Test tube hamburgers

Instead of paddock to plate, your hamburger could soon be making a journey from the test tube. Two scientists outlined their research into meat substitutes grown in the lab at the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) annual meeting on 19 February, revealing new possibilities for more sustainable meat production to feed the world’s growing population.

Mark Post, a scientist at Maastricht University, is using cow stem cells to create tissues that “resemble the skeletal muscle that makes up steak or hamburger,” according to a report on the AAAS’s Annual Meeting. According to the BBC, Post has grown pieces of muscle 20 x 10 x 1 mm that resemble calamari. He hopes to make a hamburger composed entirely of created meat by October this year, which will cost around €250,000. Costs should decrease once the technology is established. Post is hoping celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal will agree to cook the first hamburger in the European Autumn.

Stanford University biochemist Patrick Brown is creating meat from plant materials. He anticipates his technique will be used not only to create meat, but also dairy and other products and claims his products will appeal to even “the hardcore meat and cheese lovers who can’t imagine giving all this up.” Brown told the AAAS meeting that using plant materials will be a cheaper and more sustainable way to produce meat.

The consensus at the AAAS meeting was that current techniques for producing meat are inefficient and environmentally disastrous. Brown explained that only 4% of the world’s land surface is used to grow crops for human consumption, compared with 30% that is used for grazing and growing crops for livestock feed. Post told the BBC that it takes 100 g of vegetable protein to produce 15 g of animal protein - a low 15% efficiency. His synthetic meat could have an efficiency of up to 50%.

Possibilities also exist for making meat healthier when it’s produced synthetically. At the inaugural If Conference in London in November 2011, Post said that there is a possibility to change the lipid composition of synthetic meats so they include more polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Global meat consumption is a hot topic at the moment, with the WHO saying that meat consumption is set to double by 2050. One solution is for more people to become vegetarian, but Post acknowledges that’s unlikely to happen. However, with meat production as inefficient as it is, Post said, “a vegetarian in a Hummer is much less damaging for the environment than a meat eater on a bicycle.”

Post’s lab has thus far only produced small strips of tissue, thousands of which will be needed to make a single hamburger. Synthetic meat production has a long way to go, but it looks like it’s off to a strong start.