An Australian startup has created a really giant meatball.
last tuesday Food oath introduced a large meatball constituted of the meat of an extinct woolly mammoth. The meatball was ceremonially unveiled at Nemo, a science museum within the Netherlands.
An enormous meatball constituted of meat grown using the DNA of an extinct woolly mammoth has been unveiled at Nemo, a science museum within the Netherlands https://t.co/vl4Piqnlt8 1/4 pic.twitter.com/sI9drGPcQY
— Reuters Science News (@ReutersScience) March 29, 2023
“This just isn’t an April Fool’s joke,” said Tim Noakesmith, founding father of Australian startup Vow. “It’s an actual innovation.”
The meatball consists of sheep cells into which a mammoth gene called myoglobin has been inserted, mixed with an African elephant.
said James Ryall, Vow’s chief scientific officer Reuters that the strategy of making the enormous meatball was “similar to within the movie Jurassic Park”.
The only difference is that his lab didn’t create an actual 13,200-pound animal.
Making a large statement
But don’t expect to be tossing a large meatball into your pasta plate anytime soon. It’s not for eating.
“We have not seen this protein for hundreds of years” said Ernst Wolvetang of the Australian Institute of Bioengineering on the University of Queenslandthat helped create mammoth muscle protein. “So we’ve no idea how our immune system will react after we eat them. But if we did it again, we could actually do it in a way that might make it more palatable to regulators.”
The big debut of the meatballs was more of a publicity stunt to showcase the potential of cell-grown meat without killing animals. Vow Foods also wanted to spotlight the link between animal production and climate change.
“We wanted people to be excited concerning the way forward for food, which is potentially different from what we have had before,” said Tim Noakesmith, founding father of Vow. Associated Press. “That there are things which are unique and higher than the meat we necessarily eat now, and we thought the mammoth could be a conversation starter and get people excited concerning the latest future.”
While giant Vow meatballs should not edible (not less than not yet), most cell-based or “cultured” meat is meant for human consumption as an alternative choice to conventional animal and plant-based meat.
Last 12 months, the FDA approved the meat from cultured chicken cells.
And Vow experiments with greater than 50 species, including buffalo, crocodile and kangaroo.
According to Vow, the primary lab-grown meat to be sold to the general public shall be Japanese quail Guardian.
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