Slashdot Mirror
First Ever Public Tasting of Lab-Grown Cultured Beef Burger
vikingpower writes "Today, at 14:00 Western European Time (9:00 am Eastern), Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University (the Netherlands) will present a world first: he will cook and serve a burger made from Cultured Beef in front of an invited audience in London. The event will include a brief explanation of the science behind the burger. You can watch the event live, online. The project's fact sheet is to be found here (pdf)." The BBC is reporting that Sergey Brin is the mystery backer behind the project.
This way they can produce human meat for canibals... and curious people asking if we taste like chicken to them.
.... putting his money where his mouth is
dupe
toil toil grey sludge and genetically engineered eye of newt
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
Mystic eye of toad, jizz of newt, or samzenpus failing to do his job?
If he did it in America, someone would sue him for going against Gods will.
This will divide the extremists. The anti-GM Luddites will go crazy because this is arguably the most anti-organic food on the planet. The vegetarians will celebrate because they get to eat 'meat' once more without killing animals. The vegans will note that animal byproducts are still required for this process to exist at all and still turn their noses up at it.
Will brains explode with delight with the idea that humans can have their meat without killing cows and all of their related carbon emissions? Will brains explode because the lab grown meat is so expensive that only the very rich can afford it? What will the conscious do with the idea that people get to have meat at all? Will the meat connoisseur snub this lab grown meat versus a nice hamburger from cow #156? Will the greens go nuts because a carbon based food source is being replaced with a lab equivalent that will inevitably be owned by the giant food corps?
So many heads to explode, so little popcorn.
I think lab-grown meat is the future. For quite a lot of people, meat is just too tasty to be given up completely. At the same time, it is an environmental disaster, with the United Nations estimating that animal farming has a greater effect on climate change than ALL of the worlds transportation (that is, cars, trucks, trains, ships and airplanes) combined. Some even say it's responsible for 51% of greenhouse gases emissions. Additionally, factory farming causes billions of animals to suffer, which is highly unethical. Lab-grown meat avoids both problems.
Until we can buy lab-grown meat, we should still go Veg, but once lab-grown meat is available, the abolishment of the mass factory farming is much more realistic.
You know, as an American, I resent that remark. We do not sue for going against God's will.
We burn you at the steak.
Yes. I went there.
A programme about this was on BBC Radio 4 a couple of years back. IIRC both the scientist and the presenter tried a little bit of "burger" grown in a lab and it was tasteless. Not horrible - just.... nothing much. Also the texture wasn't quite right.
I think the scientist said that meat (muscle) derives a lot of its taste from the surrounding fat when it's cooked - and, of course, this had no fat.
The next stage on was to make it taste nice - perhaps in the past two years they've got somewhere with it.
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
I made the mistake of eating a hamburger in London in 2001. I was on a long business trip and just wanted something quick to eat, so I ducked into a McDonalds.
Little did I know that, thanks to the outbreak of Mad Cow Disease, this simple act would make me ineligible to become a blood donor for years to come.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
Ha ha ha. American's hate change and love God. Pretty insightful and funny about how backwards we all are.
I remember the Slashdot thread on Thatcher's death. Seems like a number of british are still bitching about fake ice cream.
Predicted results, in order of severity (best results first)
1) "But when are you starting to serve the lab-grown meat?"
2) "Tasty!"
3) "Not bad"
4) "Tastes like chicken"
5) Vomiting
6) Addictive; taster cannot stop eating... literally
7) Turns taster into cow
8) Turns taster into cannibalistic mutant psychotics
9) Triggers the Rapture
10) "Tastes like McDonalds"
We burn you at the steak.
I thought we were talking about hamburger.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There are many things American don't do well, but we are pretty good about not burning our steaks.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Tastes like despair.
I would witch that.
No Soylent Green jokes yet? Somebody.. please step up!
Silence is a state of mime.
So what does it taste like?
