By the heading you might think I am talking about some high end burger with some gold leaf stuck on it or some ridiculously overpriced topping. But that is not the case with this expensive food item. The burger I am talking about might just revolutionise the meat industry, save hundreds and thousands of cattle, and save lots and lots of water and fodder. Oh and it will be made in a science laboratory. Mark Post, a vascular biologist based in Netherlands at the University of Maastricht believes that he is inching closer to creating “cultured meatâ€.
This means that the meat on your burgers would be grown in petri dishes rather than being sourced from livestock. And mind you, this is not some imitation meat which is made for vegetarians and has vegetable proteins such as those from soy. That also explains the cost of the potential burger. Post takes leftover substances of the animals from slaughterhouses and feed them with a combination of nutrients that will make them grow in size. Currently the culture is so thin that it looks translucent. But Post says that by joining many of these muscle strips and adding a bit of fat in between, he will be able to come up with actual meat.
Though he hasn’t tasted the meat himself, a reporter it seems did and wasn’t impressed. But the research has not reached its conclusion as yet so the scientist can surely work on that aspect. But yes that will probably be one of the most important parameters by which this exercise will be judged. The great part with this experiment is that if successful it will help divert the amount of farm products used to feed the livestock towards humans who need it, thus helping the current food crisis.
Via: Reuters , SmartPlanet
