Sphere.Com
11/30/09
Scientists in the
In the meantime, the researchers may be in line for a celebratory feast: They
could be the new front-runners for a million-dollar prize offered by a major
animal rights group.
The research team, funded by a major sausage maker and the
Dutch government, used cells from a live pig to grow pork muscle tissue in a
Petri dish. After extracting cells called myoblasts from the muscle of a
live pig, the scientists then incubated the myoblasts in a nutrient solution,
which allowed the cells to multiply and create muscle.
The implications of this breakthrough in "in vitro meat," as it's
sometimes called, are potentially enormous.
Physiology professor Mark Post of
Making meat in a laboratory instead of a feed lot could also reduce climate
change by eliminating billions of tons of methane and other greenhouse gases
emitted each year by farm animals across the globe.
Of course, all these potential boons depend on whether
consumers think the man-made meat is tasty enough to eat. And even the
scientists had to admit to reporters that they don't know if their creation is
flavorsome, because laboratory regulations forbid them from tasting anything
they create.
It certainly doesn't sound very appetizing. It's hard to imagine ordering up
eggs and "wasted muscle tissue," which is how Post described his
creation.
Nonetheless, the professor believes that steps can be taken to give the
lab-grown meat a more marketable, steak-like consistency.
"We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it,
but we will get there," Post told reporters. "This product will be
good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and
tastes like meat, people will buy it." He and his colleagues predict that
within five years, sausages and other pig products made from laboratory meat
could be on the market.
At this point, the
Cindy Cunningham, an officer of the National Pork Council, called the Dutch
research "very interesting." But she noted that beyond the need to
take the technology to a commercial level capable of supplying enough product to replace traditionally grown meat, USDA and FDA
labeling issues would have to be worked out.
"The question of consumer demand would then be the driving factor,"
Cunningham said.
On that end, greater marketing savvy would help. (First order of business: come
up with a better label than "in vitro meat.")
But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is
also doing its part to create additional financial incentives for researchers.
Last year, the group announced it would pay $1 million to anyone who came up
with a way to produce large quantities of test-tube-spawned meat at competitive
prices by 2012.
"Cells are capable of multiplying so many times in culture that, in
theory, a single cell could be used to produce enough meat to feed the global
population for a year," says New Harvest, a nonprofit research
organization working to develop new meat substitutes.
The group's Web site predicts that the resulting cells will then be harvested,
seasoned, cooked and consumed as a boneless, processed meat, such as sausage,
hamburger or chicken nuggets.
Today, pig. Can foie gras be far behind?