Also, does it respond to music?
I am not a crackpot.
I'm not seeing any evidence linked that casein is in meat, just milk, or that it has any conclusive negative health effects. Even if it does exist in significant quantities in beef cultured cells, it probably wouldn't be present in any non-mammalian meat source.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Clearly the AC flirted with precognition by assuming someone would throw a good pun into the meat grinder.
The point of that is for people who can't tolerate dairy products. I suppose vegans as well, but I think it's mainly for those that can't tolerate dairy.
And that's a much larger group than a lot of people realize, I didn't realize that I had trouble with dairy, until I moved to a part of the world where dairy is hard to get, and I felt physically better than I had in years.
The anti-GM Luddites will go crazy because this is arguably the most anti-organic food on the planet.
I just have a problem with food being controlled by IP law.
I have a problem with farmers being sued by Monsanto because they are using their own seed, but are buried by legal costs because said multi-national is scared that their precious IP is being used without them collecting their pound of flesh.
I also do not believe the GM food industry's claim of safety. Because it has been shown time and time again that Big Corp will say and do anything to protect their profits.
> hamburger ... McDonalds
So... When did you eat the hamburger?
It's all about preferences. I think a grilled portobello can be delicious, but when I get a burger craving, I want ground beef (or some combination thereof). That "rubbery" texture that you describe is exactly what I am looking for. The bean-based stuff I've tried seems mushy to me, or has that funky texture that makes tofu so off-putting to many.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
9:00 am Eastern what? Eastern Europe doesn't have that much difference with Western Europe.
Raising animals for meat is resource intensive. I would assume that the hope is to scale this process so that lab-grown meat is much less so. Then ranching land can be reclaimed, water diverted to other endeavors (drinking), etc.
The amount of waste generated by livestock is astounding, not to mention the inputs needed. If inventions such as this can reduce either of those (ideally both), even by just a few percent, there is most certainly a 'point'. There are many non-vegetarians interested in more sustainable production methods.
Indeed, if I remember correctly there's actually only a few human populations that evolved to drink cow's milk. As it happened some became dominant cultures and spread their genes around a fair bit, but if you didn't happen to inherit one of the genes that let you digest it effectively it's not actually that suitable a foodstuff for us.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Edward G. Robinson waxing lyrical over Real Food is the first thing that comes to my mind when thinking about Soylent Green in this context. I doubt that vat-grown beef will taste anything like beef from free range cattle. Hydroponic tomatoes taste nothing like those grown in soil and in that case you have the entire organism producing the product, not just some cells in glucose water.
But if it's cheap and tastes like nothing, it will be perfect for fast food production. Slop some liquid smoke on it and can you feed millions of overweight underemployed slobs.
China's populations is levelling off but its standard of living is going up. Not every one lives in a house with electricity and plumbing but most people would like to. When larger fractions of their population start living the western life you can bet they wont want to farm their own foods. We are no where near feeding the world adequately, if this can be done cheap and efficiently than its a big step in the right direction.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
How exactly is laboratory grown meat more disgusting than a factory-farmed alternative? If it tastes similar enough* and the price can be made competitive I predict a lot of high-yield subspecies will go nearly extinct.
*within acceptable tolerances - factory farmed meat is a poor substitute for free-range meat, but is so much cheaper that most people will choose it anyway. Same with most high-yield fruits and vegetables that have been bred (or genetically modified) to have huge yields with little or no regard for flavor.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I agree many people eat too much meat. I personally don't eat much meat but I am not a vegetarian and once in a while I love a hamburger.
However if you are maybe a bit fat like I am (I am loosing a lot of weight due to dietary changes I have made), a small bit of meat (or other protein) in every meal is good. Protein will reduce the hunger feeling immensely for a longer time than other kinds of food. From a calorie point of view meat metabolises in a few hours, so it is released pretty slowly in the bloodstream. If you are able to eat a small amount of fast metabolising food (such as grains and fruit), slow metabolising food (such as meat) and really slow metabolising foods (vegetables and salads), your blood sugar levels stays a lot more balanced.
