Plan B Forum

World's first test-tube burger: Do you want ketchup with that?

(CNN) -- It cost more than $380,000 to develop -- and doesn't come with French fries on the side.

But the world's first test-tube burger -- grown in a laboratory from a cow's stem cells -- will be served in London next week.

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The burger, made from 20,000 strips of cultured meat mixed together with lab-grown animal fat, took nine weeks to grow and cost £250,000 ($384,000) to develop. The scientist behind the project hopes that laboratory-grown meat could provide a solution to the problem of increasing global demand for meat and protein.

Mark Post, from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, spent two years researching the initiative. "There's no doubt it would be revolutionary in the way we produce staple food," he said.

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It takes eight to nine weeks to produce just one stem cell burger. "It depends how much resources are put into the production of cultured meat. It will always take this long for cells to multiply, but we could produce a million burgers in this time if enough resources were being spent on the production," he said.

According to the World Health Organization, demand for meat is going to double during the next 40 years but current production methods are not sustainable. Post said the production of synthetic meat would also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and help address animal welfare problems.

Scientists believe artificial meat could be sold in supermarkets within five to 10 years. "The emphasis is on could," Post cautioned. "Five years might be too early and 10 years sounds more realistic, if we spend a lot of resources on pushing the production of cultured meat forward."

His research into synthetic meat has been funded by the Dutch government, as well as an anonymous donation of €300,000 ($396,000). The burger will be cooked and eaten in London next week at a yet undisclosed location in front of an audience.

"The whole presentation next week will be a proof of concept," Post said. Of course we're not there yet to make it an efficient and cheap product. But I want to show that it can be done so that people see: "Yes you can eat it, yes, it tastes good.'"

It takes eight to nine weeks to produce just one stem cell burger.

The world's most expensive hamburger has been served in London today - cooked by a chef from Cornwall.

Richard McGeown, head chef at Couch's Great House Restaurant in Polperro, pan fried the €250,000 hamburger which was produced entirely from stem cells cultured in a laboratory in Holland's Maastricht University.


20,000 muscle fibres were grown from the biopsy of a cow over a three-month period by a team headed by Prof. Mark Post.

Prof Post said he was "very excited" at the tasting which he described as being five years in the making.

"It is important to show we can produce meat this way," he said. "Current meat production isn't going to supply sufficient meat for the coming years. This is an ethical and environmentally friendly way of producing meat."

Raw, the cultured beef looked classically pink, coloured with red beet juice and 'a bit of saffron'. Prof Post said "it's beef as we know it."

Cornwall chef Richard McGeown said his first impressions of the meat were "very good."

"It's slightly paler than a traditional burger, but it's well bound."

McGeown cooked the meat "like a traditional burger" with sunflower oil and butter to induce the caramelization process.

As he cooked it, McGeown said "it's holding incredibly well" and joked about the pressure of not burning the quarter of a million Euro burger. "It's got a very subtle smell and good colouration. It's like every other burger I've known."

The first taste volunteer said "I was expecting the texture to be more soft. There is quite some flavour. There is [an] intense meat taste - it's close to meat but it's not that juicy. I miss salt and pepper."

The second taste tester said "the texture has a feel like meat. The bite feels like conventional hamburger."

Prof Post said "its a good start - it was mostly to prove we could do this. I'm very happy with it."



Read more: http://www.westbriton.co.uk/Stem-cell-h ... -19614429-