The idea may be stomach-turning, but the science for making pork in a Petri dish already exists.
Put simply, the process relies on a muscle precursor cell known as a myoblast, a sort of stem cell preprogrammed to grow into muscle. This cell is extracted from a living animal, and encouraged to multiply in a nutritional broth of glucose, amino acids, minerals and growth factors -- Churchill's "suitable medium". The cells are poured on to a "scaffold" and placed in a bioreactor, where they are stretched, possibly using electrical impulses, until they form muscle fibres.
The resulting flesh is then peeled off in a "meat-sheet" and may be ground up for sausages, patties or nuggets.
(Via Boing Boing.)
Why "stomach-turning"? This sounds much more appetizing to me than eating the corpses of brutalized animals.
1 comment:
I remember reading years ago in New Scientist that they were doing this with fish. I'm actually a bit surprised that it took them so long to move onto other meats. Although, I guess, it's just not as cheap as raising sickly animals and then slaughtering them...
Post a Comment