Meat That Doesn't Come From Animals

[gustard]

Yum !

Scientists are taking small amounts of muscle tissue from an animal and growing them into meat and fish in a lab, removing the need for animals to provide meat. While the aim of researchers at Touro College in New York City is to develop food for astronauts on long missions to, say, Mars, researchers are hoping their method will go the way of Velcro and catch on with the general public. So far, they've grown chunks of meat from small amounts of live muscle tissue extracted from a goldfish. They say the simplest meat to grow is seafood, though they say the early samples aren't exactly "tasty" yet.

Dr. Morris Benjaminson, a bioengineer at Touro College who has captained several NASA projects, heads up the study. He became interested in growing meat in the lab while working with space researchers and astronauts. "I noted that their prime emphasis in terms of food production in space was plants – growing food plants," he says. "It dawned on me that it would make sense to grow muscle and feed that to people who were not interested in being strict vegetarians."

The best way to do that, thought Benjaminson, would be to mimic the conditions under which muscle grows naturally. He decided to start with fish muscle, because, he says it's the simplest muscle system to work with and it has all the characteristics of meat that people typically eat for food. Eventually, he settled on goldfish. "Goldfish are easily available, they are cheap, and they are actually carp so that makes them a food fish," Benjaminson says.

Benjaminson and his colleague, James Gilchriest, sliced off pieces of the goldfish muscle and bathed them in fetal bovine serum, an extract of unborn calves that Benjaminson calls a "magic potion" because of its abundance of nutrients. But muscle doesn't grow just because nutrients are present, Gilchreist says. Instead, adult muscle (like goldfish tissue) contains special baby cells called satellite cells that grow into muscle fiber when they detect tears or rips in the muscle. "When they sense damage and loss of fiber, they will activate," says Gilchreist. Normally, satellite cells help repair muscle that is damaged from exercise or injury. But in the lab, satellite cells released from the strips of fish muscle attached to the cut edges and grew into mature muscle tissue. Over the course of a few weeks, the fish muscle grew 16 percent.

Benjaminson and Gilchriest are quick to point out that there's still much work to be done before we can grow steak in a test tube. Since fetal bovine serum won’t be available in space, Benjaminson is experimenting with serum made from mushrooms that could be grown in the space shuttle. Researchers would like to figure out how to get nutrients to the interior of the muscle so that it can grow even bigger than the nuggets they made in the lab. They've also started working with chicken and eventually hope to grow beef as well.

[Not_Just_DNA]

Interesting concept considering the intended use, but blech. I'm not a vegetarian, in fact my dinner last night was eaten at a locally famous BBQ place appropriately coined 'The Salt Lick' but somehow I suspect vegetarians wouldn't want a 'test tube steak' anymore than a real one. Perhaps the concept of just giving potential Mars explorers some beef jerky is much too simple- no no let's spend a billion dollars growing cattle hide in a petri dish.

I do find this sentence funny 'They say the simplest meat to grow is seafood, though they say the early samples aren't exactly "tasty" yet.' Surely they jest!

[bell-the-cat]

...sliced off pieces of the goldfish muscle bathed in fetal bovine serum, an extract of unborn calves that Benjaminson calls a "magic potion"

Ahhh, so that's the secret ingredient they use in Kentucky Fried Chicken.

fetal bovine serum won't be available in space

But maybe Tesco will stock it.

[kathyv]

Regardless of what it is, I bet it's better than Mcdonald's questionable burgers!

[Not_Just_DNA]

Originally Posted by kathyv

Regardless of what it is, I bet it's better than Mcdonald's questionable burgers!

That's true! I guess if a 'resturaunt' has 'I'm lovin' it!' as their motto the important thing to do is approach with caution!

[HollyElise]

Ewwwww!



You know, i'm not exactly sure what it is about it that is so disturbing, but ew!

Visions of the old black & white, "The Body Snatchers" are now flashing through my mind.

[Celyn]

Soylent Green, anyone?


I agree, it seems a grotty idea to me too. It would not be acceptable to vegetarians, I am sure, and IF the idea would be to invent a cheap food source, well, I think the planet has enough resources to feed people, but "the warld is ill-divided ....".

It jsut looks like the space exploration people saying "look - we're not entirely a useless waste of money", whereas I tend to think they are, of course. Yes, even taking into account the Teflon and the contact lenses.