The rise of man made meat?

Dutch researchers are soon to unveil meat they have grown from the stem cells of cows.

We eat 90 pounds of meat a year - and 80% of farmland in the world is devoted to meat production. The demand for meat is set to double by 2050. So it’s a bit of a no brainer to figure out that the current situation won’t be sustainable for very much longer.

Somehow, the way we produce and consume meat will have to change. If it doesn’t, the chances are we‘ll be doomed forever to a force fed diet of tofurky, nut roasts and dodgy sounding pulses. 

Test tubes and stem cells

Researchers at Eindhoven and Maastricht Universities in Holland think they've come up with a perfect solution: don't bother with farming and all that nasty slaughtering business, just grow the meat in a test tube.

After years of research, the boffins are soon set to unveil meat they've grown from the stem cells of cows.  

The concept

The Dutch scientists who are pioneering the idea of in vitro burgers and steaks are following in the footsteps of a WWII concentration camp survivor, William van Eelen.

After witnessing starvation and animal abuse on a grotesque scale, he devoted the rest of his life to exploring the possibility of producing meat painlessly – without slaughtering animals.

The motives of the academics have laudable roots then – vegetarian pressure group PETA and even NASA are among the backers of the research – but will meat eaters really want to eat the stuff, and more importantly, will it taste any good?

The birth of a burger

Maastricht University now says that the first test tube hamburger is less than a year away from becoming a reality. The production process takes six weeks and sees muscle tissue being taken from a healthy cow.

The stem cells are removed and up to 10,000 are left in a dubious sounding nutrient based soup to multiply in the lab up to a billion times. The new muscle tissue is then processed into a hamburger.

Hmm, sounds simple – but whether our carnivorous world is ready for such scientific shaping of our eating habits remains to be seen.

Looks like meat but feels like....squid

No one is quite sure what the man made burger will taste like, but previous attempts at growing meat in a lab have not, it has to be said, been an unqualified success.

In New York they’ve grown fish fillets from goldfish tissue (yum!) and a couple of years ago the same research group at Maastricht produced what were described as “pork strips”.

Unfortunately, the result was a greyish looking matter that, inexplicably had the texture of calamari. No one it seems was quite brave enough to actually taste the strips, so how similar it tasted to pork is still very much an unanswered question.

The big sell

While the idea of man made meat might not be as repellent as human milk produced by cattle, it’s surely a close call. So what does scientifically produced meat have to recommend it? And how will anyone be encouraged to buy it?

When you consider that the flavour in traditionally reared meat is derived from the animal’s diet, it’s difficult to see how test tube meat can taste of, well, anything. It seems the only way to market test tube meat is to beef up its environmental credentials, so to speak - and to remind consumers of their genuine concerns over current meat production methods.

Will we have a choice?

In the end, we may not even have a choice on whether or not we eat test tube meat in the future. Professor Mark Post, who is leading the Maastricht research, says the switch to test tube meat is inevitable.

He predicts that test tube meat cultivation will replace traditional methods because of the huge explosion in the world’s population. He says we’ll still be able to eat traditionally sourced meat as a “delicacy” but there is no way we will be able to rely on traditional livestock in the coming decades. In vitro meat, he has declared, will be the only choice left.

It could be you

Interestingly, Dr Post’s testing methods for his new hamburger do not indicate undiluted confidence in his product. He’s searching hard for a “courageous” individual to act as a, ahem, guinea pig and be the first to try the thing.

He doesn’t appear to be inundated with takers and concedes that the lab rat in this particular instance might have to be him. 

A job on his hands

Dr Post and his team certainly have high hopes for test tube meat: a huge reduction in the number of animals slaughtered for human consumption, the combating of world hunger, AND environmental protection.

It’s hard to object to any of these but my guess is that the marketing people will have a job on their hands to promote stem cell steak or anything else that started life in a petri dish.  

Your view

What do you think? Would you try man made meat or would you rather pass?

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Cloned meat

Let them eat steak