a few more made, each time with a few mods, before the button was pressed for mass production, at which point you could buy the whole graphics card for about £70 or so. That initial £60,000 it cost to tool up for each prototype was just a meaningless number - they were never going to be made individually so you have to factor it into the overall cost/profit formula later on. If synthetic meat catches on - and it's completely, totally obvious that it will (because at some point soon the choice will be synthetic meat or no meat at all) - the cost will rapidly undercut the cost of raising livestock.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

on a good day it still can, yayyy commodity manipulation.

Re:Nice

[DNS-and-BIND]

Better yet - the synthetic meat costs a fortune compared to the ordinary kind, and yet environmentalists insist on laws banning farms and butchers.

Hey, it's a net benefit to society, right? Meat is expensive, and people make wrong decisions when they don't have all the facts. It's better if informed, rational, educated people make these choices and the rest of us can benefit from their decisions.

Re:Nice

[badboy_tw2002]

The problem is that "ground beef" while probably the most consumed, is just part of the cow. There's a ton of different sections of the animal, with each part being important to some kind of dish. You're going to have to create basically an entire animal before you satisfy everyone. There's different prep methods, sizes, cuts, etc. What about ribs? Tounge? Tail? You're going to tell a Texan he can't have brisket because they can only grow a burger?

The only real way to do it I guess would be vat grow an animal without a brain and somehow stimulate the different cuts to marble them. Or else you've got a whole different ballgame of creating new artificial cuts with different fat contents (fats that can break down, fats that can't), marbling, bone structure, etc. Those will be cooked using standard methods, and a whole new vocabulary will have to be built up to translate New Meat from the cuts we know. What an odd world it will be when the worst cuts become delicacies because those have to come from a real cow. FIlet for everyone, chuck for the rich!

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

When they get the technology right down pat I expect the price of beef to drop. This looks way more scalable than factory farming.

Re:Nice

[tftp]

the next generation just takes for granted that you don't eat living animals

As a side effect, they will be able to see a live cow only at a zoo. Eventually they will be extinct. Domesticated cattle cannot live outside of a ranch, and there won't be any ranches left.

Re:Nice

[Jeremi]

As a side effect, they will be able to see a live cow only at a zoo. Eventually they will be extinct. Domesticated cattle cannot live outside of a ranch, and there won't be any ranches left.

Doubtful -- there will always be a few ranches left to cater to the gourmet/fetish crowd.

In any case, even if cows did go extinct, it's not clear that would be such a bad thing. Assuming they also figure out how to synthesize ice cream, of course.

Re:Nice

[tftp]

A large number of unique breeds that exist today for specific purpose will be gone. You will end up with only a handful - a couple for meat, a couple for milk, and that's all. Small populations will disappear by dissolving in larger populations. Some herds will be just shipped to the beef processor while the plant is open.

But there is a larger question here. What is more humane: to create millions of calves, let them live for a couple years, and then kill them - or to not let them be in the first place? This is not an idle question. Life of a wild animal is full of pain and suffering. Would it be more humane to, say, sterilize all animals on the planet, so that they don't have to struggle for survival every day of their lives?

The answer "yes" to that would be very strange (though not unheard of.) The answer "no" would be far more common; however that answer would also indicate that it is more humane to continue breeding cattle.

Re:Nice

[HJED]

Or grow different cuts individually...

Re:Nice

[HJED]

It is probably a lot harder to produce milk using this method than meat, so milk cows and gourmet breeds such as Wagu would remain. Many breeds would become extinct however and that would be risky (you only have to read about problems with the lack of genetic variance in grains to see why), however in the case of cattle most of the breeds came into existence for the purpose of food production, so it is unrealistic to expect them to remain when there is no longer a need for them.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine all the unemployed people you will have to deal with.

Also, unforeseen consequences, such as new cancers.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

You dropped a vowel. Here, you can have one of mine: i

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

If we ignore the massive side effects on the rest of the ecosystem that the extinction of one species can have, I think it's mainly the humans that suffer and feel bad about an extinction event. From a moral point of view, it's the suffering and death of the individual animals of that species that is unpleasant and morally wrong. I think in most cases the animals won't have any kind of awareness of the fact they are going extinct as a species - except possibly suffering more due to the changes in their environment - fewer available mates and less available land for example. If you want to start arguing that morals and right and wrong are subjective ideas, then I'll qualify it by saying this is the view of utilitarianism - the desire to minimise suffering.

