Chef Blumenthal to cook test-tube burger
Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal is to cook the first “test-tube burger” and will be the first beef patty to be created in a laboratory. The price tag will be £207,535 which reflects how exclusive it is. The creator will be Dutch stem cell sceientist Dr Mark Post, from the University of Maastricht. After his experiments went from mouse meat to porn, he is now ready to produce an artificial lab made burger that tastes, looks and feels just like a real one. The minced meat will been grown from bovine muscle and fat stem cells that will be cultured in Dr Post’s lab.
It will make a public appearance at an event in October, with Blumenthal cooking the burger for a mystery guest which will be chosen by the research project’s anonymous funder.
If the research is a success this could address the problem of unsustainable livestock farming and someday get rid of the need to kill animals for food at all.
Post said: “Cows and pigs have an efficiency rate of about 15%, which is pretty inefficient. Chickens are more efficient and fish even more.
“Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years. Right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock.”
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