5 ms·

Bioengineers in the Netherlands are now growing meat in a laboratory

69 points by dsil 14y ago

sodiumphosphate 14y ago
Entomophagy.
electromagnetic 14y ago
Oh yay, they've finally found a way of over processing meat, the only thing that was still hard to over process.
- mistercow 14y ago
  What do you mean by "over process"?
rabidsnail 14y ago
Deja Vu: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/221975/march-17-2009/world-of-nahlej---shmeat http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/22197...
epoxyhockey 14y ago
I am no vegetarian, but after reading about mechanically separated meat, washed with ammonia, infused with "flavor," and formed into common products like pepperoni, I would rather have my low-grade meat be lab-grown. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/04/whats-the-deal-with-tuna-scrape/ http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/04/whats-the-deal-with-tu...
- toomuchtodo 14y ago
  I'm a steak lover, and reading about mechanically separated meat makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
- pavlov 14y ago
  For the past 60 years, when people defended women's rights in smalltalk they would often start with "I'm no feminist, but..." Lately I've noticed an increased usage of the phrase "I'm no vegetarian, but...". Hopefully that's a sign that public awareness of the problems of industrial meat production may be nearing a critical mass, as eventually happened with the issues raised by Feminist movements.
- masenghi 14y ago
  I'm so glad this 'pink slime' stuff is banned in the EU.
ntkachov 14y ago
The way we treat our meat we might as well grow it in a lab. I love a good chicken as much as the next guy, but when you blast it with chemicals, drugs, and then freeze it for a few days, unfreeze it, freeze it again, and then finally shove it in my salad it doesn't taste any different than if you grew it in lab. At least we can engineer the lab grown stuff to taste good after you beat the flavor out of it.
Shenglong 14y ago
I'm excited about this, but there really needs to be societal consideration here. While I'm all for eating whatever tastes good, many of my meat-eating friends are grossed out even when they think about how regular meat is procured. I don't want to think how they'll react to test tube meat. Then again, the next generation won't know anything else.
- maxerickson 14y ago
  What's the consideration you speak of? I don't really see any reason to keep people comfortably separate from the production of their food.
RandallBrown 14y ago
I can imagine this going over well with people that want to eat meat, but don't really want to kill animals. I could see them paying twice as much for a steak produced this way. Then, as it becomes cheaper and cheaper, it will become the norm for meat. Eventually "real" meat from animals will be the the luxury item.
- swombat 14y ago
  I would pay twice as much for artificial meat that doesn't involve killing an animal, in a heartbeat. Being responsible for the deaths (often in abhorrent circumstances) of so many living creatures is simply difficult to swallow (pun ftw!). That said, there's a big if: I would pay twice as much in a heartbeat, so long as the artificial meat tasted indistinguishable or close enough to the real thing. That means texture, juiciness, taste, consistency, etc. I wouldn't pay anything for, for example, quorn. I'm a meat-eater despite disliking killing so many animals because I love the taste of meat more than I dislike the killing.
  - Confusion 14y ago
    Research and experience show that of all the people who say this (I would pay X more for animal-friendler meat), few follow through. I pay around 25% more for meat that is produced with the animals having better lives and the relative amount of such products available does not line up with the amount of people that say they would buy it.
    - smackay 14y ago
      The full statement is probably "I would pay X more for animal-friendlier meat if it was sitting next to the animal-unfriendly meat on the supermarket shelf". Not an indictment per se but it usually takes a lot of work on the producer and consumer side of the equation to effect real change in people's habits.
      - prodigal_erik 14y ago
        And if someone trustworthy has verified the animal-friendliness, because otherwise sham self-certification by factory farms is sure to predominate.
nextparadigms 14y ago
This is how "starving" will be solved in the future, with much cheaper lab-brown (replicator-grown?) food. Of course for the first 2 decades or so it will still be in "beta" mode, and I wouldn't really want to be one of the early adopters. Hopefully regulators will monitor the whole situation and force them to put labels on it that clearly separates it from normal meat.
- joedevon 14y ago
  "Hopefully regulators will monitor the whole situation" Which of course, they won't.
  - R_Symtex_II 14y ago
