Scientists 'grow meat in laboratory'

In what can be claimed a major breakthrough, scientists have for the first time grown a form of meat in a laboratory -- but they are yet to taste it.

A team in the Netherlands has created the "soggy pork" by using cells from a live pig to replicate growth in a Petri dish, which it believes may lead to sausages and processed products being made from laboratory meat in five years' time.

The scientists extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig and then put them in a broth of other animal products. The cells then multiplied and created muscle tissue. "You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals,"

'The Sunday Times' quoted Mark Post of Eindhoven University, who is leading the Dutch government-funded research.

The scientists have so far managed to develop a soggy form of pork and are seeking to improve its texture. "What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue.”

"We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there. This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it," Post said.

Vegetarian groups have welcomed the news, saying there was "no ethical objection". "As far as we're concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there’s no ethical objection," Peta, the animal rights group, said.

However the Vegetarian Society said: "The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust."

Meat produced in a laboratory could reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with real animals. Meat consumption is predicted to double by 2050, and methane from livestock is said to currently produce about 18 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases.

PTI