Scientists Say Lab-Grown Burgers Will Be Available to the Public in Five Years

This will be interesting.

When a team of Dutch scientists unveiled the world’s first stem cell beef burger in 2013, it carried a $300,000 price tag. Worse, it was dry and tasteless. But since the initial lackluster reviews, Mark Post and his colleagues have been hard at work. Now, they say they hope to have a commercially saleable cow-less patty on the market in five years.

Until very recently, lab-grown beef sounded like science fiction. But rapid advances in molecular biology and stem cell technology have placed the futuristic concept within reach. And the arguments for removing animals from the meat equation are practically endless: The meat industry as it exists today swallows an enormous fraction of our land and natural resources, produces vast quantities of greenhouse gases, has contributed to the rise of antibiotic resistant infections, and in many cases, is downright cruel. If test tube burgers can eliminate or diminish even a fraction of these problems, then this seems like one crazy idea worth pursuing.

gizmodo.com...

Test tube burgers could be good. You start making test tube pork and chicken then they will have many dishes covered. People will have to get used to this though. If you can create all the foods you like this way and you can get the same or similar taste without the calories, that would be great.

I wouldn't trust it or eat it. It make look like ground beef but it aint no ground beef it is artificial petri-dish meat.

They won't sell this # in my Butchers.


As a side note, it's great to know stem cell research is being put to good use... /sarc

a reply to: neoholographic

Yeah..... Hell No. No fake meat out of crap and crickets for me.

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No way I would eat this lab grown crap.

This will never happen.

This sounds too much like going vegetarian. Just can't. I need meat. Real meat. I can't eat fast food burgers. Hell, something they cook up in a lab with chemicals? No thank you. When the day comes that real meat is no longer available. Someone, please just shoot me.

the day they can grow a passable ribeye, im all in. Until then, im pretty lukewarm. I don't eat a lot of ground meat that i don't grind myself, unless its a trusted source. I get kinda queasy at ground meat....although if you put it in a bun with some cheese, im likely to eat it.

Here's the question I haven't seen asked yet. Will they require companies to list it in the ingredients? Especially if it's mixed with other meats? They've been fighting tooth & nail to prevent GMO labeling, so why should we expect them to voluntarily label this?

Also, glad I'm a vegetarian

In theory, I couldn't be more behind lab grown beef. What's not to like about it? I don't have anything against cows personally; I eat them because they're delicious and not because I want cows to die. Lab grown beef should be far better for the environment and far better for the people eating it as well. There's virtually no downside if the texture and taste is perfect. Also if you're like me and have a vague, distant concern about eating BSE tainted meat, losing your mind and dying horribly, well then here's the answer.

and yet...

I'm repulsed at the idea of eating it even though I am consciously aware of how irrational that reaction is! Sure it's not quite the repulsion I'd have thinking about where the protein bars in Snowpiercer came from but beef growing in vats, trays, tanks, whatever doesn't seem appetizing to say the least.

I'm thinking if it's indistinguishable from the "real thing" people will get used to the idea quickly because the benefits outweigh the risk by a mile, particularly if the price is eventually less. Look at how long people ate LFTB ("pink slime") before it became a topic of discussion — and LFTB is scraps of whatever handled in such a potentially unsanitary manner that they need to kill the bacteria with ammonia gas so that they're not killing people with meat that's probably contaminated with fecal matter. What was the result of Americans finding this out? There was a temporary outrage and some fast food chains stopped using it and now LFTB is all but forgotten even though people are still eating it all the time in frozen/processed foods.

There's a slogan: At Least Its Not Pink Slime!

a reply to: theantediluvian

There's a slogan; At Least Its Not Pink Slime!

I'll choose some pink slime rather than tube steak every time.

If it tastes good and comes from something that doesn't have a brain but all the benefits of meat? I'd stop being a vegetarian.

Yeah, it turns my stomach seeing it in a petri-dish. Hope it never becomes financially beneficial for some a-hole to pack it in the meat counter and say it's prime Angus beef. It could, of course, be grown from Angus genes.

So!
Whats to stop them producing PEOPLE BURGERS!!!

Count me out!

Curious the reactions. I'm open to it, but want to see it fed to mice first to see if they develop tumors more frequently, or any other complications. Better me farting methane than all those cows.

a reply to: neoholographic

Good thread, bad idea. F+S.
After a couple or three decades of consumer reports railing over
the quality and even composition of ground beast, it's no sur-
prise we're getting alternative food to combat the associated
medicine. We may need the latter-- although I believe that
horse left the station long ago. Maybe took the ambulance with 'im.

Not a rant, hope you laugh/
Ironically enough I just finished a late Sunday dinner of

* wide egg noodles which could be modified copolymer due
to the rate at which it absorbed even boiling water. I gave up
after 20 minutes and a resultant durometer of roughly 75-77.

* a quickly stirred up sauce consisting of off-yellow slats, pro-
bably the same molecular makeup: but with more recycled
10w-40 for the sake of 'digestibility'. Only half of the incessantly
spoon pounded semiplastic tub insulation actually melted in the
bovine growth hormone-rich, godless ermine beverage emulsion.

This at a pot temperature of welll over 250F. That qualifies
this concoction as viable organic o-ring material for non combusting
applications. The native salt and name brand mustard saved the day.
Er night. Have I got da goop for that warped Weiand intake or what.
This stuff might actually close off a brand new 1204 on a twice blown
383 stroker with smogger heads. "More goo to go.." Bob Newhart

* Finally to assist in one novel culinary coup, was the thrift store
brand fo swine called 'chunk ham'... the indescribable location
from which the swine's (if indeed even a vertebrate) viscera
obtained as much a mystery as the species of naturally salty hog.
In reality I beheld a somewhat thick, cylindrical replica of hog's
head cheese. This as I said before on the premise of the gelatin
exclusive of cheater chemicals for taste or preservatives. It's
been said glycols taste sickly sweet--- musta dodged THAT bullet.

If this guy had a suit and glowing red eyes though, I could have been
convinced he was the palooka waving with the little girl in the
"Amityville Horror" from a top story window-- right before he got
offed for threatening to turn State's on a major politician.
Names witheld to protect the culpable... for now.

They'll never take me alive. I sucked it down because I forgot what
real food is like. Ah the one blessing of senility. But if you bury me
at sea, have some bench vises tied on or I'll pop back up like Roy
Scheider's chum bob.
If you are what you eat you can call me Fake, Spad.

PS GMO Pink Slime and school glue? That's a step UP.

a reply to: neoholographic

Our meat industry is heavily subsidized so the average person never really finds out that it is unsustainable. It's horrendous, unethical, and accounts for one of the larger corporate welfare recipients we have.

Since Americans can't seem to collectively wrap their heads around the concept of not eating an animal every day, lab grown meat could be an amazing compromise. The way we treat the lowest beings under our care determines our moral worth as human beings. This would have incredible karma rewards for humanity if it went global.

a reply to: Abysha

coming from someone living in the middle of beef and cotton country....beef is nowhere nearly as heavily subsidized as cotton.

I'll open the first mondo burger.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

I believe the argument is that primarily beef is subsidized through the subsidies on feed crops.

Yum! The public will finally get to acquire a taste for "growies"!

I wonder what the beef industry is thinking about all of this...

In all reality the people up in arms claiming they won't touch it will be eating it sooner or later...just like how the people who rag on McDonalds can still be found guilty of a McNugget or two here and there.

It's not like all of us grow everything we eat ourselves...