This Brooklyn Startup Wowed The Science Community With Lab-Made 'Meat Chips'

[Buster's Uncle]

You Want Synthetic Fries with That 3D-Printed Burger?
Yahoo Tech
By Dan Tynan  12 minutes ago



Someday you may be eating a filet that was grown not on a feedlot in Iowa, but printed in a lab in Brooklyn.

It will happen sooner than you think, says András Forgacs, CEO of Modern Meadow, a New York-based startup. Forgacs presented his ideas at the 14th annual EmTech MIT, an emerging technology conference hosted by MIT Technology Review in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Forgacs’ first company, Organovo, specialized in 3D bio-printing of human body tissues for use in medical research. With Modern Meadow, he’s moved on to livestock.

“If we can grow skin, we can make leather,” Forgacs said. “If we can grow muscle, we can make meat.”

The process involves taking cell samples from a living cow, growing them in a nutrient-rich substrate over a period of weeks, and then depositing successive layers of meat and connective tissue using a 3D bio-printer to recreate the beef or the hide.

The same process can be applied to any farm-raised animal, and even to fish, Forgacs says.

As an early proof of concept, Modern Meadow created a lab-grown pork chop, which co-founder Gabor Forgacs proceeded to eat on stage at the TED-MED conference in October 2011.

At Google’s Solve for X conference last February, András Forgacs fed “Steak chips,” a potato chip-style snack made from cultured meat, to Google’s Sergey Brin, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, and entrepreneur Peter Thiel.

“So far, none of them have died,” he joked.



Infographic: What does it take to make a quarter-pound burger  (Modern Meadow)


The environmental and social benefits of printing meat instead of farming it are compelling. Livestock account for 18 percent of all greenhouse gases, consume 8 percent of the world’s potable water, and use a third of all available land. Traditional leather tanning processes also produce large amounts of toxic waste, much of which can be avoided by growing hairless hides in the lab, Forgacs says.

Modern Meadow isn’t the only company with a stake in fake steak. In August 2013, researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands served up a burger built from stem cells at a cookout in London. The cost of producing that burger? More than $300,000, not including fries or a shake.

The first products Modern Meadow sells will be lab-grown leather, a much easier sell to consumers than meat, Forgacs says. But commercial production of cultured cow hides into shoes and purses is still likely years away for the 15-person company, which still needs to refine the process, reduce the cost, and figure out how to do it at scale.

Persuading people to eat meat that was printed in a lab, not raised in a field, is a much tougher hurdle, Forgacs admits.

Just don’t call it synthetic steak. It’s made from real cow, even if it never had the chance to go “moo.”


http://news.yahoo.com/you-want-synthetic-fries-with-that-3d-printed-burger-161506352.html

[Buster's Uncle]

This Brooklyn Startup Wowed The Science Community With Lab-Made 'Meat Chips'
Business Insider
By Chelsea Harvey  September 26, 2014 10:49 AM



Leszek Leszczynski / Flickr



The cattle industry has a lot of critics, and not without reason: Cattle take up a lot of space, contribute to habitat destruction and deforestation, belch harmful methane into the atmosphere and consume massive amounts of food. But one Brooklyn-based start-up is aiming to address these issues with an innovative, if unexpected, solution: lab-grown meat.

Co-founded in 2011 by Andras Forgacz, Gabor Forgacz, Francoise Marga, and Karoly Jakab, Modern Meadow is using a technology called tissue engineering to grow leather and meat from the confines of a laboratory — no animals harmed in the making. With the help of a process called "bioprinting," which allows scientists to 3-D print tissues that are cultured from animal cells in the lab, the entrepreneurs are able to produce a humane and eco-friendly animal product.

Andras Forgacz spoke about the research this week at the MIT Technology Review, and Modern Meadow scientists presented a taste of their research earlier this year at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin with a plate of "steak chips" — potato chip-like discs of lab-grown meat, which Andras Forgacz says can be produced for less than $100 apiece.

It's not the first time such a venture has been attempted. Last year, professor Mark Poke of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, produced a lab-cultured hamburger and presented it at a public tasting in London — an achievement that won him the World Technology Award for Environment. Unfortunately, his burger won't be available at your local fast food joint any time soon — it cost more than $300,000 to make.

The research comes at a critical time for Planet Earth. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that an area of rainforest the size of New York City is lost to cattle grazing land each year, and the Food and Agriculture Organization reports that the industry pours 2.9 gigatonnes of carbon emissions into the atmosphere annually. Additionally, recent research from the United Nations projects that the world's population could top 12 billion people by 2100. If production costs become cheaper, lab-grown meat could be one way to feed an ever-growing human population without continuing to destroy the environment.

But tissue engineering has plenty of other applications, as well — most notably as a way to grow tissues and organs for use in medical research and procedures. In fact, before founding Modern Meadow, Andras Forgacz co-founded Organovo, a company that bioprints human tissues.

For now, research continues in Modern Meadow's lab. They don't have any products commercially available yet, but as environmental advocates continue to put the heat on the livestock industry, a safe and eco-friendly alternative to farm-raised animal products may be just what the doctor ordered.


http://news.yahoo.com/brooklyn-startup-wowed-science-community-144917532.html