Test-Tube Burger Aims to Reduce Number of Cows Harvested

Lurking in a petri dish in a laboratory in the Netherlands is an unlikely contender for the future of food. The yellow-pink sliver the size of a corn plaster is the state-of-the-art in lab-grown meat, and a milestone on the path to the world's first burger made from stem cells.

Dr Mark Post, head of physiology at Maastricht University, plans to unveil a complete burger – produced at a cost of more than £200,000 – this October.

He hopes Heston Blumenthal, the chef and owner of the three Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire, will cook the offering for a celebrity taster as yet unnamed.

The project, funded by a wealthy, anonymous, individual aims to slash the number of cattle farmed for food, and in doing so reduce one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

read the full story > The Guardian

image >  Fabrice de Nola >  image is a fiction of in vitro meat packed for sale. The photo was display at Skip Life, an exhibit that aims to investigate day-to-day normality as an on-going process, influenced by scientific knowledge and technological applications.

In a horizon-scanning essay from 1932, Winston Churchill said: Fifty years hence we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium - When meat is not murder, The Guardian