    Oh they do, just not in the way that's beneficial to mankind, case in point: FDA and Monsanto, The ever-present revolving door between political office and Corporate boardrooms in practice. They in turn position themselves to approve and legally hold patent seeds in order to monopolize agriculture and acquisition the competition by land seizures. You can keep your vile 'meat,' I won't consume it for the same reasons I wouldn't eat a skin graft--which is essentially what this is. (Simplified overview: isolated tissue grown in the presence of certain growth factors and culture medium.) For all of you thinking this is a 'Greener' or a 'less morally taxing' way to consume meat think again; many cultures used in bio-tech contain animal byproducts like blood to maintain and first create viable cell cultures/libraries which require extensive man-hours and expensive equipment that require constant energy use. Found in the comment section; SiriusCybernetics: As someone who has done a great deal of tissue culture in the past, I would say even if the finite number of replications problem is solved (you could just grow HeLa cells - cancer cells that divide indefinitely) a much bigger problem is cost. Most mammalian cells are grown in media using FBS, Fetal Bovine Serum, which is around U.S. $1,000/liter. Non-serum media is only about U.S. $400/liter. Feed the cells twice daily with that until you have your 3,000 pellets of cells and you will have one hell of an expensive miniature steak on your plate, $10,000+/pound before labor and processing. It can be done, but nature does it so much better. And yes, Fetal Bovine Serum is what it sounds like, serum squashed out of cattle fetuses. How that works out as better for the animal world escapes me somehow. Private livestock husbandry, by contrast, is exponentially greater at achieving both aims as it coincides and is regulated by a living and breathing ecosystem found in Nature. The same goes for animal cloning, its far beyond my mind to find reason in the practice other than to create a greater financial black hole (often tax funded) and call it 'progress.' How many will be swept by nationalist fervor when the NIH successfully fund the creation of the first batch of 'Dolly Steaks'?
ximeng 14y ago
"Vrandin, the new near meat will bring about a higher culture in the butcher fraternity" [1913] http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19130331&id=-M0zAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QPQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5145,2823878 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19130331&...
readme 14y ago
I didn't know Veridian Dynamics set up shop in The Netherlands. http://www.movieweb.com/v/VIq12vszWI4Ftx http://www.movieweb.com/v/VIq12vszWI4Ftx
GlennS 14y ago
I think that it is the wrong approach to try to make lab grown meat taste indistinguishable from real meat. Instead, they should aim to make it taste better than real meat.
dancesdrunk 14y ago
A slightly off-topic question this brings up in my mind - considering the current availability of multivitamin pills, protein + carbohydrate bars / shakes, various iron/mineral supplements, is it not possible to sustain yourself using just engineered products? Without having to buy the staple food we currently do (breads, meats, salads). From reading the article, it seems we're still a fair bit off lab grown food - but certainly for future generations it may just be the norm.
- spacemanaki 14y ago
  I am not a nutritionist, but my understanding from reading a bit about it and from the writings of Michael Pollan and others is that our understanding of the nutritional needs of humans is pretty rudimentary. There may be (or there likely are) unforeseen consequences of breaking down food into component nutrients and consuming a cocktail of pills instead of eating "food, mostly plants, not too much" as Pollan recommends. Even industrially produced meat and vegetables may contain things we don't understand and aren't currently capturing in supplements.
- Lost_BiomedE 14y ago
  Yes. I imagine all you would need vitamins, minerals and essential fats. Of course, this is sustenance not optimal nutrition. An example are coma victims fed ensure through a tube for very extended periods.
- lifeformed 14y ago
  Possibly, but eating is not just about nutrition. There's a strong cultural, social, and emotional aspect to eating.
mkl 14y ago
With how easy it seems to be to make meat carcinogenic [1][2], I'm going to wait a while on this one. (Yes, I eat meat, but limit what type and how much.) [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16526695 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16526695 [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/23/cut-red-meat-cancer-researchers http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/23/cut-red-meat-can...
Lost_BiomedE 14y ago
If lab grown meat, even if at first it is only hamburger, can be economically viable, then the boon to tissue engineering science could be very big indeed. There would be much more work done on bioreactors and biomaterials.

