Scientists forecast meat grown on kitchen counter

CBC News

Scientists are trying to develop an industrial process that grows meat tissue from a few cells in a lab – or even at home, in a device like a bread maker.

Instead of being cut from a farm animal, the beef, pork or chicken would be grown in incubators from a few starter cells, a growth medium and some hormones to get the cells to divide.

The first attempts by scientists who grow animal muscle tissue in the lab have been small in scale. But researchers are looking forward to the day when meat could be cultivated in industrial bioreactors or even in a device sitting on a kitchen counter.

"Right now, the scale that's being used in the research is about one-half of a litre for ... the incubator the muscle is grown in," said University of Maryland researcher Jason Matheny.

He said a device similar to a bread maker could one day be used to manufacture meat in the home.

Matheny said muscle produced in an incubator could have reduced fat content, and the process would do away with problems such as bacterial contamination and mad cow disease.

While he hasn't tasted engineered meat himself, Matheny said others have.

"It has the taste and texture resembling the ground meat products that are already available," such as hamburger or chicken nuggets, he said.
"Producing a steak or ... a whole chicken breast is a much more difficult task, technically," said Matheny.

Researchers in the Netherlands have grown mouse meat and are now working on pork. Australian scientists served grown frog muscle tissue with apple brandy sauce at an exhibition in France in 2003. They said the meat tasted like jelly on cloth.

American researchers, funded by NASA, grew goldfish meat in 2001 as part of an experiment to see if fish could be grown to feed astronauts on long space missions.

While the idea of growing meat for space travel is fairly common in science fiction novels, NASA has since pulled funding for lab-grown meat.
Vladimir Mironov, a tissue engineer at the Medical University of South Carolina, said NASA's decision cut off an important source of funding for his work.

Mironov said producing cultivated meat could be difficult to achieve and expensive in the short term. People would have to pay more for cultured meat than for the genuine article.

This is awesome! If they learn how to grow buffalo hot wings im gonna shit myself!

I've known how to make my meat grow for years

i...i'm not sure why we need to do this really. there's something nice about making bread and having it nice and piping hot with dinner. i'm not sure there's anything nice with growing ground beef on the counter and serving it for dinner.

i'm not big on ground beef in the slightest, but i'd much rather eat an actual ground up cow than ground up weird ass cloned cow from my counter. eeesh.

It's so we can eat meat but not have to slaughter millions of animals for it. Plus, you can't beat the feeling of waking up to the smell of freshly baked buffalo wings.

Grown... not baked.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Why not? Think of the environmental benefits of not having herds of food animals. No more mad cow concerns. No more cruelty in slaughter houses.