First Ever Public Tasting of Lab-Grown Cultured Beef Burger

vikingpower writes "Today, at 14:00 Western European Time (9:00 am Eastern), Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University (the Netherlands) will present a world first: he will cook and serve a burger made from Cultured Beef in front of an invited audience in London. The event will include a brief explanation of the science behind the burger. You can watch the event live, online. The project's fact sheet is to be found here (pdf)." The BBC is reporting that Sergey Brin is the mystery backer behind the project.

dupe

[Anonymous Coward]

dupe [slashdot.org]

Tasteless

[captain_dope_pants]

A programme about this was on BBC Radio 4 a couple of years back. IIRC both the scientist and the presenter tried a little bit of "burger" grown in a lab and it was tasteless. Not horrible - just.... nothing much. Also the texture wasn't quite right.

I think the scientist said that meat (muscle) derives a lot of its taste from the surrounding fat when it's cooked - and, of course, this had no fat.

The next stage on was to make it taste nice - perhaps in the past two years they've got somewhere with it.

Re:Solving Canibalism

[Curunir_wolf]

Human meat is much closer to pork.

That's why they call it "long pig".

Re:You would think. . .

[Politburo]

The amount of waste generated by livestock is astounding, not to mention the inputs needed. If inventions such as this can reduce either of those (ideally both), even by just a few percent, there is most certainly a 'point'. There are many non-vegetarians interested in more sustainable production methods.

Re:Zealouts and Luddites

[Sique]

There is a small but important difference between crossbreeding and GM. In general, crossbreeding does not affects the genes, just the allels (the actual expression of a gene). Crossbreeding shuffles allel combinations, and you then can select from the filial generation the ones most close to your breeding goal and continue. But you introduce no new genes into the living. Even crossbreeding between species does not affect genes too much, as two releated species have more than 99% of all genes in common (e.g. the chimpanzee and the human have 99,7% of all genes in common).

GM introduces genes which come from completely different strains of life. Mainly, one introduces genes from bacteria into plants or animals or vice versa. The most common technique to achieve this are gene vectors. A retro virus acts as a DNA shuttle. It gets the bits of DNA which should be introduced into the host, and then the host's cells are infected with this retro virus. It unloads its DNA freight into the genome of the host by introducing all its own viral genome and the DNA bits into the host's DNA. Then it starts to replicate using the normal DNA replication mechanism of its host, which then produces identic copies of the retro virus including the additional DNA. The normal immune answer of the host kills off the virus, but hopefully the bits of DNA it introduced into the host cell's DNA stay there and get replicated when the cell multiplies, producing the same protein(es) it did in its original organism.

One could thus compare crossbreeding roughly as editing config files and fiddling around with parameters, and GM with actually patching the binaries.

Re:Zealouts and Luddites

[Immerman]

The objection to GM is not just because "Ahh, not natural", though that is admittedly a component. There are many other good reasons to object, to list a few:
1) They introduces proteins (insecticides, herbicide resistance, etc) into our food supply that our bodies don't know how to deal with - at least one study shows that pigs fed an exclusively GMO'd diet displayed severe health problems compared to a control group fed an equivalent non-GMO'd diet.
2) Modified organism may have a significant survival advantage and become invasive organisms, with all the problems that entails
3) Generally speaking the modified species can cross-breed with their natural relatives, potentially making the original stock unavailable if we discover serious problems down the road.
4) GMOs tend to be patented, which means we're putting control of our food supply into the hands of a few powerful companies, and eliminating time-honored farming practices in the process, such as keeping part of your harvest to plant the next season.

Re:You would think. . .

[ckhorne]

I lived in London during that timeframe as well. Having eaten at McDonalds doesn't make you ineligible. Simply being in the UK for a prolonged time during the BSE outbreak will cause you to be turned down for blood donations.

The forms for blood donations don't even mention McDonalds, but they do ask if you were in the UK over certain dates. If so, you're ineligible to give blood, even if you're a vegan.

Re:You would think. . .

[taiwanjohn]

That's only because of how we raise livestock. [wikipedia.org] There are other ways [wikipedia.org] which do not have these problems.

Other benefits Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing include:

1. Reduction of parasites, pests, and disease vectors.
2. Less need for pharmaceuticals.
3. No need for fertilizer.
4. Less petroleum used in transporting feed and manure to/from the CAFO.
5. Increases soil fertility.
6. Increases topsoil coverage and depth.
7. Can reverse desertification.
8. Sequesters vast amounts of CO2. [youtube.com]