LABORATORIES using new tissue engineering technology might be able to produce meat that is healthier for consumers and cut down on pollution produced by factory farming, researchers said.

While NASA engineers have grown fish tissue in lab dishes, no one has seriously proposed a way to grow meat on commercial levels.
But a new study conducted by University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny and his colleagues describe two possible ways to do it.

Writing in the journal Tissue Engineering, Matheny said scientists could grow cells from the muscle tissue of cattle, pigs, poultry or fish in large flat sheets on thin membranes. These sheets of cells would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked to increase thickness and resemble meat.

Using another method, scientists could grow muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The resulting tissue could be used to make processed meat such as chicken nuggets or hamburgers.

"There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat," Matheny said in a statement. "For one thing, you could control the nutrients."

Meat is high in omega-6 fatty acid, which is desirable, but not in large amounts. Healthful omega-3 fatty acids, such as those found in walnuts and fish oils, could be substituted.

"Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat," Matheny said.

Raising livestock requires million of gallons of water and hundreds of acres of land. Meat grown from tissue would bypass those requirements.

The demand for meat is increasing worldwide, Matheny said. "China's meat demand is doubling every ten years," he said. "Poultry consumption in India has doubled in the last five years."

Writing in this month's Physics World, British physicist Alan Calvert calculated that the animals eaten by people produce 21 per cent of the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity. He recommends people switch to a vegetarian diet as a way to battle global warming.

"Worldwide reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our consumption of fossil fuels," he said in a statement.

The Kyoto treaty is a global agreement aimed at reducing production of so-called greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that help fuel global warming.
Source
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ha, it will be a cold day in hell before I start to battle global warming by stop eating meat!

Cultured burgers... Not going to happen!

Ew. I prefer my burgers the old fashioned way...cut straight from the side of the cow! DEEElicious!!

I can't get over how gross that is...

Gross and disturbing.... It's a wonder the human race has lasted as long as it has......

Good ol' fashion beef for me.
None of this artificial crap.



Edit: Offensive portion removed.
BurnSide

So am I the only one who wouldn't mind trying these burgers?

Ew. Ickxcore.

Most of the posts here say Yuck no way, i would never eat that! What will your grandchild say??

The good old fashioned beef you are eating now is already tainted IE steriods and more.

Food for thought what we eat now , is so full of chemicals and preservitives that I feel food now is gross, if this can be made with out those, cool I'll take a big hunk of medium rare. Ah I'll eat beef no matter what

All this beef talk makes me hungry for a fat steak.

see
my grandchildren will say "hey" "these store bought burgers are pretty good" recently, the meat I eat , we have killed and skinned and cut up the animal ourselves, we are beehind the times... but ahead in nutirents

Hmmm, petri-burger? I suppose I would be willing to try it...

It would be alot kinder and healthier for the animals.. but that just sounds REALLY nasty.

If we moved towards a diet of fully cultured meats, just to save the cows, there would be a TON of grain farmers looking for new business, most of the crops in the US go towards feeding cows pigs and chickens. believe it or not, the percentage of grain used for cattle and livestock feed in the united states is around 70%. Get rid of the livestock farms, and a whole lot of farmers could feed the rest of the world with grains.

Just a thought

I wouldn't mind trying it, As long as it is healthy, Doesn't have steroids, And tastes good.

I don't see why people are making a big fuss over it. Most people probably eat from Mcdonalds which is pretty close to artificial meat.

mmm more meat

Good thing my parents have a killer garden. At least I get something natural from Mother Earth (well everytime I visit them to restock). Man I just can't bring myself to an appetite and bite into a burger and say "Yummmmmm... oh my God straight from the lab dish! I wonder how many weeks it took them to grow this delicious substance!" I have to have meat from as close to Mother Nature as possible and that is the cow, the chicken, and the fish (pork occasionally). Yea it might have some sh*t pumped into it but at least they are doing the work by being alive, functioning, and growing. Like you said though, I might not even know the difference if I was hungary enough. I rather have nobody tell me that it was a lab burger and once I get "immuned" to it then somebody can tell me when it is too good to be disgusting! As time have proven, change is not in the best interest when it involves something that is so "different" and that is not pleasing to the mind. As of right now though, I can only see myself eating an ole fashion juicy wet grilled burger.

no clone patties for me!........maybe some clone mammoth or something

Mmmm....this just got me hungry. A burger's a burger, in my opinion.