Engineering the $325,000 Burger 353
Dr. Mark Post hopes to bring the dream of cultured meat one step closer to reality when he unveils his high tech hamburger in London. The five ounce burger is composed of 20,000 strips of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory at a cost of $325,000 (provided by an anonymous donor.) From the article: "The hamburger, assembled from tiny bits of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory and to be cooked and eaten at an event in London, perhaps in a few weeks, is meant to show the world — including potential sources of research funds — that so-called in-Vitro meat, or cultured meat, is a reality."
I hope (Score:5, Funny)
You get lots of fries for that price
(And your coke in a real glass, not a plastic cup)
Re:I hope (Score:5, Funny)
But then, it's not made out of animals. So it's clearly vegetarian food.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people don't eat meat and animal products for health reasons, others for ethical reasons. So I think this will split the vegetarians and vegans into four groups:
- health issues vegetarian
- health issues vegan
- ethical vegetarian
- ethical vegan
Re:I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there are also the people who think that any food that has even just come close to a lab is the devil. That group might have a considerable (but not complete) overlap with the ethical vegetarians/vegans.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I hope (Score:5, Funny)
My own concern is: how will I know for sure it's fake beef and not fake horse?
Re:I hope (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I hope (Score:5, Interesting)
What about real human?
Would that be either legal or ethical?
Re:I hope (Score:5, Funny)
Heck, maybe you could market it based on donor identity? Beyonce rump roast anyone?
Re:I hope (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course there are also the people who think that any food that has even just come close to a lab is the devil.
And I guarantee those people will say vat grown causes everything from cancer to autism. If we don't watch out this will become the next frankenfood scare
Re:I hope (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I hope (Score:5, Funny)
- ethical vegetarian
- ethical vegan
Things that I eat include:
- edible vegetarian
- edible vegan
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Some people don't eat meat and animal products for health reasons, others for ethical reasons. So I think this will split the vegetarians and vegans into four groups:
- health issues vegetarian
- health issues vegan
- ethical vegetarian
- ethical vegan
Theres also political. I've known many vegans and the ones I've known treat it more like a political movement than a dietary discipline. I guess you might put that under 'ethical' but I think they get so carried away on their ethics that really it becomes political.
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It's unlikely that your meat is grazed at all, let alone that it came from a wild population in an overgrazed area.
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If I recall correctly, awhile back PETA stepped into this and offered some prize for whoever could make commercially viable vat grown meat, and a bunch of PETA members flipped out. I'm not sure what exactly their reasonings were, but they didn't like it.
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Because there's plenty of people who do things like eat vegetarian just to have an identity and a common interest with other people.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot '- think that eating seafood and the occasional hamburger counts as vegetarian'
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- religious vegetarian
- religious vegan
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Ethical vegetarians will eat this but still won't eat meat from animals. They would still be vegetarians. This wouldn't be "meat" to them.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure it would. For people who adhere to vegetarianism on an ethical basis strictly founded in the idea that they do not want to contribute to the death and/or suffering of animals, there is no reason why they would have any issues with meat, taken in the absence of animals, nor any reason why they would deny the "meatness" of this material. They're issue isn't with the meat itself: it's with the way that the meat is gathered. Lab grown meat would still be meat and would likely circumvent those objections.
Of course, I recall an episode of Better of Ted where the geeks try to grow meat in the lab. When the tester eventually eats it, they ask how it tastes, and from my recollection, I believe the answer was, "like despair".
Re:I hope (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I hope (Score:4, Interesting)
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Um, wouldn't the ethical vegetarian become ethical non-vegetarians...
This interests me greatly. I have never had meat in my life, for ethical reasons. I'd eat this thing, though.
I'm curious if this would one day allow human muscle tissue to be sold. I saw this weird movie where most, if not all diseases were cured, and there was a obsession with celebrities. If they got a virus, it would be sold at a high price. And their vat grown muscle tissue was sold at a local deli.
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You are aware that BILLIONS of people live perfectly healthy lives without meat right?
If you call that living.
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Pesco-Vegetarianism is the closest thing that most anyone of european descent can actually move to without drastic detrimental health-related side effects.
Vegan is difficult, but it's not especially hard to be vegetarian without ill effects.
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Meat is a relatively expensive source of proteins and other nutrients however eating (cooked) meat does provide a very rich source of those nutrients that require less energy to metabolize which has allowed us to evolve our brain structures to become more intelligent.