So morally, slaughtering individual animals inhumanely or causing them to suffer by making their enviroment uncomfortable or more hostile (either through intensive farming of that species or by destroying their habitat in the wild as a side effect of human activity) is arguably much worse than being responsible for an extinction. I suppose you have to weight up the human sadness and guilt when comparing suffering like this but I can't see how that comes anywhere near close to that of the individual animal.

Re:Nice

[Jeremi]

What is more humane: to create millions of calves, let them live for a couple years, and then kill them - or to not let them be in the first place?

I think the answer would depend a lot on the quality of life the calves could expect to experience during those couple of years.

Life of a wild animal is full of pain and suffering. Would it be more humane to, say, sterilize all animals on the planet, so that they don't have to struggle for survival every day of their lives?

No, because they are wild: the lives they live are the lives they evolved to live; humanity's opinion of whether their lives are worth living is irrelevant. (Contrast that with cows, whose lives and living conditions are almost wholly designed by and controlled by humans. Given that we "created" the domestic cow and exploit it for our own benefit, we have a moral responsibility for making decisions regarding its welfare)

Good luck selling it

[Registered Coward v2]

Given the reaction to GM crops you think the EU will embrace the Frankenburger? Much like the monster it will be vilified, misunderstood and eventually driven out and destroyed.

Re:Good luck selling it

[manu0601]

I understand it to be quite different from GM crops: The thing will not produce BT toxin, nor it will be raised in a roundup bath because it is resistant to it. Since it is grown in a lab, it will not spread without control in the environment. And even if it did, theses are just natural cattle cells, right? The usual health concerns about GM do not apply there.

Re:Good luck selling it

[HJED]

until... GM artificial cattle!
but yeah I see your point.

Re:Good luck selling it

[DiEx-15]

Given the reaction to GM crops you think the EU will embrace the Frankenburger? Much like the monster it will be vilified, misunderstood and eventually driven out and destroyed.

I'm surprised it hasn't already started yet...

Can I ...

[PPH]

... Super Size that for a buck?

Re:Can I ...

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

... Super Size that for a buck?

Yes. That will be $375,001 please. Would you like fries with that? Only $50,000 more.

Is it really food?

[mwvdlee]

It's just a $375,000 failed lab experiment until somebody dares eat it.

Re:Is it really food?

[Drethon]

How many great scientific discoveries were due to a dare?

Re:Is it really food?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Failed" does not mean "I think it cost too much because I am short-sighted and aggressively unimaginative".

Re:Is it really food?

[mwvdlee]

"Failed", in this case, has nothing to do with cost. It is the question whether it's actually food if nobody dares to eats it.

Re:Is it really food?

[Pulzar]

How many great scientific discoveries were due to a dare?

I don't know, how many? Do you know of many?

Re:Is it really food?

[Nimey]

Hellfire. I'd eat the thing as long as it's properly cooked.

Re:Is it really food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would not worry about it. These things have been eaten for a long time, although perhaps not in whole-hamburger quantities at a time. A few years ago I heard a podcast interview with a scientist working on growing in-vitro meat, and the end of the interview went something like this:

Interviewer: OK, so we have heard all the details of how it's made, but what we really want to know is have you tasted it?

Scientist: Uh, our in-vitro meat is not FDA approved as food yet, and consequently is not ready for consumption by humans.

Interviewer: Oh, come on! You know the process better than anyone else, do you really need the FDA to tell you it's OK to eat? Besides, doesn't working with it all day make you really curious about the taste?

Scientist: It's possible, but I wouldn't fess up to it!

Interviewer: Haha, fair enough!

"...without slaughtering animal(S)-plural, guys!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah you only have to kill the source of the stem cells. So ridiculous! The article could have been spun to be about anything else under the sun, from efficiency to nutrition, and all we can do is kow-tow to the PETAveg crowd?

Has been done before...

[TheSync]

Symbiotica did this before in 2003 by growing tissue from skeletal muscle cells harvested from pre-natal sheep. And they ate the results.

There are two major hurdles with non-violent cultured meat for eating though:

1) Edible meat is a very complex tissue with muscles, fat, blood vessels, etc. and the precise relation of these cell types and their physical placement in the meat affects the taste and texture.

