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Artificial Meat: UK Scientists Growing 'Bacon' in Labs:
Scientists at the University of Bath have grown animal cells on blades of grass, in a step towards cultured meat.
If the process can be reproduced on an industrial scale, meat lovers might one day be tucking into a slaughter-free supply of "bacon".
The researchers say the UK can move the field forward through its expertise in medicine and engineering.
Lab-based meat products are not yet on sale, though a US company, Just, has said its chicken nuggets, grown from cells taken from the feather of chicken that is still alive, will soon be in a few restaurants.
[...]Chemical engineer Dr Marianne Ellis, of the University of Bath, sees cultured meat as "an alternative protein source to feed the world". Cultured pig cells are being grown in her laboratory, which could one day lead to bacon raised entirely off the hoof.
In the future, you would take a biopsy from a pig, isolate stem (master) cells, grow more cells, then put them into a bioreactor to massively expand them, says postgraduate student Nick Shorten of Aberystwyth University.
[...]To replicate the taste and texture of bacon will take years of research. For structure, the cells must be grown on a scaffold.
[...]At Bath, they're experimenting with something that's entirely natural - grass. They're growing rodent cells, which are cheap and easy to use, on scaffolds of grass, as a proof of principle.
"The idea was to essentially, rather than feeding a cow grass and then us eating the meat - why don't we, in quotation marks, 'feed our cells grass'," says Scott Allan, a postgraduate student in chemical engineering.
"We use it as a scaffold for them to grow on - and we then have an edible scaffold that can be incorporated into the final product."
Also weighing in are a couple of authors.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 21 2019, @10:03PM
It tastes fine cooked or raw IMO. I'd rather have some of it than lettuce.
Adding some garlic and butter would probably make it delicious to almost anyone. And then there's bacon.
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