We do eat comparatively more meat since the industrial revolution than the cultures before us to the point that we may be eating too much meat, that's true and the poor in some countries still don't have easy access to meat as we do here in the
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http://baconsalt.com/ [baconsalt.com]
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The ethical ones will likely still have issues.
Ever grow tissue culture cells? I didn't think so.
Your going to be feeding them regularly with a media composed of a number of things. One of those things is going to be horse/bovine serum. Lots of blood components went into it. One of the reasons that the burger is so expensive.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Informative)
FDA driving the shift to "defined-medium" culture (Score:3)
I used to work in a company that grows animal tissue cultures. You certainly CAN grow lots of tissue types without horse serum or any animal-related products. In fact, lots of lab protocols require that.
Cyberax is correct, and the main driving force behind the shift has been the FDA; they've been pushing hard for chemically-defined culture media, with elimination of serum-type materials whenever possible. Although bio-pharm materials are closely examined for both known and unknown pathogens, their concern is that animal derived substances may yet harbor pathogens too novel to be detected by conventional methods. We're used to defined media for microbes being simple and cheap, but the ones used for mammal
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But then, it's not made out of animals. So it's clearly vegetarian food.
No, it is made out of animals. From TFA:
But the meat is produced with materials — including fetal calf serum, used as a medium in which to grow the cells — that eventually would have to be replaced by similar materials of non-animal origin.
Vegetarians love fetal calf serum. It just sounds so tasty, natural and cruelty-free!
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I love vegetarians... they go great with catsup!
Reminds me of an old joke (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: How can you know why somebody is a vegan?
A: Don't worry. He'll tell you.
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And if you want to have some fun eat uncooked red kidney beans. Note: be sure to stay in the bath tub as you will be projectile vomiting out of both ends.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Funny)
You get lots of fries for that price
Yep, you get plenty of fries from a parallel research project, codenamed "raise dolphins that grow potato tumors and kill them to make fries," thanks to a generous donation from the Society for the Promotion of Cruelty to Animals.
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I think you mean real coke in a real glass.
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Yeah, I also wouldn't accept imaginary coke. Nor complex coke, because it always has an imaginary part.
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coke is always partly imaginary
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Japanese (Score:2, Insightful)
The Japanese will love this - while it's expensive. When it gets cheap, expect McDonald's to start quietly using it...
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if it tastes as good as dead animal muscles and has equivalent or better nutritional value, I'm all for it
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nutritional value is easy enough. However taste is another matter. If you have ever had ground steak, ground burger, and ground venison, you can taste the difference. muscle that has been grown invitro I expect will have it's own unique taste, Electrical stimulus exercises isn't the same as an animal running through a field.
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while your correct about mother milk, the real benefit of a mothers milk is compatible antibodies that jump start the immune system.
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This might be a very cardboard and dry burger - all meat tissues, no fat.
Japanese would prefer something of quality and not just because something is expensive. They have their Kobe beef. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef
Re:Japanese (Score:5, Interesting)
As per the wiki article, the Tajima cow is the only cow considered for this meat, what it fails to mention is that the Tajima is just an Angus, and indeed an Angus that is brought up in conditions I do not agree with. They are brought up in a very small area, not allowed to exercise so as to get that delicious marbling. After visiting these farms I feel much better about how my cows are brought up in Australia, with one cow having an average of 2 acres as opposed to 20 square feet.
Anyway, rant aside Kobe beef just isn't all that good in comparison to the other meats available in Japan as they're all the same damned breed being brought up exactly the same, Japanese tradition just dictates that it's more expensive and 'better'.
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expect McDonald's to start quietly using it
Who did you think funded the research?
a couple of problems (Score:3, Interesting)
the nanny-state mentality that is gripping government first world countries will soon forbid the growing of beef-life tissue because of its increasing the risk of arterial clogging, etc.
the second is a quality consideration, I will accept nothing less than the flavor and texture of the very finest beef cuts in vat cultured tissue. else I will continue to support the inhumane raising and slaughtering of cattle. Also, I reserve the right to throw tissue cultures on the grill over charcoal, concerns of carcinogens be damned.
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the nanny-state mentality that is gripping government first world countries will soon forbid the growing of beef-life tissue because of its increasing the risk of arterial clogging, etc.
When the state is paying the medical bills for tens or hundreds of millions of people why shouldn't it have a say in the sale and marketing of products which increase its costs?