69 points by dsil 14y ago

sodiumphosphate 14y ago

Entomophagy.

electromagnetic 14y ago

Oh yay, they've finally found a way of over processing meat, the only thing that was still hard to over process.

mistercow 14y ago
What do you mean by "over process"?

rabidsnail 14y ago

Deja Vu: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/221975/march-17-2009/world-of-nahlej---shmeat http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/22197...

epoxyhockey 14y ago

I am no vegetarian, but after reading about mechanically separated meat, washed with ammonia, infused with "flavor," and formed into common products like pepperoni, I would rather have my low-grade meat be lab-grown. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/04/whats-the-deal-with-tuna-scrape/ http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/04/whats-the-deal-with-tu...

toomuchtodo 14y ago
I'm a steak lover, and reading about mechanically separated meat makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
pavlov 14y ago
For the past 60 years, when people defended women's rights in smalltalk they would often start with "I'm no feminist, but..." Lately I've noticed an increased usage of the phrase "I'm no vegetarian, but...". Hopefully that's a sign that public awareness of the problems of industrial meat production may be nearing a critical mass, as eventually happened with the issues raised by Feminist movements.
masenghi 14y ago
I'm so glad this 'pink slime' stuff is banned in the EU.

ntkachov 14y ago

The way we treat our meat we might as well grow it in a lab. I love a good chicken as much as the next guy, but when you blast it with chemicals, drugs, and then freeze it for a few days, unfreeze it, freeze it again, and then finally shove it in my salad it doesn't taste any different than if you grew it in lab. At least we can engineer the lab grown stuff to taste good after you beat the flavor out of it.

Shenglong 14y ago

I'm excited about this, but there really needs to be societal consideration here. While I'm all for eating whatever tastes good, many of my meat-eating friends are grossed out even when they think about how regular meat is procured. I don't want to think how they'll react to test tube meat. Then again, the next generation won't know anything else.

maxerickson 14y ago
What's the consideration you speak of? I don't really see any reason to keep people comfortably separate from the production of their food.

RandallBrown 14y ago

I can imagine this going over well with people that want to eat meat, but don't really want to kill animals. I could see them paying twice as much for a steak produced this way. Then, as it becomes cheaper and cheaper, it will become the norm for meat. Eventually "real" meat from animals will be the the luxury item.

swombat 14y ago
I would pay twice as much for artificial meat that doesn't involve killing an animal, in a heartbeat. Being responsible for the deaths (often in abhorrent circumstances) of so many living creatures is simply difficult to swallow (pun ftw!). That said, there's a big if: I would pay twice as much in a heartbeat, so long as the artificial meat tasted indistinguishable or close enough to the real thing. That means texture, juiciness, taste, consistency, etc. I wouldn't pay anything for, for example, quorn. I'm a meat-eater despite disliking killing so many animals because I love the taste of meat more than I dislike the killing.
- Confusion 14y ago
  Research and experience show that of all the people who say this (I would pay X more for animal-friendler meat), few follow through. I pay around 25% more for meat that is produced with the animals having better lives and the relative amount of such products available does not line up with the amount of people that say they would buy it.
  - smackay 14y ago
    The full statement is probably "I would pay X more for animal-friendlier meat if it was sitting next to the animal-unfriendly meat on the supermarket shelf". Not an indictment per se but it usually takes a lot of work on the producer and consumer side of the equation to effect real change in people's habits.
    - prodigal_erik 14y ago
      And if someone trustworthy has verified the animal-friendliness, because otherwise sham self-certification by factory farms is sure to predominate.

nextparadigms 14y ago

This is how "starving" will be solved in the future, with much cheaper lab-brown (replicator-grown?) food. Of course for the first 2 decades or so it will still be in "beta" mode, and I wouldn't really want to be one of the early adopters. Hopefully regulators will monitor the whole situation and force them to put labels on it that clearly separates it from normal meat.

