Meat grown in a lab is 'not Frankenstein stuff'

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Could fried chicken be created in a lab? Scientists have been offered $1 million to prove it can. Picture: Herald Sun

LATER this year a small group of people will meet in Washington. They will be expecting to eat fried chicken for lunch.

But while it may look like chicken, smell like chicken and hopefully even taste like chicken, it will have never walked like one or have even taken a breath.

Five years ago scientists were offered a $1 million reward by animal welfare group PETA to prove they could make meat in a laboratory. To win the prize, the lab-grown chicken must be indistinguishable from "real" chicken flesh and it must be able to be grown in quantity.

The deadline for their creations is June 30 this year. And PETA believes there is a very real chance someone will claim the reward.

“We really do not know who will apply," said Ingrid Newkirk, president and founder of PETA, told The Guardian. "Five years ago I thought no one would.

“But I cannot tell any more. There is a real chance someone will claim the reward.

“A lot of researchers are keeping very quiet and have their cards close to their chest. Progress is being made. They are overcoming obstacles. We are very optimistic."

By 2050 the world population is expected to increase by 2.5 billion – an extra China or India. The United Nations says the world will need to nearly double food production to sustain this increase.

But dwindling farm land, growing water shortages, and climate change are expected to make growing crops much more difficult.

Artificial meat is suddenly becoming a viable option. For vegetarians and animal rights groups, that means less animal suffering.

"More than 40 billion chickens, fish, pigs and cows are killed every year for food in the US alone, in horrific ways," Ms Newkirk said.

“In vitro meat would spare animals from this suffering.”

Progress is being made – but don’t expect lab-grown meat to be on your dinner plate in 2013.

US scientist Vladimir Mironov has successfully grown muscle tissue from turkey cells – but only in small quantities. While Mark Post, head of the department of vascular physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands claims he will produce a synthetic beefburger this year.

The problem is that burger may be colourless, tasteless and lacking texture.

Meat needs blood and fat to give it colour and taste. While stem cells for blood and fat have been identified it is slow, complex and expensive work.

Until research into blood and fat cells improves, scientists may have to add fat and even lab-grown blood and colour to artificial meat.

Professor Julie Gold, a biological physicist at Chalmers technical university in Gothenburg, Sweden, told The Guardian it could be years before artificial-meat lands in our fridges.

"There is very little funding,” Ms Gold said. “What it needs is a crazy rich person."

Or maybe a million dollar incentive.

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