Monday, February 20, 2012

Test tube meat

BBC reports that "Dutch scientists have used stem cells to create strips of muscle tissue with the aim of producing the first lab-grown hamburger later this year."
Professor Post's group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick.

I predict that

  • The taste will be awful
  • The universal reaction will be "yuck"
  • If they do make a hamburger by the end of the year it will be small, and, as they indicate have to have blood and fat mixed in
  • If they make a go of it the price (currently £200,000/hamburger) will in fact come down as they predict
  • The price will never be competitive, because it will never be as efficient at turning grain into protein (15%) as natural means, unless they use sleight of hand accounting.

3 comments:

Texan99 said...

You can safely assume that the reaction to the taste at first will be "yuck," but as we've seen from Wonder Bread and Cheese Whiz, that won't last.

james said...

and chicken nuggets.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

It goes the other way also. Escargot was considered a delicacy, likely still is, in some locales. Cheese Doodles don't look so bad in comparison