The biggest amount of weight loss I achieve is through alternate day fasting, I eat 600 (500 for women) calories on two non consecutive days in a week. On the other days I pay a lot less attention on how much I eat. I will do this for the rest of my live because next to losing weight, you will gain a lot of other health benefits (beyond those by just weighing less).
I have been doing this for a year, and my doctor and the blood lab do tests every three months. It has been quite interesting, I had a few things in my blood that were off, blood sugar level to high, good/bad cholesterol ratio bad (I have too little of the good stuff), liver function reduced (I don't drink), high blood pressure. These have all been going into the right direction. The liver function was completely restored (was because I got phiefer which messes with your liver), my blood pressure is perfect, my sugar levels are normal (but on the high side still) and my cholesterol ratio is getting better.
Actually the fake ice cream created by Thatcher was the soft-whip type that could be despensed in a nice looking curly (I don't even know what noun goes here) lump(?) from a machine that squidges out icecream. It could also be stored warm, and near instantly chiilled down to the required temperature, staying soft after freezing.
It's pretty tasty, if you consider it as a frozen desert rather than fancy ice-cream.
As an added bonus it is indeed nearly dairy free to the extent that it's quite edible by all but the most lactose intolerant.
And that's a much larger group than a lot of people realize,
Indeed, and yet for some reason so many products have dairy added completely unnecessarily. It's odd though, people have complete blind spots. Despite two members of my family being lactose intolerant, the thought of cooking without milk or butter either never crosses the mind of most of the rest of them or sends them into a blind panic. This is despite my grandmother being an Jewish and carniverous and an excellent cook and therefore very adept at non dairy cooking.
TL;DR: people are weird.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
burnt steak?? blasphemy!
i could live a little longer in this prison
I lived in London during that timeframe as well. Having eaten at McDonalds doesn't make you ineligible. Simply being in the UK for a prolonged time during the BSE outbreak will cause you to be turned down for blood donations.
The forms for blood donations don't even mention McDonalds, but they do ask if you were in the UK over certain dates. If so, you're ineligible to give blood, even if you're a vegan.
> The point of that is for people who can't tolerate dairy products.
No. The point is to make a cheaper product.
Whether or not it gives you a case of Montezuma's revenge is entirely immaterial.
Industrial engineering tweaks to food products are all about making it cheaper, easier to store, easier to transport, and to give it a longer shelf life. All other concerns are tertiary at best.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Well, not much challenge in making artificially grown meat taste like a bunch of spices designed to hide the fact that you're basically eating offal.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That's only because of how we raise livestock. There are other ways which do not have these problems.
Other benefits Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing include:
1. Reduction of parasites, pests, and disease vectors.
2. Less need for pharmaceuticals.
3. No need for fertilizer.
4. Less petroleum used in transporting feed and manure to/from the CAFO.
5. Increases soil fertility.
6. Increases topsoil coverage and depth.
7. Can reverse desertification.
8. Sequesters vast amounts of CO2.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Mmm. This is a tasty burger!
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Actually far more ice cream than that is made from vegetable oil.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-393432/The-chilling-truth-ice-cream.html
Pretty much every ice cream we ate as kids came from vegetable oil and tasted awesome!
Indeed, if I remember correctly there's actually only a few human populations that evolved to drink cow's milk.
Those of us of European descent have evolved the ability to tolerate it a little better than others; we still tend to feel far better and experience fewer diseases when we abstain from it.
Of course, it's still not from a cud-chewing cloven-hoofed animal. Whether it is meat is a more philosophical question.
That's not the fake ice cream I was talking about. I was talking about the stuff that doesn't use dairy.
And generally that stuff is more expensive.