2) Most cell culturing media is not vegetarian - the nutrient baths are generally processed from living animals.

It sounds like this new effort is basically the same thing - culturing myoblasts and feeding them with fetal calf serum.

At the same time, I look forward to these challenges being overcome, and glad to see new funding!

Re:Has been done before...

[markass530]

LOL Non Violent? As in Other meat is obtained violently? FYI Animals are not beat to death

Re:Has been done before...

[samwichse]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oeQGtu6cRs

Re:Has been done before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda slow, are we?
Non-violent means not having to KILL anything.
I am not a vegetarian, but I am also not a retard.

Re:Has been done before...

[delt0r]

We don't need to recreate all the muscles, fat, blood vessels and their precise relation to replicate a taste. Our sense of taste is just not accurate enough to distinguish between good enough and perfect. In fact i don't think cultured meat like this will ever be popular. Because by the time we can do that affordably, we will be able to make artificial meats from "raw" products (ie proteins etc.) Say extrude a food muscle, that when cooked can't be distinguished from the genuine article by most people.

Doesn't save animals

[nbauman]

FTA:

There are other problems: Cultured meat is now grown in medium with fetal calf serum, a supplement made from blood collected at slaughterhouses; scientists have yet to find an alternative that doesn't involve dead animals.

Re:Doesn't save animals

[smaddox]

Soon we'll have cow blood-donors.

Re:Doesn't save animals

[Jeremi]

Soon we'll have cow blood-donors.

Don't the Maasai own the patent on that?

Pardon me...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but this is still "killing the animal". Those cells could have been carefully cultivated and grown into a sizeable bull-dick for me, personally, to graft to my loins. I could have given it life and it, in turn, could have definitely given life to me in return. And now somebody's just going to eat it? Well, fine, eat my dick. That doesn't make you a super hero.

Re:Pardon me...

[ae1294]

... but this is still "killing the animal". Those cells could have been carefully cultivated and grown into a sizeable bull-dick for me, personally, to graft to my loins. I could have given it life and it, in turn, could have definitely given life to me in return. And now somebody's just going to eat it? Well, fine, eat my dick. That doesn't make you a super hero.

Everything will be ok Misses Clinton...

Slashdot sociopaths...

[Anonymous Coward]

... in evidence, as always...

So you seriously believe that human beings are supposed to eat animals? What facts would it take for you to admit you're wrong? No amount of facts will change your mind, because you don't eat animals because you thought it through one day and decided it was a good idea, you eat animals because EVERYBODY ELSE does, and you would rather watch a million animals be tortured to death than stand out from the crowd, disagree with your 'friends' and family, etc.

The suffering of others means nothing to you, therefore you are sociopaths.

Human beings aren't supposed to eat animals because ALL human beings who kill animals are visibly neurotic, and sociopathic, and the more cruel their acts towards animals are, the more visibly psychopathic they are. If human beings were supposed to eat animals, then those of us who kill animals on a daily basis would be kind and loving people - but they are not.

A cat kills mice, rats and birds every day or week, yet is totally normal, kind and loving the rest of the time. A mother cat will ALWAYS care for her children, and never hurt them, even though she will be killing rats, rabbits, etc. every day, to stay alive. Show me the human mother who kills animals with her bare hands and teeth, and is also a kind, caring, non-neurotic mother, or who even kills animals in a slaughterhouse, and is a kind, caring mother. You won't find one. There aren't any.

I realise I'm wasting my breath because sociopaths are never going to admit they are wrong, which is part of the reason they are sociopaths...

Lab based meat is the greatest hope for ending suffering on earth that has ever existed - seeing as most people are too selfish and too good at denying reality to ever consider giving up their precious 'meat' - after all, they might 'feel bad' and that would be just awful for them, right? I mean, it would be just so much worse than the REAL physical torture and agonies that thousands of innocent animals will go through because they can't be bothered to spend five minutes thinking about the consequences of their dietary choices.

Re:Slashdot sociopaths...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you care about ending the suffering of cows? Are you a cow?

Re:Slashdot sociopaths...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Human beings aren't supposed to eat animals because ALL human beings who kill animals are visibly neurotic, and sociopathic"

I totally lost it here, 10/10 if serious, 6/10 if trolling

Re:Slashdot sociopaths...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you label the majority of people as having some mental problem, perhaps they're not the one with a mental problem...

