Test-tube burger 'petri dish' of the day
February 24th, 2012 8:00 pmHeston Blumenthal is set to serve up a 207,000 'test-tube' burger later this year.
The tasty meal will be the first beef patty ever created in the laboratory thanks to the efforts of Dutch stem cell scientist Dr Mark Post, from the University of Maastricht.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Canada, Dr Post said: 'In October we're going to provide a proof-of-concept showing that with in-vitro methods, out of stem cells we can make a product that looks like and feels and hopefully tastes like meat.
'That first hamburger is going to cost 250,000 euros.'
After experiments which progressed from mouse meat to pork, it will make a grand public entrance in October.
The current plan is for Blumenthal to cook it for a mystery guest, to be chosen by the research project's anonymous funder.
The minced meat will have been grown from bovine muscle and fat stem cells cultured in Dr Post's laboratory.
Currently Dr Post is still working with unappetising half-millimetre thick strips of lab-grown meat that are pinky-yellow in colour.
But he is confident that over the course of this year he will produce a burger virtually indistinguishable from one bought in the high street.
The research has a serious aim - to address the problem of unsustainable livestock farming.
'These animals are very inefficient in the way they convert vegetable matter to animal protein,' he said.
Test Tube Burger Is 'Petri Dish' Of The Day
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The research aims to address the problem of unsustainable livestock farming
3:57am UK, Monday February 20, 2012
Heston Blumenthal is set to serve up a 207,000 'test-tube' burger later this year.
The tasty meal will be the first beef patty ever created in the laboratory thanks to the efforts of Dutch stem cell scientist Dr Mark Post, from the University of Maastricht.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Canada, Dr Post said: 'In October we're going to provide a proof-of-concept showing that with in-vitro methods, out of stem cells we can make a product that looks like and feels and hopefully tastes like meat.
'That first hamburger is going to cost 250,000 euros.'
After experiments which progressed from mouse meat to pork, it will make a grand public entrance in October.
The current plan is for Blumenthal to cook it for a mystery guest, to be chosen by the research project's anonymous funder.
The minced meat will have been grown from bovine muscle and fat stem cells cultured in Dr Post's laboratory.
Currently Dr Post is still working with unappetising half-millimetre thick strips of lab-grown meat that are pinky-yellow in colour.
But he is confident that over the course of this year he will produce a burger virtually indistinguishable from one bought in the high street.
The research has a serious aim - to address the problem of unsustainable livestock farming.
'These animals are very inefficient in the way they convert vegetable matter to animal protein,' he said.
'Cows and pigs have an efficiency rate of about 15%, which is pretty inefficient. Chickens are more efficient and fish even more.
'Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years. Right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock.
'You can easily calculate that we need alternatives. If you don't do anything meat will become a luxury food and be very, very expensive.'
In time, he expected the cost of test-tube meat to be brought down to affordable levels. It may then present consumers with the same kind of choice they currently have between buying battery farm or free range eggs.
The process of making test tube meat involves first obtaining the stem cells and allowing them to proliferate around 30-fold. Every muscle cell is accompanied by four or five stem cells.
The stem cells are grown in a culture medium containing all the nutrients and vitamin 'food' they need.
To construct three dimensional tissue, the cells are mixed with a collagen gel in a culture dish containing velcro 'anchor points'.
Between the anchor points, they self-organise into fully-fledged chunks of muscle. An important step is to make them contract using electrical stimulation.
Finally the beef strips are harvested, minced up, and moulded into a patty. To make the burger more realistic, the muscle meat is mixed with fat grown the same way from a different kind of stem cell.
Three thousand pieces of muscle are combined with around 200 pieces of fat.
Dr Post refuses to reveal the identity of the private individual financing the research, who wants to remain anonymous.
But he said he was a well known figure with 'deep pockets'.
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Test-tube burger 'petri dish' of the day