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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
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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.
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.
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.
> hamburger ... McDonalds
So... When did you eat the hamburger?
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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