From NOTICE News Daily for April 3, 2023
What’s the big deal about this big meatball? A new lab-grown meatball shows the potential of cultured meat.
TRANSCRIPT
Four thousand years ago, the wooly mammoth went extinct.
But last week, scientists at a science museum in the Netherlands unveiled this: a massive meatball made from the D-N-A of the long-gone, massive creatures.
SOT: “We inserted the gene from the mammoth into these sheep cells and then over-expressed that gene really, really highly. So all that means is that we could detect the amount of traditional sheep myoglobin inside the cells and we could detect over 100 times more mammoth myoglobin in those cells themselves, so quite a significant portion of what you can see here in front of you today comes from mammoth.”
No, the goal here isn’t to bring back the wooly mammoth, Jurassic World style…
It’s to draw attention to what can be done with cultivated meat.
Cultivated meat, also called cultured or cell-based meat, is grown from animal cells – meaning livestock doesn’t need to be killed in the process.
Supporters say it’s good for animals—and the environment.
SOT: “The mammoth has traditionally been a symbol of loss. Mammoths we know now were wiped out because of climate change and we wanted to draw attention to a different future, something more exciting, something where we can eat our way out of extinction.”
Don’t expect to be eating a mammoth meatball any time soon though…
The company says it still must go through rigorous testing before it’s ready to eat.
Reporters in the room said it smelled like cooked crocodile meat.
Hard pass.