I'm still skeptical these will do so well because, quite frankly, vege burgers and other meat substitutes are actually very good alternatives to meat already. I won't claim they're as good, but they are pretty damned close and, considering that they are easier to make, less chance of food borne illness, and healthier for you and the environment, I'd recommend giving them a shot. If the vat grown stuff can be better in cost and taste, then maybe it will do well, but I think the main advantage it has is that there is stigma on the concept of vege burgers and the like. And if protein is a concern, between things like various beans and quinoa, that can be handled without meat too.
This is a cool idea and I hope no foodie luddites start with the fearmongering (I guarantee in a sooner or later someone out there will start claiming vat grown meat causes cancer), but really I think there is a suitable, and quite possibly superior, technology already here.
When this is something backed by someone that doesn't use deliberate exclusion as a business model, perhaps it might mean something.
Until then, it's a parlor trick.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The stem-cell reproduction process uses viruses to revert cells into stem cells, and eating viruses or virus byproducts is pretty gross.
At least with organic food, you have some idea of what you're eating.
I made the mistake of eating a hamburger in London in 2001. I was on a long business trip and just wanted something quick to eat, so I ducked into a McDonalds.
Little did I know that, thanks to the outbreak of Mad Cow Disease, this simple act would make me ineligible to become a blood donor for years to come.
Who and where are you trying to make your donation to? I used to donate blood religiously (haven't because I am irritated with my current blood bank) and my understanding is that you had to live in the UK during a certain time frame for more than 6 months. It doesn't matter what you ate, only how long you were there for. That was the case at the American Red Cross, Stanford Blood Bank, and the local blood bank in my current state.
And in case you're wondering, I am unhappy with my current blood bank because I feel that they are disrespectful. They call me every day asking me to donate. I tell them I am busy, or not feeling well or whatever and ask them to call me back. I have even been ineligible, and told them that I was ineligible for the next 6 months, and they still call daily. It's rude.
I will have mine medium rare please.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
Forgive me for asking this, because it seems like wires have been crossed to result in this question... but what exactly does meat have to do with dairy? IE, it doesn't have anything to do with dairy.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I'd mod you up if I could.
So many of the anti-meat crowd are completely oblivious to how cattle ranching is primarily done these days. Managed intensive rotational grazing isn't the sought after ideal, it's reality for pretty much everyone I know who ranches and is holding on or doing well, and it's been that way for probably a decade or more now.
These idiots think cows are grown in vats and fed a steady diet of bubble gum and corn syrup in a 1920s style slaughterhouse.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Meat, cows, dairy.
All contain animal fat which is bad for you, bad for the environment and ethically questionable.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
There are many things American don't do well, but we are pretty good about not burning our steaks.
You obviously grew up with a different mother than I did.
I'm wondering if they replicated the fractional horse meat content in their vat meat.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Only according to your ethical compass. Mine says animals are here to help provide for our needs such as food and clothing and horsepower before the harnessing of steam and derivatives thereof.
Depends where you get your milk. There's a farm pretty close to me that sells milk and you can go see the cows wandering around in a field grazing. They may not be 100% as happy as some theoretical happiest cow, but I find it hard to picture anyone finding a serious problem with it who isn't espousing some extreme fringe ideal of animal freedom and independence.
All of that is to say that someone might be a vegetarian for animal welfare reasons and drink milk from such a place and that would be logically consistent.
...violating his "don't be evil" motto.
Just a "lab-grown meat will have a milkshake texture and taste like tofu" stereotype joke. In reality, I'm really all kinds of excited about this proof of concept because when it eventually becomes commercially viable, it will greatly diminish animal suffering and at the same time allow us to feed more people off the limited agricultural resources on the planet. And now some food experts say it doesn't taste half bad, what more do you want?!
We already have that. We call them double-cheeseburgers and they are readily available in every town in the US.
I would think that being a good vegeterian meant that you didn't crave meat. If you want meat that much, stop being trendy or whatever and eat meat.
