Scientists want to cultivate artificial meat to replace traditional meat
Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once predicted that when he wants to eat chicken breast or chicken wings in the future, there is no need to spend a lot of time on chickens. Just put the meat in appropriate containers and cultivate them. Now, someone is just in agreement with Churchill. An animal protection organization in the United States recently announced that it will invest US$1 million to award scientists who can mass-produce commercial artificial meat methods in the laboratory.
People can not help but ask, what kind of meat is "artificial meat"? How is it made? Can it really take the place of traditional meat and take our table to meet the human demand for meat? In fact, the term "artificial meat" is not new and not terrible. It was once called soy protein meat and is a soy product that mimics the shape, color, and taste of meat. But the "artificial meat" mentioned here is different from the traditional one. As the scientists in the United States and the Netherlands are studying, they are made by cell culture. They first extracted the animal's "muscle mother cell," and then placed it in the culture fluid to grow, then pour the stent into the bioreactor to develop animal muscle fibers. Thus, from a single cell, thousands of new cells are obtained by splitting until a sufficient amount of muscle tissue is produced. Then there will be a scene in which a large amount of meat grows on the film and is taken off from the film after it has been covered with one piece, stretched and then placed on another piece of meat. The layers are superimposed and inexhaustible.
Scientists say that this kind of "artificial meat" is absolutely clean and has many advantages. It can fundamentally eliminate viral infections such as mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease. It can also control nutrition and reduce the pollution caused by keeping poultry. More importantly, it may also solve the more significant challenges that humans face, such as the food shortage caused by population growth and rising food prices.
Even the United Nations has developed an interest in this technology. The world population will increase to 9 billion in the next 40 years. By then, living materials will not be able to meet the needs of all. At present, research teams around the world have begun research on artificial meat in the laboratory. At the first international tube-in-tube meat seminar held in Norway recently, experts planned to bring it to the market for the first time, and stated that after setting a series of technical standards, artificial meat may be placed on super shelves in the near future, with traditional meats. Compete for consumers.
"Artificial meat" seems to have good prospects, but people do not seem to be psychologically ready to accept and eat it. Over 60% of consumers in the United States dislike “artificial meat.†Engineer Paul Cosney, who studies artificial meat, even said that making such meat “is like putting 100,000 chickens in jars and injecting a lot of antibiotics into them†. Compared to the price of 1,800 euros per tonne of traditional chicken, the cost of artificial meat at 3,500 euros per tonne is not competitive. The experts who participated in the first tube meat seminar in Norway did not personally try the results of their research and development in the laboratory. Obviously, it is not a simple matter to make "artificial meat" on the table.