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Francois Lenoir / Reuters file
Dutch scientist Mark Post displays samples of lab-grown meat at the University of Maastricht.
The quest to grow meat in a lab rather than on an animal is due to reach its climax this fall, with the first-ever culture-dish hamburger served to a celebrity taster after a $330,000 development effort.
Mark Post, a physiologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, said the project is being funded by an anonymous investor who is interested in "life-transforming technologies" and believes lab-grown meat could revolutionize the food industry.
"It's a reputable source of money, I can tell you," Post said today in Vancouver, Canada, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Post hopes the tasting will be a media event, with experimental chef Heston Blumenthal cooking the burger. The patty will be much like a regular quarter-pounder — but with one big difference: This one will be created by growing bovine stem cells in a vat, transforming them into thousands of thin layers of beef muscle cells, mincing them into tiny pieces, then combining the bits with lab-grown animal fat to form a lump of meat the size of a golf ball.
If Post and his colleagues succeed, it would mark a technological triumph after years of working to improve upon the current, millennia-old method for making meat. Researchers in the field say the livestock industry in its current incarnation is too energy-intensive and land-intensive for a global population that's rising in numbers and affluence.
Meat production already takes up more than half of the world's estimated agricultural capacity, in one way or another. U.N. figures show that animal farming takes up 30 percent of the planet's exposed land mass. And over the next 40 years, the demand for meat products is expected to double.
If the researchers' assumptions are correct, growing meat in the lab "could reduce the energy expenditure by about 40 percent," Post said. Lab-grown meat has also won the endorsement of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, because the stem cells could be extracted without killing animals.
The money behind the meat
Post has been talking about serving up the first lab-grown burger for a long time, but it took the anonymous 250,000-euro ($330,000) contribution to turn the dream into reality. Traditional meat producers weren't interested in changing their ways, and were doubtful about success, he said. "Most people don't believe it's ever going to happen," he told reporters.
When Post started working on the project, he focused on growing stem cells from pigs to create a lab-grown sausage, but he said "my financier was not very interested in sausages."
There's still a long way to go between now and the celebrity cookout: Post said he doesn't yet know what the burger would taste like, because the samples that have been grown so far are too small. The pinkish-yellowish strips of muscle cells are only about an inch (3 centimeters) long, a half-inch (1.5 centimeter) wide, and so thin (1 millimeter) that they're semi-transparent. Post feels confident that his team can perfect the process by October, but full commercialization could take another 10 years or more.
The good news is that if there's someone out there willing to buy the second lab-grown hamburger, they can get it for "an extreme reduction in price," Post told me. He estimates that piece of meat should cost just 200,000 euros ($263,000).
Beyond meat
It's worth asking whether the quest to grow lab-grown meat is worth the effort, considering that there are already vegetarian alternatives to meat. Aren't tofurky and field roast good enough? Post and others note that such products haven't made a significant dent in the meat market, and are generally more expensive than the meat items they're meant to replace.
"If there is a vegetable-derived product that can take away the human being's craving for meat, that would be preferable," Post said.
Stanford University biochemist Patrick Brown says he's working on precisely that kind of stuff, and it could be on the market in the next year or so.
"We have a class of products that just totally rocks and cannot be distinguished from the animal-based product it replaces, even by hardcore foodies," he said. He promised that his plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy products would be tasty, nutritious — and profitable.
"I think it's going to be one of the easier things I've done," he said.
Brown joked that he couldn't talk about the details, "because if I did, I'd have to kill you." He'd say only that he "had no trouble getting investment" from a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm. To commercialize the concept, two ventures have been set up with placeholder names: Sand Hill Foods and Jasper Ridge Creamery.
The way Brown sees it, the meat industry is a "sitting duck for disruptive technology," offering a rich target for alternatives. He said the wholesale market for unprocessed meat has been estimated at $150 billion a year, which is 250 times the current market for meat alternatives.
Even though Post said the meat industry has been generally standoffish about lab alternatives, some companies are going against the grain: Nicholas Genovese, a visiting scholar at the University of Missouri at Columbia, told journalists that JBS, one of the world's biggest meat-packing companies, was interested in his parallel effort to grow meat in the lab.
More about the future of food:
- Scientists turn stem cells into pork
- Beef producers see America losing its appetite
- The skinny on milk nutrition: Cow, goat, rice or soy?
- Future of food: Drinkable bagels and beyond
More from the AAAS meeting in Vancouver:
- Scientists map the world's microbes
- Device turns gestures into song
- Researchers working to build a better leaf
- Answers ahead for physics' deepest mysteries
- Scientists revive sounds of Stonehenge and other sacred spaces
- Gas-drilling gaffes aren't unique to fracking, study says
Last updated 7 p.m. ET.
Alan Boyle is science editor for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding the Cosmic Log Google+ page to your circles. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
We have enough artifical things in our world now days...we don't need to mess with out food supply any more than they already have!!! Give it up! Where's the beef????
