Hamburger from the laboratory

For six months we will eat first hamburgers that is grown in a test tube!

The first will be an artificial hamburger stand 250,000 euros, but production of artificial meat in the future should be cheaper and more cost effective.

First, people hunted wild animals for meat. Then the animals started to grow on farms. Now scientists have to step up to a new peak: growing meat in labs. "For six months we will have the first 'sausages out of the tube,'" he told New Scientist prof. Mark Post of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands.


Serum from fetal horse

Fasting is one of the pioneers in the development of new technologies "in vitro meat" who this week met at a conference in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. He and his colleagues have so far been largely experimented with pork. From pig muscle to isolate stem cells and then fed serum from fetal horse. Finally they got 2.5 inches long and 0.5 cm wide strips of pork. While muscle tissue in animals red, "Pork from the tube" is a pale gray color and more like a squid tissue.

"This is because the 'meat from tubes' no blood and very little myoglobin, a protein that binds to iron. Now we are looking for a way to insert the myoglobin in meat to get the color, "explained the Post admitted that the taste of" lab meat "is still unknown.

In fact, according to Dutch law, scientists are not allowed to taste the "in vitro meat." "We are looking for a daring person who will try the synthetic pork. If no one answers, I'll do it, "joked Post who is now with the help of anonymous philanthropists for donations to the development of" beef from the tube. "

"I am full of hope and I believe we are in a year to dispose of the first 'in vitro' burgers," he promised, adding that the price of the first "man-made hamburger" could reach 250,000 euros. But the Post predicts that by the time production "lab meat" cheaper way to become economically viable.

Although at first it sounds bizarre, new technology could be the solution to several problems. First, world population will continue to grow over the coming decades and will be in 2050. The meat consumption will double. This will largely be due to changes in dietary habits in the new economic powers like China, India and Brazil, where meat consumption in the past ten years has increased 33 percent.
killing animals

Second, livestock and meat production are a source of greenhouse gases, nine percent of carbon dioxide emissions and 18 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions associated with livestock farming. Thirdly, the killing of animals for food is a big ethical problem, which is a famous philosopher and a vegetarian Peter Singer wrote a bestseller, "Animal Liberation".

"'In vitro' meat will be the only choice that we will be left. We eat a hamburger, rarely think that comes from dead cows. As you get used to the synthetic flesh, we do not even think about it that are grown in the lab, "concluded Mark Post.