LONDON — The first laboratory-grown burger was showcased at a London, England media event this week and described by taste testers as tasting “close to meat.”
Mark Post, the scientist behind the experiment hopes to offer an alternative solution to the world’s current meat-production system.
“Right now, we are using 70 per cent of our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock. You are going to need alternatives,” the medical physiologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, told the UK’s Telegraph. “If we don’t do anything, meat will become a luxury food and will become very expensive.”
The US$332,000 project took five years to complete. The result was a red meat patty, resembling a traditional burger but created by joining 20,000 strands of laboratory-grown protein. The protein was then combined with egg powder, salt and breadcrumbs for texture and red-beet juice for colour.
