COOKING TECHNIQUES

An Australian company has created a mammoth meatball: will synthetic meat be the future?

Scientists have been trying for years now to find a meat substitute that has less environmental and climate impact. Synthetic meat, also known as cultured meat, that is, meat produced in a laboratory without the need to slaughter animals, has jumped into the news lately.

And so an Australian synthetic meat company has unveiled to the world that it has succeeded in creating a meatball from the mammoth, the ancestor of the elephant that went extinct thousands of years ago. No one knows what it tastes like, since it is not yet intended for actual food consumption, but the implications could be enormous.

Although there is already a lot of resistance to this future (Italy, of course, is leading these protests), synthetic meat could really be a solution to the problem of intensive livestock farming, carbon dioxide production and climate change due to the food industry.

https://www.mammothmeatball.com
An Australian company has created a mammoth meatball: will synthetic meat be the future?
Scientists have been trying for years to find a substitute for meat that has less impact on the environment and climate. Recently, synthetic meat, also known as cultured meat, i.e. meat produced in a laboratory without the need to slaughter animals, has hit the headlines. And so an Australian synthetic meat company has revealed to the world that it has succeeded in creating a meatball from mammoth meat, the ancestor of the elephant that became extinct thousands of years ago. No one knows what it tastes like, as it is not yet intended for actual food consumption, but the implications could be enormous. Although there is already a lot of resistance to this future (Italy, of course, is leading these protests), synthetic meat could really be a solution to the problem of intensive farming, carbon dioxide production and climate change due to the food industry.
https://www.mammothmeatball.com
Mammoth meatball created
A synthetic meat (or cultured meat) company in Australia has announced on its website that it has succeeded in recreating a mammoth meatball from simply a sequence of the animal that disappeared more than 10,000 years ago.
https://www.mammothmeatball.com
The meatball was presented in Amsterdam
The event was staged at the Nemo science museum in Amsterdam, where the meatball was presented under a glass bell by the Australian company Vow. At the moment, this company is also studying the potential of 50 other animal meats, including alpacas, buffalo, crocodiles, kangaroos, peacocks and different types of fish. The first meat to come to market will be quail meat, which is expected to debut on the Japanese market as early as the end of 2023.
https://www.mammothmeatball.com
The goal of the research
Tim Noakesmith, who co-founded Vow, pointed out that the mammoth was chosen because the symbol of animals driven to extinction by the vicious hunting of humans and climate change resulting from the end of the last ice age. Moreover, these studies also aim to demonstrate the validity and usefulness of cultured meat in relation to large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife with the climate crisis. The company itself aims to "shift a few billion meat consumers from consuming animal protein to consuming things that can be produced in the lab."
https://www.mammothmeatball.com
How this new meatball was created
The process of creating this meatball was, on balance, also simple. Vow collaborated with Ernst Wolvetang of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering at the University of Queensland. A genetic sequence of a protein from the animal (myoglobin, what gives meat its flavour) was used, filling in the existing recurring gaps with DNA sequences taken from the African elephant, the closest descendant of the mammoth. After obtaining the sequence, it was inserted into the myoblast stem cells of a sheep, which reproduced to the 20 billion cells subsequently used by the company to cultivate mammoth meat.
https://www.mammothmeatball.com
This meatball is not yet edible
At present, this product is only serving as a demonstration, since it is not yet edible. In fact, it is not known how our immune system might react to this food. "We haven't seen this protein for thousands of years," explained Professor Ernst Wolvetang of Australian Institute for Bioengineering in an interview with The Guardian, "so we have no idea how our immune system would react when we eat it."
Di Tracy O - Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4387467
A door to continue the dialogue
Looking at the general repercussions, this experiment can certainly be useful to continue the debate and discussion on synthetic meat as an alternative to the intensive farming, slaughtering and C02 production that it all entails. There is already much resistance around the world, with Europe leading the way in preserving traditions. Seren Kell of the Good Food Institute Europe, however, has called for more dialogue on the issue, and is convinced that this experiment will bring further debate and thus have a positive effect on the fate of cultured meat.
Informativa ai sensi della Direttiva 2009/136/CE: questo sito utilizza solo cookie tecnici necessari alla navigazione da parte dell'utente in assenza dei quali il sito non potrebbe funzionare correttamente.