LONDON
DM
A slice of history will be served Monday when the world’s first test-tube patty, made from lab-grown meat, is cooked and eaten in London.
The 142g patty cost £250,000 to produce and will be served up by its creator in front of an invited audience at a secret location in the west of the city.
Scientist-turned-chef Professor Mark Post produced the burger from 20,000 tiny strips of meat grown from cow stem cells. He believes it could herald a food revolution and expects artificial meat products appearing in supermarkets in as little as 10 years.
The demonstration was originally planned for October last year, with celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal cooking the burger for a mystery guest. The burger will be fried in a pan and tasted by two volunteers, one of whom may be the anonymous businessman who funded the research. Pictures of the test-tube burger have not yet been released.
Professor Post’s team at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands conducted experiments which progressed from mouse meat to pork and finally beef. He said: ‘What we are going to attempt is important because I hope it will show cultured beef has the answers to major problems that the world faces.
‘Our burger is made from muscle cells taken from a cow. We haven’t altered them in any way. For it to succeed it has to look, feel and hopefully taste like the real thing.’ The raw ingredients are 0.02in (0.5mm) thick strips of pinkish yellow lab-grown tissue.
Professor Post is confident he can produce a burger that is almost indistinguishable from one made from a slaughtered animal. He points out that livestock farming is becoming unsustainable, with demand for meat rocketing around the world. Unveiling the research last year at a science meeting in Vancouver, Canada, he said: ‘Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years. Right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock. ‘You can easily calculate that we need alternatives.’
A multi-step process is used to turn a dish of stem cells into a burger that can be grilled or fried. First the stem cells are cultivated in a nutrient broth, allowing them to proliferate 30-fold.