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How is it made ?
A muscular test is made under total anesthesia for the donor.
Then, the meat is cultivated.
Many current research projects grow in vitro meat experimentally with stem cells of myoblasts, but this type of food is not distributed, for the moment, to public intake.
How to cultivate a burger in a laboratory:
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Muscular cells are taken from an animal. They are stem cells which can develop easily. They are cultivated in a nutrient broth with chemicals products, thanks to that they can multiply and increase. After that, cells merge to create “myotubes”. These cells grow to become muscle fibers. They are stimulated with electricity to exercise muscles, boost protein and bulk up. At the end, we have more than 20,000 muscle fibers. Scientists add flavour, iron and vitamins, then, muscle fibers are minced and turned into a 142 g burger.
This steak is composed of 20,000 strips of muscle to which have been added egg powder, breadcrumbs, salt, and for the color, beet juice and saffron.
At the beginning, a little piece of muscle is taken from a cow. Next steps take place in a laboratory: researchers insulate stems cells and throw out fat cells.
They put stems cells in a nutritive environment, where they split.
A cell will give a billion cells.
Then, they combine to create many little tubes (3 mm long); they’re called “myotubes”.
After that, “myotubes” gather to constitute strips of muscle.
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Since 2008, some scientists have said that this technology was ready for commercial use. The first successfully cultivated meats, in laboratory, were “red fish”, “lamb” and “beef”.
To have an idea of the price that it costs: for the first artificial burger it costs 270,000 Euros to a Dutch laboratory in 2013.
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So to be profitable it is necessary to improve the technology used to have an edible meat and yields of cultivated cells with the use of huge incubators.
At the end of the process the price could be 21 Euros per kilo.
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