Oh sure it's definitely becoming, if it isn't already, the defacto way of keeping cattle, but you don't have to go back many years before it was the other way around; keeping as much cattle on as little an area as is effectively possible, throwing food at them to get them big and 'healthy'.
That's one of the real big reasons a lot of acreage has turned to wasteland over the years, and this new/old way of herding the animals around over a much larger area is only just now starting to return some balance to some of these desert and near-desert areas. But there's still a great deal of land all over the world where farmers and ranchers went bust doing it the wrong way, because all the vegetation just up and disappeared.
Some people find the conditions under which some farm animals are raised to be ethically questionable.
Some people think it is unethical to kill animals.
You are entitled to your own ethical compass.
Enjoy your meat.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Actually, in Canada, they can't call it ice cream if it isn't actually ice cream. If you read the package, it often says "frozen dessert" or some other such name. If it says ice cream on the box, it actually has to be real ice cream. To qualify as Ice Cream, it must be made only with 100% Canadian milk, apart from the stuff used to actually add the flavour like vanilla, sugar, chocolate, nuts, caramel, etc.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
"The main protein in milk and meat is casein [wikipedia.org]. "
Have you actually read what that article says?
All contain animal fat which is bad for you,
No. No it's not. The great food experiment that has been foisted on the public over the last 30 or 40 years has shown that the current recommended diet is horrible for people's health. The Medical industry is just stuck with the tautology that it is good, so the keep recommending that when it doesn't work, you have to double down on the high sugar (carbohydrate)/low protein/low animal fat diet.
Yeah, I support the idea, but I won't be eating this if the American Food Industry is going to be growing this stuff. We're too lax on labeling, too focused on cost and profit, and not careful enough about consumer health over here. who knows what kind of ingenious additives they'll throw in the mix to further engage our taste buds or cut costs at the expense of our health?
They're fed corn and antibiotics -- I dunno where you raise your cows but California between Bakersfield and Salinas is one big concentrated feedlot. We only recently convinced people to stop feeding cows with other dead cows. Let alone grass.
I don't know who "everyone you know" is, but 50% of meat in the US comes from CAFOs.
The modern slaughterhouses are pretty awesome. I mean, sure, assembly lines are imperfect things, and pigs and cows often aren't dead when they get put up on the hooks, and are conscious when their trotters and ears get sawed off, but this is a marginal issue...
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
And everyone can be happy.
I like meat, I do.
But you know who seems to be really obsessed with meat? Vegetarians.
For people who don't like meat, they seem to eat a lot of vegetables that are mashed up and shaped to look like meat. [In his "vegetarian" voice]: "I find meat repulsive. I'll have a veggie burger with fake bacon, and can you serve it to me dressed like a cow? I don't like meat; I just like to call meat late at night and hang up. Let's drive by meat's house. Does meat ever ask about me? [singing] I don't care! I ain't missin' you at all...missin' youuuuuu...."
You never see that the other way: [meat eater's voice]: "I will have the steak and can you make it taste like tofu?"
-J. Gaffigan
Hate to break it to you, but you just swallowed hundreds of viruses just now. Oops, there you went and did it again. The remains of the virus that infected the stem cell should be insignificant. In fact we could even make certain of it by doing full dna analysis on multiple samples taken from the initial growing cell-clump versus the donor animal.
As for organic - yes, we're 100% certain that whatever you're eating has bits and pieces of viral DNA incorporated into it's own. Everything does. That's what (some) viruses do, and have been doing for billions of years. There's a fair chance that some of our own useful genetic traits were introduced by a virus at some point in our evolution, we certainly have bits of random junk accumulated over the eons.
Not that I'm knocking organic - but if we're going to be eating processed, factory-farmed food anyway we may as well do it cleanly and efficiently and leave the farmland available for more constructive uses. Permaculture maybe. Or wilderness areas.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The waiter approached.