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You already live in a nanny state. It's just that your nanny state is lobbied by and promotes the interests of those who lace their food with sugar. Which is "only" 70% of food in a rich neighbourhood, and 100% of food in a poorer one. How many choices do the people in those neighbourhoods have? None really.
See this : http://www.youtube.com/playlist?annotation_id=annotation_286965&feature=iv&list=PL39F782316B425249&src_vid=h0zD1gj0pXk [youtube.com]
(they only really start saying something in the second bit onw
So... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the wide range of positions that fall under the broad banner "vegetarian" (do you eat eggs? dairy? fish?), there is no one correct "technical qualification". Likely, vegetarians closer to the "fundamentalist vegan" side will consider this an unacceptable animal product, while vegetarians closer to the "I still sometimes have a BLT because bacon tastes so good" school will embrace the concept.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes*
* Unless you don't think so.
I don't eat meat because I find animal food farming in this country (the US) abhorrant. I don't eat well treated food animals (free range, wild hunted, etc) because I find it simpler to draw the line at "I don't eat meat".
I'm looking forward to commonly available vat-grown beef. Once the price point hits a reasonable level, I think I will partake. Other people won't feel the same way.
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I don't eat well treated food animals (free range, wild hunted, etc) because I find it simpler to draw the line at "I don't eat meat".
It's your choice, of course, and I totally understand why you would say that while in public (it does simplify the explanation), but there's no reason to deny yourself those things at home. I have a local source for pastured chickens. They're delicious.
Tastes like... (Score:2)
The price is perfectly realistic, really... (Score:4, Funny)
The price is perfectly realistic, really; in fact, it's quite well thought-out. By the time these are ready for large-scale roll-out, inflation will have caught up nicely.
It might have been cheaper.. (Score:2)
If they followed the lead of other UK burger manufacturers and they used horse meat instead.
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Obligatory (Score:5, Informative)
Linda: "Ugh! That's creepy!... Right?... Oh, I see, we're doing that."
Artificial Beef Taste Tester: "It tastes... familiar..."
Ted: "Beef?"
Taste Tester: "No..."
Linda: "Chicken? We'll take chicken."
Taste Tester: Shakes his head
Ted: "What does it taste like?"
Taste Tester: "Despair?"
Ted: "Is it possible it just needs salt?"
Taste Tester: Shakes his head very slowly
Better Off Ted, Season 1 Episode 2
Speaking as a meat eater... (Score:3)
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If you think you are top of the food chain don't tell the bacteria, or fungi, or a host of other organisms that feast on humans both live and dead.
Re:Speaking as a meat eater... (Score:5, Funny)
Were you a slave-owner in a previous life?
Re:Speaking as a meat eater... (Score:5, Funny)
Bacon ftw. (Score:5, Funny)
First they replaced my natural flavor with imitation, and I ate it anyways.
Second they replaced sugar with corn syrup, and I kept on getting fatter.
Then they replaced my natural crops with genetic modified crops, and I kept eating.
Now they are trying to replace my natural cow grown meat with vat grown meat? WTF?
When will this stop? We are very close to losing bacon in the name of progress.
Think of the bacon, this must be stopped.
Re:Bacon ftw. (Score:5, Funny)
Think of the bacon, this must be stopped.
Ten years ago we had Steve Jobs, Johnny Cash, and Bob Hope. Now we have no Jobs, no Cash and no Hope. Please God don't let Kevin Bacon die!
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Or whatever bacteria/virus decides to develop itself in those vats of meat...
Of course you'd order... (Score:2)
...a cup of Kopi Luwak with it.
What about human flesh? (Score:2)
Does eating synthetic human tissue make you a cannibal? (cue the creepy cannibalistic zombie apocalypse music in 3... 2.... 1...)
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There was a short story in Analog long ago that touched on that. A husband-wife team were famous for selling the best and most exotic cloned meat. He was the scientist, she was marketing. In a competitive industry, everyone was trying to out do each other.
In the end, he confessed to his wife that their latest blockbuster was cloned from a sample taken from her ass.
all beef patty (Score:3)
How much worse can it be than what you get at McDonald's?
great news for the environment (Score:3)
If vat grown becomes a reality. Beef production produces huge amounts of methane which is a big contributor to climate change. You don't have to be animal welfare nut to advocate for this development.
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So what exactly are you calling bullshit on?
