Test-tube burger could save cows and the planet

Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal is famous for his scientific approach to cooking.

However, the burger he could be serving up in eight months will surpass his most outlandish efforts.

The “test-tube burger” will be the first beef patty ever created in the laboratory.

Its price tag — €250,000 — reflects how exclusive this culinary experience will be.

The burger’s true “chef” is Dutch stem cell scientist Dr Mark Post, from the University of Maastricht.

After experiments which progressed from mouse meat to pork, he is now ready to produce an artificial burger that looks, feels, and tastes like the real thing.

Sandwiched between two buns, it will be available in October.

The plan is for Blumenthal to cook it for a mystery guest, to be chosen by the research project’s anonymous funder.

The minced meat will have been grown from bovine muscle and fat stem cells cultured in Dr Post’s laboratory.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, Canada, Dr Post said: “In October we’re going to provide a proof-of-concept showing that, with in-vitro methods, out of stem cells we can make a product that looks like and feels and hopefully tastes like meat.”

Dr Post is still working with unappetising half-millimetre strips of pinky-yellow lab-grown meat. However, he is confident that over the course of this year, he will produce a burger virtually indistinguishable from one bought in shops.

The research has a serious aim: To address the problem of unsustainable livestock farming.

“These animals are very inefficient in the way they convert vegetable matter to animal protein,” he said. “Cows and pigs have an efficiency rate of about 15%, which is pretty inefficient. Chickens are more efficient and fish even more.

“Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years. Right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock.

“You can easily calculate that we need alternatives. If you don’t do anything, meat will become a luxury food and be very, very expensive.”

In time, he expects the cost of test-tube meat to be brought down to affordable levels. It may then present consumers with the same kind of choice they now have between buying battery farm or free range eggs.

Test-tube meat would greatly reduce the number of cattle taken to slaughter, with each animal theoretically capable of producing 100m burgers.

It would not even be necessary to kill them, and their living conditions could be much improved.

“I have spoken to the chairperson of the Dutch Society of Vegetarians, who said probably half their members will start to eat meat if you can guarantee that it costs much less animal lives,” said Dr Post.

Another benefit of test-tube meat is environmental. Livestock produce more greenhouse gas emissions than transport vehicles — 39% of all methane, 5% of carbon dioxide and 40% of nitrous oxide.

A third advantage of test-tube meat is that it can be customised for health, for example by boosting levels of polyunsaturated fats.

Moving on to manufacturing steaks presented much greater technical challenges, said Dr Post. Some kind of blood vessel system, or an artificial version of one, is needed to carry nutrients and oxygen to the centre of the tissue.

Dr Post refuses to reveal the identity of the private individual financing the research, who wants to remain anonymous.

However, he said he was a well-known individual who had “deep pockets”.