MAASTRICHT,
the Netherlands — As a gastronomic delicacy, the five-ounce hamburger that Mark
Post has painstakingly created here surely will not turn any heads. But Dr.
Post is hoping that it will change some minds.
The
hamburger, assembled from tiny bits of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory
and to be cooked and eaten at an event in London, perhaps in a few weeks, is
meant to show the world — including potential sources of research funds — that
so-called in vitro meat, or cultured meat, is a reality.
“Let’s make
a proof of concept, and change the discussion from ‘this is never going to
work’ to, ‘well, we actually showed that it works, but now we need to get
funding and work on it,’ “ Dr. Post said in an interview last fall in his
office at Maastricht University.
Down the
hall, in a lab with incubators filled with clear plastic containers holding a
pinkish liquid, a technician was tending to the delicate task of growing the
tens of billions of cells needed to make the burger, starting with a particular
type of cell removed from cow necks obtained at a slaughterhouse.
The idea of
creating meat in a laboratory — actual animal tissue, not a substitute made
from soybeans or other protein sources — has been around for decades. The
arguments in favor of it are many, covering both animal welfare and
environmental issues.
A 2011
study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, for example, showed
that full-scale production of cultured meat could greatly reduce water, land
and energy use, and emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases, compared
with conventional raising and slaughtering of cattle or other livestock. Those
environmental arguments will only gain strength, advocates say, as worldwide
demand for meat increases with the rise of middle-class populations in China
and elsewhere.
Dr. Post,
one of a handful of researchers in the field, has made strides in developing
cultured meat through the use of stem cells — precursor cells that can turn
into others that are specific to muscle, for example — and techniques adapted
from medical research for growing tissues and organs, a field known as tissue
engineering. (Indeed, Dr. Post, a physician, considers himself first and
foremost a tissue engineer, and about four-fifths of his time is dedicated to
studying how to build blood vessels.)
Yet growing
meat in the laboratory has proved difficult and devilishly expensive. Dr. Post,
who knows as much about the subject as anybody, has repeatedly postponed the
hamburger cook-off, which was originally expected to take place in November.
His burger
consists of about 20,000 thin strips of cultured muscle tissue. Dr. Post, who
has conducted some informal taste tests, said that even without any fat, the
tissue “tastes reasonably good.” For the London event he plans to add only salt
and pepper.
But the
meat is produced with materials — including fetal calf serum, used as a medium
in which to grow the cells — that eventually would have to be replaced by
similar materials of non-animal origin. And the burger was created at
phenomenal cost — 250,000 euros, or about $325,000, provided by a donor who so
far has remained anonymous. Large-scale manufacturing of cultured meat that
could sit side by side with conventional meat in a supermarket and compete with
it in price is at the very least a long way off.
“This is
still an early-stage technology,” said Neil Stephens, a social scientist at
Cardiff University in Wales who has long studied the development of what is
also sometimes referred to as “shmeat.” “There’s still a huge number of things
they need to learn.”
There are
also questions of safety — though Dr. Post and others say cultured meat should
be as safe as, or safer than, conventional meat, and might even be made to be
healthier — and of the consumer appeal of a product that may bear little
resemblance to a thick, juicy steak.
“This is
something very new,” Dr. Stephens said. “People need to wrestle with the idea
of whether this is meat or not.”
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
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