Scientists are spending thousands of dollars for recreating a burger, yet we almost ran out of the meds needed for kids to fight leukemia? nice.
Millions of people suffer or die because of poor nutrition. Not so nice.
Sick!! This is not meat it is Frankenfood and I'm sure the FDA will approve it without labelling it as fake and created in a lab so everyone can develope the disease of Big Pharmas choice so they can treat it with their bogus drugs!! FDA, Big Pharma, EPA, Government are holding hands in the biggeest posi/multi level marketing, secret society scam or a lifetime!!! The Fleecing of America!!! If it isn't natural then it wont go into my body!!! This is scary stuff!!!
Annie - I certainly hope you stay on your meds...
I'll agree that it isn't meat, as meat implies that it came from an animal. The FDA doesn't really need to approve this, just classify it. It's cow cells. We already eat that. This product, arguably, will cause less disease than an actual cow. Since this product is made in a lab (they'll make it in a factory once they get it right) there are no environmental factors or diseases present in the product. Therefore it will be one of the safest foods on the market. This is nowhere near big pharmaceutical territory. I have no clue which voice in your head told you that it was. The EPA also has no say in this. Cows aren't in their jurisdiction (cows can't damage the environment any more than a beaver can. The EPA can only control damage done to the environment done by humans.). Most of the rest of your comment I'm going to write off as a severe tourette's attack.
Also, you do realize that this research is going on in the Netherlands right? Although some US agencies will need to oversee the production process and the product if/when they are exported here. As it stands this research has absolutely nothing to do with the US, period.
And to think the FDA approved the ammonia-infused pink slime to be passed off as ground beef to us and our children. Do you think they eat this stuff? Nah!
This sh-it looks worse then the sh-it people already eat at all these sh-it fast food dives.
Oh wait!.................I guess know one will really noticed the sh-it that much, because it all taste like the same sh-it only difference being this sh-it will be made in some sh-it lab by a sh-it company.
I guess the whole idea of this sh-it will end up coming out your rear end, and what is that you ask?
more SH_IT!
In fact this whole idea is sh-it.
Later
Hunter/Gatherer for life you can keep your synthetics.
How the hell do we know what they're going to put into this 'meat' when it's fed to the masses? Arsenic? They can keep it.
People adapt to a great many things in this modern age, but it seems a little naive to believe anything that is created in a lab could ever be healthier or less expensive than what nature has to offer. To me the fact remains the same, we need to change our eating habits. Meat is a very small part of a healthy diet, and unfortunately our modern culture doesn't allow us to use the bounty that is all around us. Sounds gross, but they have the right idea in a lot of places. Horsemeat, possum, squirrel, rats, snakes, kangaroo, ostrich, alligator, etc. are all extremely viable forms of meat based protein. If we look at different cultures (ie.Asia) we can see how little meat (due to expense) is actually needed to make a well balanced healthy meal. True, many don't like seafood, but perhaps if more of us were cooking it more would eat it and farmed fish is incredibly efficient and sustainable. If we learn to cook more variety and less indulgently we have no need to worry about population growth.
As with pharmaceuticals, anything "engineered" will be extremely costly, as the technology will be patented. This idea sounds like an "end of days" alternative to meat, as if everyone is living underground or in isolation from the growing urban masses. As a society we should start going the way of the pioneers; move out of the city, grow vegetables and fruits, raise our own meat; goats, chickens, sheep, etc., and become more independent as family units. There are so many better alternatives to becoming a society dependant on technology, especially in the area of what we put into our bodies. Think of the terrorist implications involved in such an idea. We literally would be putting our lives at risk, not knowing what kind of sick saboteur could do to a great many people with a single act. Bring an end to the fast food giants that corrupt our childrens idea of tasty food!
The problem with high cost on so many things is usually more because of greed rather then high cost of production. People don't want to make a living anymore they want to make a killing. If they could produce energy for free they would still control it and jack the price to the customer.
I agree Mark, I was reading about how some "experts " during the 1800's predicted that machines would create cheap food, clothing and housing, that mankind would enjoy a golden age where people wouldn't need to work to survive, and devote themselves to art, science and poetry. It never came about, what they didn't consider was the greed of those who owned and controlled the machines.
just like mom used to make.
Ewwww! Gross! Disgusting!
Every time people trust chemistry more than nature there is always something wrong with it, even if we don't realize until years later the harm that it's done. I will NEVER eat that stuff.
A "McPetri Dish" hamburger won't sound appealing to me. Give me the real thing.
Gag me with a spoon. Barf me out!
Edward Rice Burroughs, author of "Tarzan" and many sci-fi romances, invented "vat grown tissue" (literally) in his novel "Synthetic Men of Mars" back in the 1930's, and the predictable Frankensteinian consequences were that the tissue went out of control and began to overflow its vats and started to engulf the entire island where it was being cultured, eventually threatening to swallow up the entire planet in amorphous protoplasm.
The Law of Unintended Consequences had better be carefully obeyed in this actualization of his dreadful vision.
