Indian American entrepreneur unveils world’s first lab-grown meatball.
AB Wire
Uma Valeti, an Indian American cardiologist and entrepreneur, has unveiled the world’s lab-grown meatball.
If all goes well as planned, in three to four years’ time, Valeti’s company, Memphis Meats, based in San Francisco, will flood the market with lab grown hot dogs, sausages and burgers using some of the finest recipes by chefs in half a century, all grown in laboratories, and which may ultimately prove to be the answer to provide food for all globally.
Valeti, a cardiologist who trained at the Mayo Clinic, is associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota and president of the Twin Cities American Heart Association, unveiled the lab-grown meatball in a presentation in San Francisco, California, on February 4.
Memphis Meats, which grows meat from animal cells, is one of several firms developed ‘test tube meats’ that could one day be cheaper and more environmentally friendly to produce than traditional farming, reported the Daily Mail.
‘This is absolutely the future of meat,’ said Valeti, CEO, Memphis Meats. ‘We plan to do to the meat industry what the car did to the horse and buggy. Cultured meat will completely replace the status quo and make raising animals to eat them simply unthinkable.”
The firm has been growing real meat in small quantities using cells from cows, pigs and chickens, he revealed.
“We love meat. But like most Americans, we don’t love the many negative side effects of conventional meat production: environmental degradation, a slew of health risks, and food products that contain antibiotics, fecal matter, pathogens, and other contaminants,’ the firm says on its website.
“Our concept is simple. Instead of farming animals to obtain their meat, why not farm the meat directly? To that end, we’re combining decades of experience in both the culinary and scientific fields to farm real meat cells—without the animals—in a process that is healthier, safer, and more sustainable than conventional animal agriculture,” it said.
“We watched how the meatball reacted in the pan, we heard the sizzle, we smelled the meat and it was exactly how you would expect a meatball to smell,” Valeti said in the video that unveiled the lab grown meatball. ‘This is the first time a meatball has ever been cooked with beef cells that didn’t require a cow to be slaughtered.”
Memphis Meats aims to reinvent modern animal agriculture, which the United Nations estimates consumes on-third of the world’s grains and about a quarter of all land is used for grazing, reported The Wall Street Journal.
The firm says its cutting-edge technique produces 90 percent less greenhouse emissions, consumes less nutrients and doesn’t require antibiotics or other additives used in traditional meat production.
As of right now, it costs about $18,000 to produce one pound of Memphis Meats’ ground beef, compared to the $4 a pound in most US grocery stores, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Memphis Meats officials say they have had discussions with the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration on how their meats will be regulated.
The FDA will most likely review the cultured meat before the USDA Food Safety & Inspection Service begins their process of regulating the product and how it is made, a USDA spokesman said, reported the Daily Mail.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who provided $330,000 to fund the world’s first cultured hamburger, describes cultured meat as a technology with ‘the capability to transform how we view our world.’
“The meat industry knows their products aren’t sustainable,” Valeti told the Wall Street Journal. “We believe that in 20 years, a majority of meat sold in stores will be cultured.”
There are other startups also racing the produce test-tube meats, reported Fox News.
In 2012, Netherlands scientist Mark Post made headlines for his lab-grown hamburger that came with a whopping $330,000 price tag. Already production costs are falling and Post in 2014 told the Huffington Post he’d be able to get his beef down to costs of $11 per burger patty.
1 Comment
It’s not something we should be proud of.. its leading to destroy those mammals completely from the world.. It’s again business… These corporates can even advertise an actual shift and make money out of it…