Tag: lab-grown meat

Biotech, Food, Science & Technology News

Lab-grown meat also creates an unexpected benefit: Ethical zebra burgers

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“What are the odds that these animals contain the tastiest, most nutritionally rich food offerings?”

The term “cultivated meat” is industry’s preferred language for the admittedly unappetizing-sounding “lab-grown meat,” and it has the potential to actually change the world.

This lab-grown meat could reduce the various impacts of raising animals for slaughter, which is the second-largest source of global warming emissions, as well as save sentient beings from needless cruelty.

The technology behind cultivating meat involves taking stem cells from the muscle of a living animal, which are then fed a serum rich in nutrients. This causes the cells to proliferate and transform into muscle cells. That’s when lab technicians step in and encourage these multiplying cells to take shape and form fibers. The fibrous material is then placed in a vat, which provides the ideal conditions to stimulate growth. Eventually, the tissue grows to the point where it can be cooked and eaten.

Voila, you’ve got yourself a lab-grown hamburger.

Continue reading… “Lab-grown meat also creates an unexpected benefit: Ethical zebra burgers”

Farming, Food, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Lab-grown diary could soon become the food of the future

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First stop burgers, next stop cheese.

Lab-grown meat is getting a lot of attention along with plant-based meat substitutes. Technology is driving the industry toward providing alternatives to conventionally produced food products. Dairy proteins may be the next product produced in a lab, for use in fluid “milk” production and processed dairy products like yogurt and cheese, to name a few.

Continue reading… “Lab-grown diary could soon become the food of the future”

Farming, Food, Great New Product, Legal Issues

You call that meat? Not so fast, cattle ranchers say

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Sales of plant-based meat substitutes, like this burger made by Impossible Foods, increased 22 percent to $1.5 billion last year.

SAN FRANCISCO — The cattle ranchers and farm bureaus of America are not going to give up their hold on the word meat without a fight.

In recent weeks, beef and farming industry groups have persuaded legislators in more than a dozen states to introduce laws that would make it illegal to use the word meat to describe burgers and sausages that are created from plant-based ingredients or are grown in labs. Just this week, new meat-labeling bills were introduced in Arizona and Arkansas.

These meat alternatives may look and taste and even bleed like meat, but cattle ranchers want to make sure that the new competition can’t use the meat label.

Continue reading… “You call that meat? Not so fast, cattle ranchers say”

cutting edge, Farms, Food, Green Friendly

Milk without the Cow. Eggs without the Chicken

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Yeast-derived “animal products” may soon be part of an environmentally balanced diet.

In 2008, the biotech industry had fallen on tough times: capital was drying up and businesses were struggling to survive. That’s when Ryan Bethencourt saw an opportunity. A biologist with an entrepreneurial streak, he and a couple of friends started buying equipment from bankrupt companies and setting up their own small labs. By 2013, he had co-founded Counter Culture Labs, a “biohacker” space in Oakland, California. There, DIY-biology enthusiasts are now working on, among other projects, making real cheese in a way that bypasses the cow.

Bethencourt is part of a growing group of scientists, entrepreneurs, and lab tinkerers who are forging a bold new food future—one without animals. But they’re not asking everyone to give up meat and dairy. Thanks to advances in synthetic biology, they’re developing ways to produce actual animal products—meat, milk, egg whites, collagen—in the lab. And in doing so, they are shrinking the carbon footprint and slashing the land and water requirements of these goods with the goal of meeting the world’s growing protein needs more sustainably.

Continue reading… “Milk without the Cow. Eggs without the Chicken”

3D Printer, Agriculture, Food, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Novameat’s 3D-printed ‘steak’ looks gross, but could it save the planet?

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Does your mouth water at the prospect of a nice juicy steak? How about a nice juicy 3D-printed steak, made using a paste composed of vegetable-based materials like rice, peas, and seaweed? That’s what a new Spanish startup, Novameat, is working hard to bring to market.

“I developed the first 3D-printed plant-based beefsteak while I was working as a postdoc researcher in tissue engineering, and assistant professor at the UPC university in Barcelona,” founder Giuseppe Scionti told Digital Trends. “I was lucky … because this city is a great hub for both 3D printing companies and world-renowned restaurants.”

Continue reading… “Novameat’s 3D-printed ‘steak’ looks gross, but could it save the planet?”

cutting edge, Ecological Products, Green Friendly, Inventions, Science & Technology News

Can mushrooms be the platform we build the future on?

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Ecovative thinks it can use mycelia, the hair-like network of cells that grows in mushrooms, to help build everything from lab-grown meat to 3D-printed organs to biofabricated leather.

Can mushrooms be the platform we build the future on?

When the first bioreactor-grown “clean meat” shows up in restaurants–perhaps by the end of this year–it’s likely to come in the form of ground meat rather than a fully formed chicken wings or sirloin steak. While it’s possible to grow animal cells in a factory, it’s harder to grow full animal parts. One solution may come from fungi: Mycelia, the hair-like network of cells that grows in mushrooms, can create a scaffold to grow a realistic cut of meat.

Continue reading… “Can mushrooms be the platform we build the future on?”

Agriculture, Bill Gates, Food, Science & Technology News

Bill Gates and Richard Branson are investing in a mysterious new meat

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Just as Whole Foods shareholders and the Federal Trade Commission gave the green light to Amazon’s $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods, news broke that a number of high-profile investors—including billionaires Bill Gates and Richard Branson—have decided to pour their money into a very different sort of food venture: Memphis Meats, a San Francisco-based company that is developing meat from stem cells.

The start-up is part of a growing “clean meat” movement intended to produce a variety of sustainable, lab-grown meat products using animal cells, without having to actually feed or slaughter any animals in the process.

Continue reading… “Bill Gates and Richard Branson are investing in a mysterious new meat”

Agriculture, Animals, Farming, Food, Genetics, Science & Technology News

Lab grown meat prices have dropped 30,000 times in less than four years and are about 3-4 times more expensive than regular ground beef

Lab-grown meat could be on your plate within the next five years. For the past few years, the barrier to getting test-tube meat into the hands of consumers has been the cost of production. In 2013, it was around $325,000 to make this stuff in a lab, but the process has been refined, and the cost now is just $11.36.

In 2015, the cost was $44 per pound.

Continue reading… “Lab grown meat prices have dropped 30,000 times in less than four years and are about 3-4 times more expensive than regular ground beef”