"Would you like to see the menu?" he said, "or would you like meet the Dish of the Day?"
"Huh?" said Ford.
"Huh?" said Arthur.
"Huh?" said Trillian.
"That's cool," said Zaphod, "we'll meet the meat."
--Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
I've been following this story for what seems forever now. I'd like to know how he's kept his beef fresh all this time. Did he lace it with preservatives? Freeze it? Cure it?
In general, things that are so small they're invisible to the naked eye tend to be Halachically irrelevant. So the fact that a few stem cells from a pig were involved might not render it pork. I can see it being judged Kosher.
Of course, IANAR.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
This so reminds me of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbp8jzAI-HY&t=7m40s
John_Chalisque
Parent post completely misses the point. Sure, rotational grazing is a much healthier (for the animals) and many would say more humane way to raise cattle. If we could meet 100% of demand for beef this way, then I'm sure nearly everyone would support it over feed lots.
But you're not comparing feed lot beef to grazed beef. You're comparing grazed beef to lab grown. Right now, for every pound of meat we consume, requires about 10 pounds of vegetation. The number vary quite a bit based on what you're eating (beef is different than chicken), but it's a good estimate.
Suppose it took just 2 pounds of vegetable input to produce a pound of lab-grown "beef"? You could take literally millions of acres of farmland offline without sacrificing capability to feed people. That farmland could either be used as part of a much larger rotation (so more land is fallow each season), which would improve overall land quality. Or, it could be returned to nature, which would be even better for desertification and topsoil coverage. And if the lab-beef can be made from non-food "crops", like say something indigenous, you might not need to really farm at all. Maybe all you do is harvest grass a few times a year, and dump it into your beef-o-matic.
With increasing wealth in Asia, in the long run, it's either something like lab-meat, crickets (as the UN suggests), or we all eat about 1/3rd the animal protein each day as we do now.
They're fed corn and antibiotics -- I dunno where you raise your cows but California between Bakersfield and Salinas is one big concentrated feedlot. We only recently convinced people to stop feeding cows with other dead cows. Let alone grass.
Yep, and as a partial result, you've got a lot of vegetarians who think meat is gross - for good reason. California raised beef is probably close to the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten.
You'll find best practices employed out here in "flyover country" where effective land use is valued. (You know, those people the Coasts disparagingly tend to refer to as ignorant and earth destroying hicks...)
As for these supposed slaughterhouses you're referring to: please explain to me how ranchers, who get paid by weight and often have their meats taste graded and rated, would benefit from having a squirming, living adrenaline-pumping animal processed? No, it doesn't work that way, not in this country. Even someone cursorily familiar with the cattle industry would be able to tell you that you're relying on inaccurate propaganda.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
On the contrary, I see healthy animal fats as inherently healthy - just not ones established by eating corn, soy, etc. in feed lots. History as well as modern health information does agree with me.
I can understand your stance. When you rely upon the FDA to make your food choice decisions instead of listening to centuries of built-up wisdom of centuries and relying on traditional foods determined to establish and extend health, it's easy to make such foolish mistakes.
As far as your ethics claim? That's laudable but also extremely laughable, since I can almost guarantee you do not believe in a moral authority higher than yourself. Good luck with that!
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I think that was my point.
The main protein in milk and meat is casein. However casein has been linked to adverse health effects.
Casein is not found in meat, much less its main protein. I don't know where you read that crazy idea. Casein is radically different in structure from myofribullar proteins that give muscle its strength and from myoglobins which store oxygen which are two of the more common proteins in meat.
And other than allergic reactions, pretty much the only people purporting adverse health effects from casein are the authors of "The China Study," who mix some common sense, pro-vegetarian suggestions with some questionable and some really, really bad science. For your perusal, he is a extremely detailed takedown of the science in the book, including the casein/aflatoxin study.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
CAFO's still provide the bulk of the meat consumed in the US.