If you cannot grasp the basics of life (such as for one organism to live, another has to die) perhaps you'd like to lock youself away.

Re:Slashdot sociopaths...

[Anonymous Coward]

So a female butcher is physically incapable of being a good mother?

Also, cats kill for pleasure CONSTANTLY. If cats killed humans instead of other animals, it would only take the domestic cats in the USA to kill 41% of the human population yearly.

Re:Slashdot sociopaths...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty easy to tell that human beings are supposed to eat animals.

Humans have omnivorous teeth, and an omnivore-adapted digestive system.

Not herbivorous dentition and an herbivorous gut.

Re:Slashdot sociopaths...

[0123456]

If we weren't supposed to eat animals, they wouldn't taste so good.

Re:Slashdot sociopaths...

[iggymanz]

you are a moron of the highest order.

Of course mothers cleaned animals prior to cooking them when our civilization was more agrarian. My mother (while growing up on farm helping at home) and grandmother and great-grandmother did those things. your grandmother or great-grandmother more than likely did the same thing.

the truth is the luxury of modern life has separated you from the normal human experience of the last million years. we've been killing, cleaning and cooking animals at least that long. It's normal for our species.

Re:Slashdot sociopaths...

[aaronb1138]

If you really understood how cows are raised, you would well know that killing them and eating them are the two most humane parts of the process...

Re:Slashdot sociopaths...

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't show how they weren't sociopaths. So you failed to rebut my argument.

Re:Slashdot sociopaths...

[iggymanz]

the word "sociopath" has a clinical definition, look it up.

What if the anonymous billionaire is

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the anonymous billionaire is Steve Jobs?

Re:What if the anonymous billionaire is

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the anonymous billionaire is Steve Jobs?

What if the stem cell culture is from Steve Jobs? Stop! Don't eat it! Soylent 375 is Jobs! You're eating jobs. It's canibalism... or it's bad for the economy... or something, but for the love of God, STOP IT!!!

what about the unborn cows???

[sribe]

I mean, were those fetal stem cells or adult stem cells that they used?

Re:what about the unborn cows???

[PRMan]

It does make me question the "no killing" in the summary.

But... but... meat is murder?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I admit I'm a heterotroph. That means I eat things. There's no way around that. I'm not photosynthetic. I'm not chemoautotrophic. It doesn't matter if it's plant or animal or fungus or various prokaryotes, I live thanks to the death of other living creatures. My heritage has been heterotrophic since sometime when the first eukaryotes started clumping together into multicellular creatures back almost a billion years ago, and some of them realized it was easier to raid other critters and burn it with oxygen than to grow their own. That choice was made a long, long time ago, long before I had enough differentiated nerve cells clumped together to enable me to make a conscious choice about it. Even if they're cultured cells sitting in a growth medium, I'm still responsible for their death. Even if I'm vegetarian, it's a formerly living plant that I'm eating. They die so I can live.

My main and almost only moral concern is that I don't eat other sentient creatures (obviously) and if I do eat reasonably intelligent creatures (e.g., pigs), that they are treated reasonably well during their lifetime until I decide to eat them. I'd sooner ensure a basic standard like that is strictly adhered to than waste $375k on a lab hamburger for the sake of the vain illusion that I'm not killing things to survive. I still am, even at that kind of cost and hassle.

Re:But... but... meat is murder?

[Anonymous Coward]

That choice was made a long, long time ago, long before I had enough differentiated nerve cells clumped together to enable me to make a conscious choice about it.

Maybe, but the point is that now you do have enough differentiated nerve cells clumped together to enable you to make a conscious, maybe even civilised choice about it.

My main and almost only moral concern is that I don't eat other sentient creatures (obviously) and if I do eat reasonably intelligent creatures (e.g., pigs), that they are treated reasonably well during their lifetime until I decide to eat them.

So pigs aren'y sentient? Are you sure about that?
Would you eat a "brain dead" human if you were a little peckish and they were cooked just right? How about a human fetus? I'm pretty sure they're not sentient.
I'm not judging you. Everyone draws their own line in the sand depending on their own reasoning or lack thereof. At least you've thought about it.

Re:But... but... meat is murder?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not photosynthetic

Yet without sun you can't synthesize vitamin D.

