Dutch researchers create “lab” pork
Scientists have created artificially engineered food in meat form for the first time.
Dutch researchers have created what was described as soggy pork and are investigating ways to improve the muscle tissue in the hope that people will one day want to eat it.
Mark Post, professor of physiology at Eindhoven University, said: “What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue. We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there.”
The scientists extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig and put them in a broth derived from the blood of animal foetuses. The cells then multiplied and created muscle tissue. The project, backed by the Dutch government and a sausage maker, follows the creation of fish fillets from goldfish muscle cells.
Although the product has not yet been tasted it is believed the artificial meat could be on sale within five years.
The advent of meat grown in a laboratory could reduce the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals and help meet the growth in meat consumption, which the United Nations predicts will double by 2050.
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