Posted on 04/10/2015 7:44:39 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Scientists in the Netherlands are one step closer to producing a viable lab-grown alternative to the conventional beef burger patty.
Last year, Professor Mark Post and his team of scientists at the Maastricht University in the Netherlands produced the first prototype of a lab-grown burger. Benefits of this new burger production method include a decrease in animal slaughter, savings in land, water, and energy use required for livestock, and a reduction in greenhouse gases.
The project has faced several hurdles, though, not the least of which was the enormous price tag of 250,000 Euros, or $273,000. That was roughly how much it cost the research team to produce just one burger.
According to Post, however, the team has since figured out a way to drastically cut down the cost of production. In an interview with Australia’s ABC News, the professor said that a new technique would drop the cost of production to $80 per kilogram of meat, meaning that one burger patty would cost around $11.40 – an impressive drop from the initial $273,000.
The reason why the price dropped so drastically is because the new technique would just use a muscle tissue from a cow. The tissue would be placed on a petri dish of fetal calf serum which allows it to multiply. A small tissue, according to Post, "can produce 10,000 kilos of meat."
While the cost has been reduced enough to make the lab-grown beef more feasible, not all issues have been overcome. For one thing, even though the technique is cost-effective, it remains too slow for mass production.
A second obstacle is the very same serum responsible for the price drop. Fetal calf serum, which allows the muscle tissue to multiply, is made from the blood of cow fetuses and collected from slaughterhouses. The reliance on this serum therefore undercuts one of the project’s main goals — to decrease animal killing. Post has said that he and his team are currently working on replacing the serum with something that would not rely on animal products.
Finally, and probably more importantly for burger consumers, is the issue of taste. Food writer Josh Schonwald and nutrition researcher Hanni Rutzler, both of whom were part of the burger’s tasting panel last year, have said that the absence of fat in the lab-grown beef takes away from the patty’s juiciness and flavor.
All in all, scientists at Maastricht University expect the project to take some time, but aren’t giving up on bringing the lab-grown meat to supermarkets everywhere. "I do think that in 20 or 30 years from now," Post said, "We will have a viable industry producing alternative beef."
yuck....
No thanks. God-made meat is all I want or need.
Get your own dirt.
Another way the lefties make red meat look disgusting to get more people to go vegan.
the enormous price tag of 250,000 Euros, or $273,000.
I’ll stay with wagyu beef if you please.
Cold fusion
Solar power
Flying cars
Lab-grown beef
It’s all just 20 years away.
I’m waiting for fish.
Sounds like the food equivalent of battery powered cars.
Lab meat and global warming sex from prostitute women, the future is cool.
Awesome news! I can’t wait to taste it with my tofu.
And the way prices are going up on red meat, they may be going at this in two directions.
Kremlin News go back to write titles in broken English, da?
“Strong like bull!”
There are many companies that have tried to develop alternatives to fetal calf serum. I've never come across a substitute that works.
Fetal calf serum is obtained when a pregnant cow is slaughtered. A single fetal calf might yield a liter of serum. That may cost several hundred dollars, depending on the supply of beef. Because growing cells in quantities sufficient to become a food supply requires a LOT more serum than I ever needed for growing cells for experiments in the lab, I'm not even going to begin to try to calculate how much it would cost to grow a pound of cells in a lab.
The bottom line is that this is unlikely to become less costly than natural meat, and will end up killing just as many, if not more, cows than needed just for meat. Because, to get all that serum, the cows have to be slaughtered while pregnant--which means two cows die, not just one. And more than one fetus will probably be needed to produce just a pound of lab meat. Researchers will still need the serum for experiments, which are (IMHO) more important than trying to shield people from the fact that animals are slaughtered for food.
One other complication is that researchers grow cells in plastic flasks or Petri dishes. The plasticizers leech quite readily into the culture medium used to grow the cells. While that isn't much of a concern when growing cells for experiments, I'm not certain that those plasticizers are a safe additive for food.
People just need to accept the fact that we are omnivores, and that means we do need to consume other animals in order to live. This is actually true of most animals; even some we consider herbivores do eat animal products on occasion. I caught my bunny at the cat food dish once...
Yeah, I’m thinking, no.
At $11.40, that is some burger. Where I come from, it is called “Soylent Green”.
I’m going out for a pizza very soon.
So you've described that an abortion will accompany a cow slaughter. That's a lefty sacrament so it makes the killing thing more palatable.
They’ll probably fall back on us peasants eating insects, rodents, lower order sea creatures and the like while the elites will still get beef, pork, lamb, shellfish, chicken and good fish.
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