Expensive Hamburger Priced at $320,000 Each, Ready to Serve in August
There is no written record of who served the first hamburger but Dr. Mark Post's name is going down in the annals of fast food history for serving a $320,000 hamburger. This hamburger contains the 140 gram, cultured meat patty, created from tiny bits of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory.
The lab meat is grown in the lab using the science of stem cell technology. An anonymous donor paid Dr. Post, a physiologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, and his research team, $320, 000 for the experiment; and as part of the deal, he will be the first to taste the test lab grown hamburger. The $320,000 hamburger is likely to cost less for the second taster.
Ogilvy Public Relations told the media that the tasting will be conducted in London on August 05, 2013 in front of an invited audience.
"The event will include a brief explanation of the science behind the burger before it is cooked and tasted," according to the statement as cited in NBC.
Experimental chef Heston Blumenthal will be cooking the hamburger, NBC reports. The patty will be unlike the conventional meat as it will be created by growing bovine stem cells in a vat. It will then be transformed into 20,000 thin layers of muscle cell. NBC reports that the muscle cells will be minced to convert them into tiny pieces and that will be combined with lab-grown animal fat to have a golf-ball-size meat ball. Dr. Prost told The New York Times that without any fat, "the tissue tastes reasonably good."
It will take a long while before hamburgers, containing cultured meat, will be sold on the streets but the growing worldwide demand for meat may speed-up the trial process and also provide Dr. Post and his colleagues the much needed research funding.
Dr. Gabor Forgacs, a researcher at the University of Missouri and a founder of Modern Meadow, told The New York Times, "Getting cultured meat to the supermarker is going to be difficult and controversial." Modern Meadow, a start-up, aims to create and market cultured meat.
Neil Stephens, a professor at Cardiff University in Wales, told CBC that one of the biggest stumbling blocks is funding that is needed to make cultured meat commercially viable and for its journey from the lab to the supermarket.