Sacrificing the lives of many unborn calves...

[Anonymous Coward]

"an estimated cost of $375,000, just to prove a point: that it is possible to produce meat without slaughtering animals."

This is ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT, no pun intended. The growth factors required to supplement the liquid medium in which these cultured cells are grown comes from Foetal Bovine Serum (FBS), which sadly involves the slaughtering of many many more pregnant cows and their unborn calves than would be required to yield a single ground beef patty.

Without slaughtering animals?

[Hatta]

Where did they get the stem cells from? Where did they get the foetal bovine serum from?

PETSS

[Geste]

People for the Ethical Treatment of Stem Cells

How did they get the Stem Cells?

[wisnoskij]

I am guessing the cow is dead now, and only produced a single hamburger.

Igor, bring me a Frankenburger

[Smokeybehr]

Okay, you've grown meat in a test tube, but who's going to eat it? The whole point of real meat is the flavor that's imparted to it through its feed and husbandry. There's a reason why some people raise and slaughter their own cattle, or grind their own meat, or buy the frozen patties from the warehouse club store. This whole thing is like a Concept Car: Sure, it can be done; sure, it's as expensive as hell; sure, it can be eaten; but who in their right mind is going to eat it? I have a feeling this is going to be Post's "Blinky Moment", where the 3-eyed fish is cooked and served, but whether it's edible or not is a whole different story.

Re:Igor, bring me a Frankenburger

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no, you're missing the point:

Its patty — financed by an anonymous billionaire — is made from meat that Post has laboriously grown from bovine stem cells in his lab at an estimated cost of $375,000, just to prove a point: that it is possible to produce meat without slaughtering animals.

This isn't really to make food. It's here so some douchebag vegan can prove a point and hysterically point to it later on a protest tour of a cattle farm. As far as this bean-eating asshole knows, meat is meat. An emaciated cow is the same meat as a well-fed and raised cow to this guy. He seriously doesn't understand that food can have taste, per se, just political or ecological statements.

Re:Igor, bring me a Frankenburger

[vux984]

Okay, you've grown meat in a test tube, but who's going to eat it?

I think they'll find people who are ok with relatively tasteless vat-meat.

http://blu.stb.s-msn.com/i/1D/D8A8C7A676F88DD879380F9695414.jpg

Yummy Means Never Endangered

[olyar]

What these people never think about is the fact that these animals being edible is what keeps people breeding, raising and feeding them. Cows, pigs and chickens have never been endangered species because they are (or make) good food. I own 30 or so chickens that I buy food for, built a safe coop for, let out into a pasture every morning and close in each night. I do this because they make yummy eggs.

The bison is no longer endangered because people started raising them for meat. A hundred years ago, there were 800 or so. Now there are over 300,000.

If you couldn't use cows for milk or meat, who would spend the money on fencing, irrigation and hay to keep a herd around?

Re:Yummy Means Never Endangered

[matfud]

Them bison who numbered in the many tens of millions would perhaps make me disagree that they need to be herded or farmed. Current cattle yes but humans parcelled off the land, restricted growth, stopped migrations and then hunted bison to near extinction.

I do not totally disagree but bison are now only extant because they are profitable and it is because we made their land non-survivable. We made the species dependant on us.

The animals we keep are for food are now dependent on us for survival as a species. We have breeded them to be that way. I think that is a strange concept. Oddly most pets have not been breeded that way (cats, dogs, ferrets can all live without humans (part of the reason they are such a problem wrt native wild life)

Re:Yummy Means Never Endangered

[BurningFeetMan]

Yummy also means extinct... Here's one example;

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

glad i live in cattle-country

[FudRucker]

where real cows are raised on dairy farms, and the over abundance of bull calfs are castrated for beef steers, for 375 thousand bucks i could buy a lot of pasture land and stock it with cattle and start my own beef ranch

They're in for a hell of a shock...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

when they bite into it. It will taste incredbly gross without adding the beef fat. It's the fat that's delicious.

Surprise!!!

Don't believe me? Go make a burger out of steak tartar, no flecks of white at all. Use a Teflon pan and no cheating with Pam, butter, or a slice of cheese.

Put it on a bun and bite into...the best burger ever?

Meat is nutritious, and moreso than any other food. People debate whether you get everything you need, but it's damn close. But you don't need it for flavor. Better to come up with sawdust and dump beef fat on it.