Cattle don't produce significant methane? Is the EPA not authoratative enough for you?
http://www.epa.gov/rlep/faq.html [epa.gov]
Or that methane causes climate change? I can't really help you if you believe climate change is a hippie conspiracy, but maybe this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/evidence/methane.shtml [bbc.co.uk]
Human beings causes a huge, measureable impact on the environment in may other ways, it is not a leap of logic to believe in anthropological climate change.
Opposite Land (Score:2)
Food manufactured in a lab for factory production. This is even further down the spectrum of the absurdity of processed foods and the exact opposite of what we need. This will be far more energy intensive and economically controlled.
Stick with natural, pasture raised meat.
Not exactly meat free (Score:3)
From the article: "starting with a particular type of cell removed from cow necks obtained at a slaughterhouse."
There was also a mention that there's an ongoing need for animal products to produce the growth medium.
There's work going on to be animal independent, but for now this meat is also slightly murderous.
Did I hear... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:At $325K a burger that is not reality (Score:5, Insightful)
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I only use virtual machines
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Also the expensive things are affordable. Not for everyone, of course, but for the upper 1%.
Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are you so negative about lab grown meat? No more animal suffering, a lot less impact on the environment, what's not to like?
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I guess both of you have a point. I can summarize the issue stating the obvious: the techniques (on vitro beef, GMO, etc) are not the problem; the problem consists of the organizations controlling these techniques (Monsanto, etc). And the problem is this: monopoly.
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Obviously lab meat will have to live up to the standards of real meat. But once it's edible, I don't see any other complications.
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Plus it's kind of icky.
Re: I dont want to live on this planet anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not only do you eat McDonald's for lunch, you bring your family there?
Do you want your children to be obese and have health problems?
Do poor people simply dislike money?
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I would be concerned at the increased unemployment as farmers, abattoir workers and everyone else involved in the production of real meat are replaced by lab technicians and scientists.
On a more personal note, will the taste be the same? For medical reasons, I must follow a gluten free diet - and despite wider availability and better quality of food than in the past, they still haven't been able to come up with something exactly the same "real" bread. Why would it be any easier to replicate the taste of a f
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Actually, the suffering makes the meat taste worse [fao.org]:
Here the animal is subjected to severe anxiety and fright caused by manhandling, fighting in the pens and bad stunning techniques. All this may result in biochemical processes in the muscle in particular in rapid breakdown of muscle glycogen and the meat becoming very pale with pronounced acidity (pH values of 5.4-5.6 immediately after slaughter) and poor flavour.
Re:I dont want to live on this planet anymore (Score:5, Funny)
GMO agriculture by a fascist system (Monsanto and govt) HFCS in one form or another is in almost everything, now this (lab grown meat), i seen enough of this planet and i want off
The upside is that you're still going to be able to have burgers without having to figure out how to herd cattle in space.
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Just talk to the dolphins, they're almost ready to launch.
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Unless and until we get unpatented GMO crops, and no more lawsuits against farmers who got cross-pollination from GMO crops, I'll be against GMO crops, regardless of its other merits or non-merits. Buying GM crops means supporting an abusive industry.
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and a delicious source of free-range meat products.
No, you have that backwards. This meat is "range-free," not "free-range."
Shimata, I just realized how the food companies are going to market this.
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Common additional "ingredients" in your "normal" burger:
* puss
* feces
* lead and other hazardous materials
* human hair
* insect parts
* insect larva
* bacterial waste
* lots of other disgusting things
And you want to complain about something grown in a nice clean lab?
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My normal burger? nope. Because I know the cow that I am eating and I know the butcher that killed it and processed it.
That crap sold at restaurants? Yes. But then that stuff is not real cow meat, It doesn't even taste like cow meat.
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At some point, someone will offer you hamburgers made out of induced pluripotent stem cells generated from fibroblasts harvested from your own skin. You'll be able to eat a "youburger."
Re:The dream? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAFO [wikipedia.org]
Yup, not cultured at all.
Re:The dream? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Eventually there could be several advantages over your "real" burger actually.
1) No need to grind it up. Grow it in the proper shape/texture and cook.
2) You can cook it as rare as you like.
3) Get the exact amount of fat you want so your burger is in fact juicy.
4) High quality cuts might be mass producible.
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Consequently, #2 wouldn't apply either, unless the meat was ground in a completely sterile room and stored in vacuum-sealed containers or something.
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Taste, texture, and have the nutritional charactersitics of beef? Not without engineering them well past anything you could properly call a soybean anymore...