scienceillustrated.com.au | 47bioreactor, in which he and his team of four
scientists are testing their cell cultures.
Preparing for the first "performance" in
2013, the team spent three months producing
two burgers, which each consisted of
approximately 30 billion muscle cells. All
individual cells were grown in culture dishes,
which were manually filled with individual stem
cells and a nutrient fluid including vitamins,
minerals, and sugar for the cells to feed on.
The elaborate process meant that the price of
one burger was $340,000.
With the bioreactors, the process will be
utterly different, Mark Post promises. In a
culture dish, the cells can only grow in one
layer, but the large bioreactors involve an
extra dimension. The problem is that the cells
need a surface to grow on, and the scientists
intend to solve it by filling the nutrient fluid
with microparticles for the cells to grow on,
while the ship's propeller makes sure to
circulate nutrients to all the cells of the liquid.
According to plan, the scientists will move
from the small prototype of 1.5 l to bioreactors
of 25,000 l over a period of four years. One
such bioreactor would be able to supply
10,000 people with meat at a price of about
DKK 250 per 500 g. Considering the high price,
Mark Post expects expensive restaurants to
be the first to buy the new type of meat, but
within a period of eight years, the new method
will be so efficient that the stem cell burgers
will be cheaper than ordinary ones.
WHO WOULD EAT LAB MEAT?
In principle, there is no difference between the
process taking place inside a cow and the one
that Mark Post is carrying out with the cells in
the lab. Nevertheless, one of the major
challenges facing his project is the outside
world’s immediate disgust concerning lab-
grown food – the disgust factor, as he calls it.
However, the disgust factor is all about
emotions, he explains, and they can be changed.
In the Netherlands, you can buy a snack
called frikandel – a type of deep-fried sausage
consisting of a mixture of dubious meat
scraps, which often come from different
animals. When Mark Post lectures about stem
cell meat, he asks the members of the
audience who admit to be frikandel eaters if
they know what the snack is made of.
“Many of them do not know, and they do
not want to know, which is very interesting. It
proves that we are prepared to eat things we
do not know what is – provided we are familiar
with the taste and know that it is harmless. I
do not see why the same should not be true
for stem cell meat.”
Ethical foie gras: Foie gras is made
by force-feeding a duck or goose to
make its liver extra fat and tasty.
Animal lovers consider the process
unethical, but if the liver is grown
in a lab, the foie gras can be enjoyed
without moral problems.Living salami: If you use the
stem cell method, it only
requires a prick in the butt
of a pig to get the tissue
sample needed to produce
a delicious salami.Until the mid-1600s, the small island
nation of Mauritius was the home of
the clumsy, turkey-like dodo. The bird
was about 1 m tall and unable to fly, so
for seamen arriving to the island, it
was an easy prey and a meaty, tasty
meal. The population was wiped out,
but after 350 years, the dodo may now
be on its way to staging a comeback on
dinner tables.
That is the vision of the people
behind the Bistro in Vitro project, who
invent creative future menus based onmodern meat research by scientists
such as Mark Post of the Netherlands.
Dodo nuggets, in which chicken has
been replaced by dodo meat, could be
one of the new dishes. Trying to draw
up the dodo family tree, scientists
from the University of Oxford have
taken DNA samples from museum
specimens. If they manage to
sequence the prehistoric bird’s
complete genetic code, scientists will
have all the information they need to
grow dodo meat in the lab. The wild
vision also applies to other extinct
animals such as mammoths and
smilodons, which could stage a
comeback on dinner tables
throughout the world.Extinct
animals
on the menu
The team behind the
Bistro In Vitro project
has introduced their
idea of dodo nuggets.With DNA from extinct animals, chefs
might be able to cook meat courses
based on animals, which have not ex-
isted on Earth for centuries.SUBMARINE CHANNEL/NEXT NATURE NETWORK/BISTRO IN VITROSHUTTERSTOCKSTEM CELL MEAT