BTW, red meat raises cholesterol a ton independent of fat, because gut bacteria proliferate in red meat eaters that convert carnetine into stuff that is absorbed and turns into cholesterol.

tl;dr Red meat tastes like shit without fat and is bad for you even without fat.

Re:They're in for a hell of a shock...

[Anonymous Coward]

> BTW, red meat raises cholesterol a ton independent of fat, because gut bacteria proliferate in red meat eaters that convert carnetine into stuff that is absorbed and turns into cholesterol.

Do you have citation for any of that?

Re:They're in for a hell of a shock...

[tftp]

It's the fat that's delicious.

I hate fat, and I always remove it from beef. The taste of remaining meat is just fine. Perhaps my cooking habits are too harsh for some people, but I never eat meat unless it is very well done. (By that time all the fat melts out.) The lengthy, high temperature cooking also kills most of undesirable lifeforms.

I would be perfectly fine with a vat-grown meat. I only need proteins from it, not taste. I have no love of eating. If you can condense a daily, or even monthly meal into one tiny bitter pill, that would be perfectly fine with me. More time to do useful things.

Re:They're in for a hell of a shock...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yuck. I love bloody, rare steak, the more fat the better. The lifeforms add flavor.

And craps like...

[djupedal]

...week old beef from the fridge when it comes out the other end...

Vegetarian...

[Anonymous Coward]

Make a philosophical vegetarian eat it. Just cause.

Is this going to be like...

[Type44Q]

Is this going to be like Olestra - $200,000 roll of toiletpaper sold separately?! :p

The real question

[Jmc23]

80/20 or 75/25?

You are a fucking asshole.

[gumpish]

Assuming the price comes down once the economy of scale kicks in, this would be a far less destructive staple than traditional meat.

You claim you have pangs of guilt for supporting the realities of the meat industry.

Yet you would reject the product unless it tastes nearly identical (and has additional nutritional advantages).

Basically you're saying, if it doesn't taste exactly like what I'm used to eating, I don't give a fuck how many billions of gallons of water are wasted raising cattle, I don't care how much pollution modern industrial farming produces, I don't care how many billions of animals will experience cramped, noisy conditions for their brief, unpleasant lives, I am going to continue to demand traditional meat.

Fuck you, you self-centered piece of shit.

Re:You are a fucking asshole.

[epyT-R]

I know, how about you leftists quit reproducing so much, and quit demanding taxpayer funded support of dead end 3rd world countries? then there'd be less population growth. Quit trying to tell me what I should and shouldn't eat..

Re:You are a fucking asshole.

[GodfatherofSoul]

Fuck cows, and pigs, and chickens. Not my fault they got the delicious gene. Go ahead and chow down on your soy burger marinated in self-satisfaction. I really don't get your huffiness about a guy not considering something a replacement unless it's a close facsimile. I'm sorry, but for the rest of us meat!=vegan_substitute+self_satisfaction.

Re:You are a fucking asshole.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just about left and right. Why do people have to have everything neatly compartmentalized on some irrelevant and imaginged political spectrum? A lot of environmentalists share your view that in general humans are just having far too many babies. Human population growth is indeed the biggest threat to the wellbeing of living organisms on the planet, as well as arguably lowering quality of life for humans when competition over resources reaches a certain point. The political left and right both generally want high populations because more babies means more voters and more economic wage slaves.

So you're right about the population growth, but the parent poster has every right to tell you that you're being a self-centered piece of shit if you don't care about the wellbeing of other organisms.

Re:You are a fucking asshole.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why do people have to have everything neatly compartmentalized on some irrelevant and imaginged political spectrum?

Because otherwise, we couldn't stuff every issue into a neat polarized "us vs. them" choice and say "don't blame me, I voted for the other guy!"

Re:You are a fucking asshole.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vote for a third party. That way you always get to say "Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy!".

Producing meat without slaughter

[macraig]

it is possible to produce meat without slaughtering animals.

That really ain't the overriding concern, is it? Synthesizing meat will consume just about the same resources as the animal would. If we allow the animals to live in the same numbers AND we grow synthetic meat, we've just graduated to consuming twice as much resources. For what, an act of ill-informed conscience? And if we start culling the former food animals to reduce their numbers to make way for the synthmeat and because we're not biting chunks out of their asses any more, well doesn't that just put us on even shakier ill-informed moral ground than we were on when we were slaughtering and eating them?

