Cacophony

8bitfuture:

Lab grown meat: the facts and figures.

The Guardian has an interesting interview with Dr Mark Post, head of physiology at Maastricht University, who made headlines this week announcing that he hopes celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal will cook the first lab-grown hamburger this October, for another celebrity taster.

• “Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years and right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock,” Post said.
• The first burger will be produced at a cost of  £200,000.
• The team is focusing on cow meat first because they are the least efficient animal at converting the food they eat into food for humans, with an efficiency rate of 15%.
• The technique uses only a tiny sample from cow muscle tissue, and would allow a single cow to produce up to 100,000,000 burgers, up from the current number of just 100.
• The current meat samples measure 3cm long, 1.5cm wide and 0.5mm thick. They will need 3000 pieces to make the first burger, but hope to use it as a proof of concept to drive further investment and development.

The team says the method could be applied to any type of meat;  “We could make panda meat, I’m sure we could,” Post said.