Millions of Hamburgers without Killing A Cow

It’s in the works at a lab at Eindhoven University in the Netherlands: meat made in a Petri dish. Mark Post is multiplying stem cells extracted from a single cow (still alive), until they make muscle cells, which are then juiced up by a separate growth process of fatty cells.

Dr. Post is hoping to satisfy the world’s rapidly growing rate of meat consumption without all the animal slaughter. Though his project is expensive dollar-wise’the burger he plans to produce by October will cost about $300,000’Dr. Post’s creation may help to alleviate the extreme costs to the environment and millions of animals slaughtered every year for human consumption (about 30% of the world’s viable land is used for raising animals).

So if Dr. Post can make burgers in the confines of a tiny Petri dish without killing an animal, the question will be: will animal rights activists and vegetarians start biting down on a new kind of “meat”? And more importantly, will millions or billions of omnivores do so?

Photo courtesy of Ron Dollete