Re:Producing meat without slaughter

[Jeremi]

Synthesizing meat will consume just about the same resources as the animal would

What makes you think that? Cows aren't a very efficient mechanism for converting grain into beef; about 90% of the grain's calories are wasted in the process. I have no idea how efficient synthesizing beef could become, but it's not like there's no room for improvement there.

If we allow the animals to live in the same numbers AND we grow synthetic meat, we've just graduated to consuming twice as much resources.

Most likely the synthesized meat would cannibalize (sorry) the real-meat market instead.

And if we start culling the former food animals to reduce their numbers to make way for the synthmeat and because we're not biting chunks out of their asses any more, well doesn't that just put us on even shakier ill-informed moral ground than we were on when we were slaughtering and eating them?

That's not what would happen either. The existing cows would be used in the same ways they've always been, but not as many new cows would be conceived/born/raised in the future. And that, so the argument goes, would be a good thing.

Give me 100k...

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me 100k and I'll become vegetarian...

Finally, some GMO meat for my GMO bun!

[NotQuiteReal]

Just when more and more folks are balking at GMO veggies... this should go over well (especially since the same type of person who is anti-GMO will likely also lean toward the "be kind to animals" crowd).

no spoiler

[hurfy]

lol, no one appears to have looked at what that medium is and the fact they only found one suitable medium at the moment.

You really don't want to know so if you want to know you have to read it yourself ;)

20000 protein strands grown in XXXXXX and mashed together to make a patty. eww. Doesn't sound like meat, doesn't look like meat, really doubt if feels like meat...actually tasting anything like a burger would be incredible. In fact we could then debate how you can do that...not holding my breath tho ;)

rRe: I wonder about the taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you try to sell them as meat substitutes he damn sure wants something that doesn't make him miss meat at every bit

List of achievements in lab-grown meat over the ne

[Anonymous Coward]

1. A circulatory system is devised to allow the growth of thicker meat tissues.
2. Lab-grown skin is grafted to growing meat slabs to allow meat growth under less sterile conditions.
3. Scientists have developed a rudimentary digestive system for lab-grown meat to dispense with the expensive plumbing associated with feeding and waste removal.
4. Engineers develop a reusable aluminum skeleton and control system upon which lab meat can be grown. The control system monitors the growth and uses the growing tissue to move the skeleton about, greatly reducing the amount of human handling required in the growth process.
5. To eliminate costs associated with skeleton/control system repairs and upgrades, researchers have developed a way to grow skeletal and neural systems along with the meat tissue.

A century from now...

[Alejux]

People will look back at us and find it disgusting we ate corpses.

Re:A century from now...

[tftp]

People will look back at us and find it disgusting we ate corpses.

You can brainwash a child even today. No need to wait for a century.

However no mental gymnastics can obscure the fact that humans are predators. You can live in a tower, surrounded by food synthesizers and whatnot. But if that tower one day crumbles and drops you into a forest, you *will* eat every corpse you can come across, and you will make many new ones in the process. Those who won't will die. Plants that you can find in a forest, or in a prairie, are not sufficiently developed to sustain you - and the pieces of your fallen tower destroyed your fields of cultured plants and all your machinery.

In other words, you can pretend that you are not what you are only when you are surrounded by machines that allow you to make your wishes real. Without those machines you are either an omnivore, or food for wild animals.

Re:A century from now...

[epyT-R]

..and if they have the same smarmy, arrogant attitude as yourself and the rest of the PETAtards, I won't worry about what they'll think of me.

Re:A century from now...

[TheDugong]

Computers are stupid because they rely on a developed industrialised economy and would worthless in an apocalyptic scenario \s

However, as I live in a developed industrial economy and I am "surrounded by machines that make my wishes real"...

Re:A century from now...

[Alejux]

But if that tower one day crumbles and drops you into a forest

You can't live by that assumption. If sh!t happens, then you deal with it. The fact is, as it is today, we don't exactly live as predators or hunters. We buy things at supermarkets, that are the remains of captive animals, that mostly likely were never wild or free, but instead lived in a cubicle not much larger then they were for all their lives. Maybe it's me, but I don't see anything natural in this.

Re:A century from now...

