A meatball made with mammoth genetic code is on display at the Nemo science museum in Amsterdam on Tuesday.
Mike Corder/AP
hide captions
switch captions
Mike Corder/AP
A meatball made with mammoth genetic code is on display at the Nemo science museum in Amsterdam on Tuesday.
Mike Corder/AP
AMSTERDAM – Throw another mammoth at the barbie?
On Tuesday, an Australian company removed the glass cloth from lab-grown meatballs using the genetic sequencing of the long-extinct pachyderm, saying it was intended to stimulate arouse the public debate about this high-tech dish.
The premiere at a science museum in Amsterdam happened just days before April 1 so there was an elephant in the room: Is this true?
“This is not an April Fools joke,” said Tim Noakesmith, founder of Australian startup Vow. “This is a real innovation.”
farmed meat — also known as cultured or cell-based meat — is made from animal cells. Livestock doesn’t need to be killed to produce it, which advocates say is not only better for the animals but also for the environment.
Noakesmith said Vow used publicly available genetic information from the mammoth, filled in the missing pieces with genetic data from its closest relative, the African elephant, and inserted it into sheep cells. , Noakesmith said. With the right laboratory conditions, the cells will multiply until enough to roll into a meatball.
More than 100 companies around the world are working on farmed meat products, many of them startups like Vow.
Experts say that if the technology is widely adopted, it could significantly reduce the environmental impact of global meat production in the future. Currently, billions of acres of land are used for agriculture worldwide.
But don’t expect this to hit discs around the world anytime soon. So far, tiny Singapore is the only country that allows the consumption of meat made from cells. Vow hopes to sell its first product there – farmed Japanese quail meat – later this year.
This giant meatball was produced only once and has not been tasted, even by its creators, nor is it planned for commercial production. Instead, it was presented as a source of protein that got people talking about the future of meat.
“We want to get people excited about the future of food that will be different from what we had before. That there are things that are unique and better than the meats that we absolutely must eat now, and they are. I think mammoth is going to be a conversation starter and get people excited about this new future,” Noakesmith told The Associated Press.
“But the woolly mammoth is also a traditional symbol of loss. Now we know that it’s died from climate change. And so what we wanted to do was see if we could create one. something that is symbolic of a more exciting future that is not only better for us, but also better for the planet,” he added.
Seren Kell, director of science and technology at Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes plant and cell-based alternatives to animal products, said he hopes the project “will opens new conversations about the extraordinary potential of farmed meat for more sustainable food production, reducing the climate impact of our current food system, and freeing up land for farming practices less intensive farming.”
He said the mammoth project with its unique genetic resources is an exception in the new meat industry, which often focuses on traditional livestock – cattle, pigs and poultry.
“By raising beef, pork, chicken and seafood, we can have the greatest impact on reducing emissions from traditional livestock farming and meeting growing demand for meat,” he said. globally while meeting our climate goals.”
The giant meatball on display in Amsterdam – about the size of a softball and a volleyball – is for display only and has been glazed to ensure it was not damaged during the journey from Sydney.
But when it’s prepared – first slow-baked and then torch-finished on the outside – it smells delicious.
“The people there said the scent was similar to another prototype we had produced before, which was crocodile,” says Noakesmith. “So it’s exciting to think that the addition of protein from an animal that went extinct 4,000 years ago has given it a completely new and unique aroma that we haven’t smelled yet.” for a very long time.”
