London - It may look like something you’d chuck on the barbecue without a second thought, but this round of meat costs a very beefy £250 000 (about R3.2-million) — as the world’s first test-tube burger.
After the patty was lightly fried in a little butter and sunflower oil on Monday, the two volunteers chosen to taste it in front of a live audience were hardly effusive, though.
“I was expecting the texture to be more soft,” said Austrian food researcher Hanni Rutzler, taking 27 chews before being able to swallow a mouthful. “It’s close to meat — it’s not that juicy.”
The second volunteer, food writer Josh Schonwald added: “The absence is the fat. But the bite feels like a conventional hamburger. What was conspicuously different was flavour.”
The “cultured beef” takes three months to grow in a laboratory, using cells from a living cow. Its creator, Dutch scientist Mark Post, claims it could revolutionise the food industry and help save the planet. He believes that artificial meat products could be sold in supermarkets within a decade.
After tasting his invention on Monday, he said: “I think it’s a very good start — it proved that we can do this, that we can make it. We are basically catering towards letting beef-eaters eat beef in an environmentally ethical way.”
Asked if he would feed the burger to his children, he said he was saving a piece of the cooked patty to give to them later.
His burgers are created in a four-step process. First, stem cells — which have the power to turn into any other cell — are stripped from cow muscle, which is taken during a harmless biopsy.
Next, the cells are incubated in a nutrient “broth” until they multiply many times over, creating a sticky tissue. This is then bulked up through the laboratory equivalent of exercise — it is anchored to Velcro and stretched.
Finally, 20 000 strips of the meat are minced and mixed with salt, breadcrumbs, egg powder and natural red colourants to form an edible patty.
The secret celebrity backer who bankrolled the £650 000 project was yesterday unveiled as billionaire Google founder Sergey Brin. Professor Post said: “He is as interested in solving the food problems as I am.”
Post has spent seven years trying to turn stem cells into meat, and was first successful with mouse burgers. He then tried to grow pork — producing strips with the rubbery texture of squid or scallops — before settling on beef.
His technique, he says, can be used to recreate the flesh of most animals, including rare species such as tigers or pandas, although demand may be questionable.
With billions in the bank after co-founding internet giant Google, Sergey Brin, was on Mondayrevealed as the businessman who bankrolled the burger. The 39-year-old tycoon has yet to try the synthetic beef but said the technology could be “transformative for the world”.
“We have a vision in our minds that there are pristine farms that have cows and a couple of chickens, but that’s not actually how meat gets produced today. When you see how these cows are treated, it’s certainly something I’m not comfortable with.
“There are basically three things that can happen. One is that we all become vegetarian. I don’t think that’s really likely. The second is we ignore the issues and that leads to continued environmental harm, and the third option is we do something new.” - Daily Mail