It was the taste test the world had long awaited… What would be the first reaction to a properly fried “hamburger grown in a lab?” As one might expect, it lacked a bit in flavor, but it doesn’t sound like they used any of the spices — not even salt and pepper — you’d use with a conventional burger, nor did they slap it on a bun with a slice of tomato, onion, lettuce, and condiments. 
It’s been years since PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) announced their competition for commercially viable lab grown meat and the deadline had past with the only progress taking place more recently. To keep the momentum apace, the deadline has now been extended on the $1 million prize until 2013.
Shmeat is a colloquial nickname for lab grown meat, but what is it exactly? What does the process look like and what prospects does it hold for the future of animal welfare, the environment, and human nutrition? The following videos from Science in Seconds and the TaoistFlyer offer quick summaries.
Known as an RC aficionado, the “TaoistFlyer” here turns his video production skills to answering the question How does it work?
Around the web and back in time:
• Meet Shmeat: Test Tube Meat (Huffington Post)
• Shmeat: It’s What’s For Dinner (Mother Jones)
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It’s been four years since PETA offered $1 million to the first company to create a commercially-viable laboratory-grown meat that didn’t involve the death of a single animal.
Until recently, this seemed a far off goal. Now, it’s predicted to be right around the corner, even by year’s end.
Unfortunately for the scientists involved, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals had set the deadline on claiming the reward as June 30, 2012.
Gabor Forgacs from Organovo lectures at TEDMED 2011 regarding tissue engineering and “printing” organs for use in clinical trials.
According to a MedGadget report on the conference, Gabor later returned to the stage to cook up a sample “printed pork” and proceeded to eat it. As to the name of such foods, he so far prefers lab meat or in vitro meat.
Mark Post, vascular biologist, University of Maastricht, Netherlands, predicts the first lab-grown hamburger will cost around $345,000 and may be less than a year away.
Petri dish to dinner plate, in-vitro meat coming soon
Source: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