If done right it could be a healthier alternative, no e-coli, hormones, or animal borne pathogens, so much depends on the safety of the procedure and the byproducts it produces. The meat industry is not as safe as people think it is, but since this is a total unknown there is a lot to be proven.
You make a valid point, but if these labs get there way who can say they won't put something worse in that fake lab Sh-it?
I would never eat the crap, I have enough illness just from the real stuff they fill with tons of sh-it let alone this man made sh-it
That's why I said if done right, I don't trust corporations either, greed and profit is too often put above doing things right.
...That whole "livestock taking up 40% of usable land" line is really REALLY untrue! Most grazing land could & would be used for nothing else...it's usually water scarce scrub brush, etc. in addition, animal fertilizer is essential for farmland enrichment.
I know it's easy to see all these supposed negatives, but it's really innaccurate actually. it's a very complicated system...and animal husbandry actually does things which would not be accomplished without it.
want a great reference?: http://chetday.com/vegmyths.htm
Warning....it will actually require a little bit of a brain and focus.
Good link. Of course, the author has no use for current mass-scale, corportate agriculture practices and in fact advocates for biodymamic ones, even as he ardently advocates for meat. Also note that even though this paper is only ten years old the author is now deceased and I wonder about his age at death. (I try to avoid overconsumption of meat. You won't get deficency diseases nearly as much if you eat three or four two-to-three ounce servings per week, far less than most Western peoples currently consume.)
This will take a very long time to become commonplace. There are too many "beef" related jobs in this country and world to see anything come of this soon. Things will have to be phased out slowly in order for one industry to make room for another; at least on any significant scale. Insect harvesting would probably be successful faster and bugs can be flavored to taste like beef. They also have plenty of protein. Grasshoppers are especially good. It would be a nice change to order a "Hopper" the next time you go to Burger King.
Last time I was in a Burger King restroom, I'm pretty sure I saw this process being tried. Something that resembled beef was growing in there.
I think that was the wrong kinda beef bro...
It might have actually been beef...two days ago.
They already have an alternative to hamburger it was discovered in japan. It has less fat and more flavor. Look it up online. I think the peta people should all try it out and let rest of us know what they think of it. It's called the @!$%#burger yep it has finally arrived it is soaked in something like soy sauce. And yes it is made from 100 percent all natural human @!$%#. None of that artificial or additive @!$%#. It's made from the proteins in poop. Japan wanted their scientist to find good use to reduced sewage they went a different direction than I would have gone.
Please tell us you made that up!!!!!!
I hear the Japanese like shiit...lol...otay I did read a few years back about they were taking the garbage and pulverizing it washing it and making a sort of protein mash as a filler to other foods similar to the "PINK SLIME" muahahahhahahahaaaa (evil laugh fading away)
Me thinks it's time to gather friends and organize to start growing our own..rent some land have a treasurer to handle the funds...and grow baby grow.
I'm sorry but Leg of Lohan kinda gags me and would make ya feel like a Dahmer
Yes who needs that when there are so many nice juicy insects to eat, yum, yum ,yum !!! Please pass the chocolate covered ants.
*Looks into crystal ball...* I can see it now! All of our food isn't grown naturally anymore, it's all grown in a lab to prevent harm to nature! All of our babies are grown in test tubes to prevent harm to women! All of our air is pumped and filtered into our lungs to keep them from harm! All of our knowledge is pumped into our brains by our government to keep us all from harm!
In the year 2525...if man is still alive..if woman can survive..they may find...
Yes! I think I had that dream! Where in the future we all had no bodies and our heads are in glass boxes and we were carried around by robots to places we wanted to see and visit !
Why is everything about Peta in these comments. I simply choose to not eat meat because I have pets and they are a part of my family. You can't love your pets if you think it's ok to kill animals period. Also, some of the comments are very much on the mark. This is a world where people can't keep their legs together and as a result, the food supply, be it plant or animal, is all ready unable to keep up with demand in many parts of the world. This is the same with available land. It may seem funny to most to make fun of people that don't think like themselves, but don't be surprised to see those vast expanses of land in the mid west disappear over the next couple of decades either. As with the real need for synthetic fuel alternatives, the same is all ready a very real necessity for alternatives to meat and grains.
I feel some of these people are of the anti-global warming camp. They'd rather put this type of research off to the side until it's too late and people suffer - as long as it doesn't bother them during their own lifetime. It's those that do these kinds of things now that will be saving everyone else's rear ends down the road - as foolish as they are made to seem by others now.
And please stop calling other people whack jobs and freaks because they don't eat what you eat. It's insulting. I know it's the typical American way to be, it's typically jerky.
My pets think it's OK to kill animals, the problem with mankind is that technology evolves but mankind is still the same savage beast it always was.
My pets not only approve of killing their fellow animals, if not watched closely they'll engage in it constantly.
Isn't it interesting how our most popular pets (cats and dogs) are carnivores?
Really? That's funny, I'm pretty sure my dog is OK with eating animals, because she likes to eat them herself. After all, dogs are natural predators.