It’s hard to believe it has been two years since scientists produced the first “test tube” burger. It was actually more of a Petri dish burger, but that’s kind of a case of splitting stem.
That burger cost $335,000 to produce. Last week, Professor Mark Post, one of the inventors of lab meat, announced they will soon have that cost down to 11 bucks.
At that price, I would buy one in a heartbeat just to be one of the first people to try it.
The reason the first one cost so much was, of course, developing the complex process required to replicate muscle tissue.
First scientists cultivated stem cells from the muscle cells of cows. Then they applied electricity to stimulate the resulting muscle strands into becoming meaty like conventional beef. To make a burger, they needed to create 20,000 such strands.
The Guinea pigs of the experiment were two London food critics, who said it tasted like beef. Not surprising, as I wrote at the time, because it is beef, just beef produced in an unconventional way.
The critics had some issues, however, with taste and mouth feel. Also not surprising because a real hamburger is not just muscle tissue, but also fat and blood.
These are mere details according to Post. If they can synthesize one type of tissue, it should not take another third of a million dollars to do others as well.
Of course, being capable of producing affordable synthetic meat does not overcome other hurdles. First, there is the “yuck” factor. Even if they got to the point where the lab meat is indistinguishable from conventionally produced meat, there would be those who oppose it on the unfounded basis that it is just gross to eat something that did not used to freely roam the land (not that most beef cattle don’t anyway).
There is also the fear factor. There are a lot of people who just don’t trust anything they don’t understand. Just look at the unfounded campaign against genetically engineered (GE) foods. These are commonly referred to as GMOs, for genetically modified organisms, but I don’t like the term because it has a connotations that there is something negative about it, which led to anti-genetic engineering crackpots coining the term “Frankenfood.”
In fact, humans have been genetically engineering food since the dawn of agriculture; our techniques have just become infinitely more efficient.
Scientists overwhelmingly believe GE foods are as safe to eat as food produced any other way.
I think sometimes opponents of GE confuse this issue with potentially legitimate concerns over how many GE foods are farmed and possible associated environmental degradation.
There will be a similar unfounded outcry over the safety of consuming lab meat even though proponents will be able to point out this type of meat production will be more environmentally friendly and address some of the ethical issues about how we treat food animals.
Regardless, both synthetic meat and GE foods are going to be an essential part of the food production mix in future as we struggle to feed an exponentially growing population.
Post believes in 20 to 30 years the alternative beef process will be commercially viable. In 2045, the UN estimates there will be two billion more people on the planet. That’s a lot of stomachs to feed.
