A Quixotic Solution: The Test-Tube Burger

ReutersMark Post’s genetically engineered burger array.

Four months ago, Mark Post, a professor of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, drew broad attention when he announced that he was close to producing a hamburger without a cow at his laboratory at a cost of about $330,000.

Dr. Post is literally growing meat from a single stem cell. (The cell for the meat is from the muscle of a special breed of Belgium cow that grows especially large and strong.)

While it is a complicated process, Dr. Post, whose research specialty is tissue engineering, said the science has already been developed by the medical community and the challenge now is honing the manufacturing process. He calls his innovation “no-kill meat,” but I think it might more accurately, albeit less appetizingly, be called petri dish meat.

This afternoon I attended a conference on technological innovation, organized by the Rockefeller Foundation, where Dr. Post was a featured speaker. Because his invention has the theoretical potential to relieve some pressures on the environment, I wanted to see how viable his idea was, business-wise.

Livestock graze on 70 percent of the world’s arable land, Dr. Post said. They consume vast quantities of declining fresh-water supplies. On another front, ruminant livestock produce a whopping 28 percent of global methane, which is a less common but far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon.

In his presentation, Dr. Post said his invention had the potential to vastly reduce the amount of land, water and energy used. In fact, he could reduce energy use by 90 percent, he said.

While it was not clear how the calculation was made, a lot of problems would have to be solved first. For starters, making the lab meat currently requires a lot of electricity to stimulate the muscle cells to contract. And most electricity is currently made by burning fossil fuels.

Dr. Post says his lab is working on various ways to cut down on energy use. Reproducing cells produce their own heat, for example, and if that heat could be caught and channeled back into the manufacturing process, it would be a great savings, he said.

“The important thing is we know all the variables” of the manufacturing process so they can be made more efficient, he said in a brief interview later. Still, I don’t think I’ll be buying anything labeled laboratory hamburger in the near future.

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