joedevon 14y ago
"Hopefully regulators will monitor the whole situation" Which of course, they won't.
- R_Symtex_II 14y ago
  Oh they do, just not in the way that's beneficial to mankind, case in point: FDA and Monsanto, The ever-present revolving door between political office and Corporate boardrooms in practice. They in turn position themselves to approve and legally hold patent seeds in order to monopolize agriculture and acquisition the competition by land seizures. You can keep your vile 'meat,' I won't consume it for the same reasons I wouldn't eat a skin graft--which is essentially what this is. (Simplified overview: isolated tissue grown in the presence of certain growth factors and culture medium.) For all of you thinking this is a 'Greener' or a 'less morally taxing' way to consume meat think again; many cultures used in bio-tech contain animal byproducts like blood to maintain and first create viable cell cultures/libraries which require extensive man-hours and expensive equipment that require constant energy use. Found in the comment section; SiriusCybernetics: As someone who has done a great deal of tissue culture in the past, I would say even if the finite number of replications problem is solved (you could just grow HeLa cells - cancer cells that divide indefinitely) a much bigger problem is cost. Most mammalian cells are grown in media using FBS, Fetal Bovine Serum, which is around U.S. $1,000/liter. Non-serum media is only about U.S. $400/liter. Feed the cells twice daily with that until you have your 3,000 pellets of cells and you will have one hell of an expensive miniature steak on your plate, $10,000+/pound before labor and processing. It can be done, but nature does it so much better. And yes, Fetal Bovine Serum is what it sounds like, serum squashed out of cattle fetuses. How that works out as better for the animal world escapes me somehow. Private livestock husbandry, by contrast, is exponentially greater at achieving both aims as it coincides and is regulated by a living and breathing ecosystem found in Nature. The same goes for animal cloning, its far beyond my mind to find reason in the practice other than to create a greater financial black hole (often tax funded) and call it 'progress.' How many will be swept by nationalist fervor when the NIH successfully fund the creation of the first batch of 'Dolly Steaks'?

ximeng 14y ago

"Vrandin, the new near meat will bring about a higher culture in the butcher fraternity" [1913] http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19130331&id=-M0zAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QPQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5145,2823878 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19130331&...

readme 14y ago

I didn't know Veridian Dynamics set up shop in The Netherlands. http://www.movieweb.com/v/VIq12vszWI4Ftx http://www.movieweb.com/v/VIq12vszWI4Ftx

GlennS 14y ago

I think that it is the wrong approach to try to make lab grown meat taste indistinguishable from real meat. Instead, they should aim to make it taste better than real meat.

dancesdrunk 14y ago

A slightly off-topic question this brings up in my mind - considering the current availability of multivitamin pills, protein + carbohydrate bars / shakes, various iron/mineral supplements, is it not possible to sustain yourself using just engineered products? Without having to buy the staple food we currently do (breads, meats, salads). From reading the article, it seems we're still a fair bit off lab grown food - but certainly for future generations it may just be the norm.

spacemanaki 14y ago
I am not a nutritionist, but my understanding from reading a bit about it and from the writings of Michael Pollan and others is that our understanding of the nutritional needs of humans is pretty rudimentary. There may be (or there likely are) unforeseen consequences of breaking down food into component nutrients and consuming a cocktail of pills instead of eating "food, mostly plants, not too much" as Pollan recommends. Even industrially produced meat and vegetables may contain things we don't understand and aren't currently capturing in supplements.
Lost_BiomedE 14y ago
Yes. I imagine all you would need vitamins, minerals and essential fats. Of course, this is sustenance not optimal nutrition. An example are coma victims fed ensure through a tube for very extended periods.
lifeformed 14y ago
Possibly, but eating is not just about nutrition. There's a strong cultural, social, and emotional aspect to eating.

mkl 14y ago

With how easy it seems to be to make meat carcinogenic [1][2], I'm going to wait a while on this one. (Yes, I eat meat, but limit what type and how much.) [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16526695 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16526695 [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/23/cut-red-meat-cancer-researchers http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/23/cut-red-meat-can...

Lost_BiomedE 14y ago

If lab grown meat, even if at first it is only hamburger, can be economically viable, then the boon to tissue engineering science could be very big indeed. There would be much more work done on bioreactors and biomaterials.