[Alejux]

If by smarmy and arrogant you mean trying to imagine a society with less suffering and cruelty to animals, then by all means include me in that category.

Your forgetting Water

[rsilvergun]

which is the other major cost in producing meat. Also land. Electricity has the potential to become cheap if we can get over our fear of nuclear and keep large corporations from disabling/ignoring safety measures to save a buck (re: Tokyo Electric Power).

but, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't you please think of the vegetarians!

Ameglian Major Cow - Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy

[prasadsurve]

What we need is a Ameglian Major Cow

Re:"...without slaughtering animal(S)-plural, guys

[Whibla]

I'm going to guess you didn't actually bother to read the article then:

Yeah you only have to kill the source of the stem cells. So ridiculous!

No! Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells are simply (usually) skin cells that have been 'regressed' back to the state of stem cells. There is absolutely no requirement to kill the source creature. It would be slightly unfortunate if this were the case, as they are currently being used in medical research to treat various issues such as age related macular degeneration (age related blindness) or the creation of artificial livers.

The article could have been spun to be about anything else under the sun, from efficiency to nutrition, and all we can do is kow-tow to the PETAveg crowd?

Spin is the bane of honest reporting. But, again, going back to the article:

"...cultured meat may need 35% to 60% less energy, occupy 98% less land, and produce 80% to 95% less greenhouse gases than conventional meat."

Well, what do you know, other potential benefits of the technology were addressed within the article. The fact that the summary chose to accentuate the possibility of creating meat without killing animals is not really representative of the entire article. In fact, if anything it's quite the reverse:

"Cultured meat is now grown in medium with fetal calf serum, a supplement made from blood collected at slaughterhouses; scientists have yet to find an alternative that doesn't involve dead animals."

However, I strongly suspect that the issue here is not one of inability but practicality. It would be quite possible to take blood from live animals, not killing them, and extract the serum this way. I'm just not sure why you'd bother, given the rate that biotechnology is advancing. We will soon have the knowledge and skills required to create the necessary culture 'soup' or medium, all within the laboratory.

I do find it slightly amusing that the presentation is due to be held in an arts centre. But is it really art?

great..

[SuperDre]

So what's the use of animals then? because imho if this is really just as tastefull and good as real meat, then it should be forbidden to slaughter animals. but then those animals aren't necesary anymore, and nobody will keep them, which will lead to the extinction of some of those species...

Not sustainable

[Optali]

It is a good gimmick and an awesome stunt.

The real issue with livestock is however that it is becoming physically and economically unsustainable: Soil is getting scarce and crops for livestock food already use up to 1/3 of the arable soil (source: FAO. Any increase of this would mean taking a part of the soil used for vegetable production. And despite what some may say this is not feasible because there are people depending on for their own food that and because despite all, vegetables, energy and utility crops and fruit are still a bigger economical player than livestock (face it: even the vegetarians need bread, jeans and beer). And the Frankemat would still need to hog on the resources that are used nowedays directly for meat production or use a part of the other ones making that it would remain expensive.

I have seen a few interview already here in the Dutch TV and for what I recall the stuff is grown on a substrate made of animal bones and there was some other animal products involved, so that the whole point of "slaughterless meat" is not met either.

Back to the economical aspect. It is important to note that meat has no special magical properties and it is 'per se' not strictly necessary, in fact the only thing that meat has in a certain abundance are essential aminoacids. Proteins are not strictly needed for us to survive: We take them form whatever source and divide them into aminoacids, that's all and it doesn't really matter where we get these from or if we get them directly as aminoacids or as proteins. There are also a few vitamins and non-essential aminoacids such as beta-alanine and glutamine and vitamin B12 that can be found in "natural" red meat (not so in common supermarket meat), but both are also available from artificial sources. Regarding the texture there are also cheaper alternatives available such as Quorn, textured soy or to some extent tofu. Note that I am not trying to advocate for vegetarianism but only to point that there are already cheaper alternatives in the market so that I don't even see that this stuff will ever reach mass production...

Unless, of course, they get the basic material from completely different sources such as micro algae grown in bio-reactors or something like that.... but this seems as far flung as the fision reactors.
 

if it taste like the pink breakfast sausage

[Anonymous Coward]

teh most l33t thing would be if they could make this artificial meat with de-salinated ocean water and sunlight ONLY!
brown green blue