Dutch Scientist Given €300,000 To Grow Hamburger In Lab

Business Insider ^ | Oct. 25, 2011 | Nick Jardine

[nickcarraway]

A Dutch professor at Maastricht University has been given a grant of €300,000 ($417,000) to "grow" a hamburger in a lab, reports the BBC.

Mark Post is attempting to grow synthetic meat in a lab using muscle stem cells. Post has said that his goal is to turn meat production from a farming process to a factory process.

According to Gizmodo, he can only currently grow meat a few millimeters thick due to having no way of getting nutrients to the muscle cells. However, he is hoping to introduce a new process to allow his portion sizes to increase.

In order to grow his meat, Post attaches the muscle cells to velcro, which causes them to contract and exercise themselves. He is planning on producing several thin strips of meat and then having a celebrity chef cook him a hamburger to demonstrate his process.

[nickcarraway]

I bet he's still struggling with the pickle matrix...

[tumblindice]

http://steakumm.com/recipes.htm
Yum, mystery lab meat.

[Dogbert41]

Have they thought of meat rollups? Works with fruit...

[Dogbert41]

Have they thought of meat rollups? Works with fruit...

[Kirkwood]

Baloney!

[DJ MacWoW]

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[exDemMom]

I wonder what is used to feed these cells. Most cell media contain fetal calf serum—collected from fetal calves at the time the pregnant cow is slaughtered. Fetal calf serum is not cheap.

[SgtBob]

Give me 413K...I’ll buy acreage and show ‘em how to grow cows...err...hamburger.

[I still care]

It’s nice to know sometimes we aren’t the only crazy ones.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I remember paying $300 a liter when buying in enormous quantites.

That was 15 years ago.

[6SJ7]

So, lets review the options. We’ve got domesticated, self-reproducing biologicals that live pretty much on grass and water and produce very tasty hamburger -or- we’ve got milimeter thin meat rollups grown on velcro for $400,000. That is a tough decision.

[mikrofon]

Dutch Scientist Given €300,000 To Grow Hamburger In Lab

A few months later.....

[exDemMom]

The price seems to have gone up a bit.

Invitrogen price list.

[count-your-change]

I worked in a restaurant and saw hamburger growing and even moving at times. Big deal! But once you drop it into the spaghetti sauce it calms right down, rolls over and floats to the top dead as dead can be.

[SunkenCiv]

Did they want fries with that?

[TheOldLady]

Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!

[SunkenCiv]

“Here or to go?”

[TheOldLady]

Egad. I can't imagine the chemicals and hormones they'd have to use to grow meat in a lab. How the heck do you grow hamburger anyway? Do they have to use nanobots to grind it up as it's growing?

This is just the yickiest thing I've heard of in a long time! Yick!

[TheOldLady]

And quit teasing me, Civ!   ;-p

[SunkenCiv]

Shake?