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Scientists have been trying to grow meat for a while now – it could be the answer to our food needs for the next 100 years. Now a lab-grown burger patty is almost ready for tasting, and guess who’s in line to cook it. Yep, Heston Blumenthal, the mad-scientist-like chef from the goggle box.
With a price tag of just under £210,000 it’s not like this is going to hit your local McDonald’s anytime soon, but it’ll be a massive step forward for test-tube meat. The burger patty is being grown by a Dutch stem-cell boffin from the University of Maastricht, Dr Mark Post, and will be ready for Heston to hopefully not-burn in October this year.
I love my meat, and although I’m a tad sceptical that meat grown in a lab will taste the same as it does from an animal, I’m all for reducing the burden on our planet, animals and food resources. Hell, it might even be OK with vegetarians and animal rights complainers, though resident Giz vegetarian boss-lady Kat turned her nose up when I asked her if she’d take a bite. Would you nibble some test-tube burger? [UKPA]
Image credit: Scientist from Shutterstock
Nothing good can come of this. As a vegetarian myself. I probably wouldn’t eat it either. I don’t know why. I just don’t trust those men in white coats much I suppose.
As an ex-man-in-white-coat, I can safely say, you shouldn’t trust us — we’re all crazy
By white coat, do you mean Lab Coat or Straight jacket?
I’m not a Vegetarian and i’d gve it a test scoff to see what all the fuss was about. If it tasted like steak but was cheaper, then i’d swap, though both those caveats are fairly unlikely.
That’s definitely the end game. It’s just proof on concept right now, but grown on an industrial scale it should be much, much, much cheaper and miles better for our poor old planet.
Well done to GizUK for getting the reply notifications going, i was gonna ask Kat what the timescale was for that and its done!
I most definitely would eat one of these. If we could throw some lab grown bacon on there as well, that would be great.
Yep… your name says it all. I was in Texas once mnay years ago, With my job at the time. If you don’t eat meat and visit Texas, you need to take your own veg. Unless you want to live on lettuce leaves covered in 1000 island sauce, which is what they called a salad? Heck, it was grim. May have changed now though.
If you’re in the city it’s pretty easy to find some decently healthy food but most small towns are still very meat and potatoes. What do you need vegetables for? You’re a Magic Robot!
I’m a composting Magic Robot. I need mainly veg to survive.
If they can lab grow bacon then I’ll start believing there IS a god !!
If they could grow lactose-free burger cheese too, that’d be grand.
I am wondering who will be the first to eat.
In theory test-tube meat could be *better* than naturally grown cow. Think about it – you could remove all the variables of how the animal was raised, what it ate, it’s genetics, etc… and just pick the best.
Also each patty could be *exactly* like every other, which means that cooking it could become an exact science – imagine a perfectly cooked hamburger every time!
Not with my cooking skills
And we’d finally be able to enjoy veal without the horrible, horrible torture needed to produce it
The concept is pretty awesome. I for one would welcome a source of meat that was not dependant on us killing other animals.
Although if you think about it, it’s kind of a horror story waiting to happen. What happens if there’s some epigenetic cock up and part of the meat-slab starts growing eyes or something? :S
I’ll stick with cows kthanx
Will they grow human meat slabs, I’ll give that a go.
But wouldn’t it be easier to remove an animals brain and just plug them into big factory rack of life support systems with a protein shake – or is it just about removing it from a natural process as much as possible. Not against it but I don’t see it as a solution to a problem, as the reason they want to make burgers from this is likely the texture and taste the basic meat is shite without a good network of veins supping quality blood – better to just have the whole complexed animal without the brain function, and a bit of input and output plumbing – job done, ethical wholesale meat.
Kat/others who wouldn’t eat this, why (not)? Surely, if it will be cheaper (might happen in a few decades), will taste as good or even close enough to meat (possibly better and healthier due to artificial selection), and was readily available, it would be the perfect solution to the vegetarian problem?
It seems that there’s still a stigma about natural things created/tampered with in a laboratory, even if the tampering is necessary or an improvement. We need to get over this as a society, surely?
I would eat it in a flash, no questions asked. I’m a complete and utter fat greedy barsteward when it comes to food (although I wouldn’t go for seconds if it wasn’t nice).
Wouldn’t eat it even if you paid me £210,000 to do it. Totally unethical and wholly unnecessary. What is the world coming to.
Why? I mean, you seem very passionate about not eating it, but you haven’t given any explanation.
And why is it unethical? Genuinely curious as to the thought process behind this.
Unethical? Unnescessary? WHAT? The demand for meat is going to double maybe even triple in the next 30-40 years. Stuff like this is completely necessary. If this works, they can theoretically produce 100 MILLION burgers from ONE cow. But people like you would rather the millions of cows get slaughtered before risking any type of progress, you’re too ethical for me.
Shhh! You’ll scare him away and I want to hear some reasoning dammit!
Some animals are bred purely for our consumption. Some in poor conditions (though I’m sure there are ones kept in good order). So trying to find an alternative is unethical?
I remember seeing this on Heston’s Feast series a while back (amongst dildo jelly and whale barf) and I was immediately interested in the process. At that time, they could barely grow something the size of a peanut, so they’ve come a decent way in a couple years.
My greatest fear is that it’ll be treated like GM crops and get shoved to one side even though its benefits could be revolutionary.
It’ll be good when this progresses. No animals harmed has get to be a good thing. I won’t be switching anytime soon though. I imagine it doesn’t taste that nice yet. Hopefully one day it will, and maybe even be less risky to health with salmonella at the sort.
Anything they make has to be better then quorn
Or that dirty beanfeast! Both of those ‘meat alternatives’ are fuel for the fart factory in my house.
Well the last I read about lab meat was it being jelly like and not really tasteful, so I think there’s probably more progress to be made. As for quorn, in secondary we got to try some as a blind experiment and it was ok. It was only a little bit though, and seeing some on adverts I’ve been like wow even on the ads it looks bad. I can see potential in this though in the future.