ABU DHABI // The scientist who led the world’s first successful effort to grow meat in a laboratory will be speaking in the capital next month.
Dr Mark Post is professor of vascular physiology at Maastricht University, in the Netherlands.
He will join a line-up of leading experts and investors, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, at the Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture.
The lab-grown meat was produced by harvesting stem cells from cows and growing muscle tissue in a laboratory dish. Dr Post joined the development team in 2008.
Funding ran out in 2010, but the project received backing from Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
In August last year, burger patties grown in a lab over nine weeks were presented for public tasting in the United Kingdom.
“We hope in two years’ time to have improved the product so much that we can start considering scaling up for production,” Dr Post said.
But it will take five to seven years before the first batch of the product, called cultured beef, start to appear on supermarket shelves in Europe.
Scaling up to commercial production will require “slightly different culturing procedures”, Dr Post said.
Before this happens, though, the team needs to tackle two main issues related to the appeal of the product.
One has to do with colour. The burger patty, served last year to food experts in London, was red-purple in colour, just like conventional meat. But the red hue was due to beetroot juice added to the meat, which is originally paler.
Improving the colour will better encourage myoglobin in the cells, a protein that, like haemoglobin, turns red in the presence of oxygen.
The problem can be solved by growing the cow cells in low-oxygen conditions in the lab, something Dr Post said his team already knew how to do.
So far, the cultured meat is also very lean, consisting of only muscle cells. So the next development involves adding some fat tissue.
“Fat is important for texture and also for taste,” said Dr Post.
The researchers have identified natural components to use in stimulating fat tissue.
“It is still something that is currently being optimised,” he said.
Dr Post said eating cultured meat could be a more environmentally friendly alternative.
Raising cattle, especially beef, has significant effects on natural resources and demand is expected to grow in proportion with rising populations and an increasing middle class in developing countries.
“Meat will inevitably become a more scarce resource than it is now,” Dr Post said.
While the cultured beef is initially likely to appeal to a niche customer concerned with environmental footprint and animal cruelty issues, eventually the product will become “a very common consumption good”, predicts Dr Post.
Initial research shows the public is receptive to the concept.
“An important aspect we considered early on was: are people going to eat this?” he said. “Some 60 to 70 per cent of people expressed interest and are willing to eat it. That was a pleasant surprise for us.”
The Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture will run from February 3 to 5 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Centre.
vtodorova@thenational.ae