Coming soon, the test-tube burger

The first ‘test-tube’ hamburger is only a year away, scientists claim. They believe the product, beef mince grown from stem cells, could pave the way for eating meat without animals being slaughtered. The Dutch scientists predict that over the next few decades the world’s population will increase so quickly that there will not be enough livestock to feed everyone. As a result, they say, laboratory-grown beef, chicken and lamb could become normal. The scientists are currently developing a burger which will be grown from 10,000 stem cells extracted from cattle, which are then left in the lab to multiply more than a billion times to produce muscle tissue similar to beef. The product is called ‘in vitro’ meat. Mark Post, professor of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who is behind the project, said: ‘I don’t see any way you could rely on old-fashioned livestock in the coming decades. ‘In vitro meat will be the only choice left. He told Scientific American magazine that he thought the first burger could be made within 12 months...more