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At o momento, os cientistas podem apenas produzir pequenos pedaos de carne por vez. Quantidades maiores iriam requerer um sistema circulatrio para distribuir nutrientes e oxignio. Os primeiros resultados sugerem que o hambrguer no ter gosto to bom, mas Breewood espera que ele tenha um sabor "bom o bastante". Sofrimento animal A pesquisadora Helen Breewood, apesar de atuar no projeto para produzir carne em laboratrio, vegetariana e acredita que a produo de carne gasta muitas fontes de energia. Ela afirma que se comesse carne, iria preferir a feita em laboratrio. "Muita gente considera carne feita em laboratrio repulsiva num primeiro momento. Mas se eles soubessem o que acontece nos abatedouros para a produo de carne normal, tambm achariam repulsivo", ressalta. Numa nota, representantes do grupo Pessoas pela tica do Tratamento aos Animais (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Peta) ressaltaram os benefcios da carne de laboratrio. "(Carne de laboratrio) ir favorecer o fim de caminhes cheios de vacas, frango, abatedouros e fazendas de produo. Ir reduzir a emisso de gases de carbono, economizar gua e fazer a rede de suprimento de alimentos mais segura", destacou a nota do Peta. Mas a escritora especializada em alimentos Sybil Kappor diz que sentiria dificuldades em comer a carne de laboratrio. "Quanto mais longe voc vai do normal, de uma dieta natural, mais corre riscos de sade e outras questes", ressalta. O ltimo levantamento das Organizao para Alimentao e Agricultura das Naes Unidas sobre o futuro da produo de alimentos mostra crescimento da demanda por carne na China e Brasil - e o consumo s no cresce mais porque muitos indianos mantm a dieta amplamente vegetariana por costume cultural. Assim, h o risco de que a carne produzida em laboratrio seja uma aparente soluo, cheia de problemas.
"What was consistently different was flavour." Prof Mark Post, of Maastricht University, the scientist behind the burger, remarked: "It's a very good start." The professor said the meat was made up of tens of billions of lab-grown cells. Asked when lab-grown burgers would reach market, he said: "I think it will take a while. This is just to show we can do it." Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, has been revealed as the project's mystery backer. Prof Tara Garnett, head of the Food Policy Research Network at Oxford University, said decision-makers needed to look beyond technological solutions. "We have a situation where 1.4 billion people in the world are overweight and obese, and at the same time one billion people worldwide go to bed hungry," she said. "That's just weird and unacceptable. The solutions don't just lie with producing more food but changing the systems of supply and access and affordability, so not just more food but better food gets to the people who need it."
An independent study found that lab-grown beef uses 45% less energy than the average global representative figure for farming cattle. It also produces 96% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and requires 99% less land.
Stem cells are the body's "master cells", the templates from which specialised tissue such as nerve or skin cells develop. Most institutes working in this area are trying to grow human tissue for transplantation to replace worn-out or diseased muscle, nerve cells or cartilage. Prof Post is using similar techniques to grow muscle and fat for food.
He starts with stem cells extracted from cow muscle tissue. In the laboratory, these are cultured with nutrients and growth-promoting chemicals to help them develop and multiply. Three weeks later, there are more than a million stem cells, which are put into smaller dishes where they coalesce into small strips of muscle about a centimetre long and a few millimetres thick. These strips are collected into small pellets, which are frozen. When there are enough, they are defrosted and compacted into a patty just before being cooked. The scientists have tried to make the meat - which is initially white in colour - as authentic as possible. Helen Breewood, who is working with Prof Post, made the labgrown muscle look red by adding the naturally occurring compound myoglobin.
Start Quote
We are doing this because livestock production is not good for the environment, it is not going to meet demand for the world and it is not good for animals" End Quote Prof Mark Post Maastricht University A lot of people consider lab-grown meat repulsive. But if they consider what goes into producing normal meat in a slaughterhouse I think they would also find that repulsive
End Quote Helen Breewood Project scientist and vegetarian
"If it doesn't look like normal meat, if it doesn't taste like normal meat, it's not... going to be a viable replacement," she said. She added: "A lot of people consider lab-grown meat repulsive at first. But if they consider what goes into producing normal meat in a slaughterhouse I think they would also find that repulsive." Currently, this is a work in progress. The burger revealed on Monday was coloured red with beetroot juice. The researchers have also added breadcrumbs, caramel and saffron, which were intended to add to the taste, although Ms Ruetzler said she could not taste these. At the moment, scientists can only make small pieces of meat; larger ones would require artificial circulatory systems to distribute nutrients and oxygen. Prof Post said initial sampling suggests the burger will not taste great, but he expected it to be "good enough". In a statement, animal welfare campaigners People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said: "[Lab-grown meat] will spell the end of lorries full of cows and chickens, abattoirs and factory farming. It will reduce carbon emissions, conserve water and make the food supply safer."
The latest United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report on the future of agriculture indicates that most of the predicted growth in demand for meat from China and Brazil has already happened and many Indians are wedded to their largely vegetarian diets for cultural and culinary reasons.
In the beginning it will taste bland. I think we will need to work on the flavour
End Quote Prof Mark Post University of Maastricht
"The reason we are doing this is not to show a viable product but to show that in reality we can do this," he told BBC News. "From then on, we need to spend a whole lot of work and money to make the process efficient and then cost effective." So why use such high tech methods to produce meat when livestock production methods have done the job effectively for thousands of years?
It is because most food scientists believe that current methods of food production are unsustainable. Some estimate that food production will have to double within the next 50 years to meet the requirements of a growing population. During this period, climate change, water shortages and greater urbanisation will make it more difficult to produce food. Prof Sean Smukler from the University of British Columbia said keeping pace with demand for meat from Asia and Africa will be particularly hard as demand from these regions will shoot up as living standards rise. He thinks that lab grown meat could be a good solution. "It will help reduce land pressures," he told BBC News. "Anything that stops more wild land being converted to agricultural land is a good thing. We're already reaching a critical point in availability of arable land," he said. Lab-grown meat could eventually become more efficient than producing meat the old fashioned way, according to Prof Post. Currently, 100g of vegetable protein has to be fed to pigs or cows to produce 15g of animal protein, an efficiency of 15%. He believes that synthetic meat could be produced with an equivalent energy efficiency of 50%. So what is the synthetic burger likely to taste like? "In the beginning it will taste bland," says Prof Post. "I think we will need to work on the flavour separately by trying to figure out which components of the meat actually produce the taste and analyse what the composition of the strip is and whether we can change that." Prof Post also said that if the technology took off, it would reduce the number of animals that were factory farmed and slaughtered. But David Steele, who is president of Earthsave Canada, said that the same benefits could be achieved if people ate less meat. "While I do think that there are definite environmental and animal welfare advantages of this high-tech approach over factory farming, especially, it is pretty clear to me that plant-based alternatives... have substantial environmental and probably animal welfare advantages over synthetic meat," he said. Dr Steele, who is also a molecular biologist, said he was also concerned that unhealthily high levels of antibiotics and antifungal chemicals would be needed to stop the synthetic meat from rotting.