World’s first lab grown burger to be eaten today

The world’s first lab-grown burger is to be unveiled and eaten at a news conference in London today.

Scientists took cells from a cow and, at an institute in the Netherlands, turned them into strips of muscle which they combined to make a patty.

Researchers say the technology could be a sustainable way of meeting what they say is a growing demand for meat.

This all sounds interesting enough but dig a little deeper and a number of problems present themselves, for starters the project to grow just one burger cost £215,000 so at the moment the market for this burger is limited to Sheikh’s and Oligarchs.

The next problem is a double-whammy, the lab-grown burger doesn’t look like, or taste like normal meat, the meat is naturally white in colour and the one eaten today is going to be couloured with beetroot juice just to make it look right.

Also I recall watching a programme last year where Jacques Peretti visited the lab where this was happening, so it’s taken at least a year for them to make one burger.

Even one of the colleagues of the man behind this idea, Prof Mark Post, admits that if they can’t get the look or taste right it won’t be a viable replacement, and that it’s very much a work in progress.

So to summarise at the moment one lab-grown burger costs £215,000, takes at least 12 months to make, and has to be coloured and flavoured because otherwise it will look and taste bad, so as a result of all that I think I’ll stick with the conventional non lab-grown burgers.