Meatloaf From a Petri Dish Is Innovator’s Goal for the Masses

[Guest guest]

G. Matheny wants to take a single stem cell and make meatloaf.

In 2004, Matheny, then 29, created a nonprofit company called New

Harvest<http://www.new-harvest.org/>to turn that idea into reality.

Thanks in part to his efforts, meat made in

petri dishes may arrive at supermarkets within 5 to 10 years, Bloomberg

Businessweek reports in its May 31 edition.

“It’s a way to satisfy the growing global demand for meat in a way that’s

healthier, more energy efficient, and sustainable,” says Matheny, who has an

MBA from Duke University <http://www.duke.edu/> in Durham, North Carolina,

and is studying for a doctorate in applied economics at s Hopkins

University in Baltimore.

Matheny’s meat starts in a lab, where scientists extract stem

cells<http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/>from animal muscles. The

cells are placed in a nutrient bath to develop and

then onto plastic scaffolding that enables them to form into strips as they

multiply. Mark Post, a professor of tissue engineering at Eindhoven

University of Technology <http://www.tue.nl/> in the Netherlands, may be

close to realizing New Harvest’s vision. Post’s lab is producing

2-millimeter-thick strips that are almost an inch long and a quarter-inch

wide. Jam enough of them together, and you have a meal.

Matheny’s interest in changing the world’s dietary habits began at age 13,

when the Kentucky native first visited what he describes as a “factory farm”

in his home state. The experience unsettled the young boy, he says now.

*Their Own Waste *

“Tens of thousands of animals are raised shoulder-to- shoulder, living in

their own waste, pumped full of drugs, in a shed,” Matheny said in a

telephone interview. “That, to me, is less appealing than making meat in a

sterile facility. This process is like (growing) hydroponic vegetables, in a

way.”

Matheny insists that test tube meat could do more for the environment than

“everyone trading their cars for bicycles,” and he may have a point,

according to a 2006 United Nations

report<http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM>titled

“Livestock’s Long Shadow.” The meat industry generates about 18

percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, the report found, and the authors

suggested the proportion will grow as consumers in developing countries, led

by China and India, consume more meat.

When Matheny, a public health expert, was working in India on an AIDS

project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he was surprised to

see American-style factory farms in a country where cows are revered by

adherents of the Hindu religion, practiced by 81 percent of the

population<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.h\

tml>.

They were there, he realized, because of the need to supply a population of

1.1 billion people with food. After reading through some statistics on

farming, he began to be concerned by the rising demand for meat, and its

attendant strain on resources.

$5,000 Investment

He then spent $5,000 of his own money to get New Harvest off the ground. The

nonprofit has no paid employees and draws contributions of less than $50,000

a year, he says. Matheny’s outfit has helped fund research at Oxford

University <http://www.ox.ac.uk/> in the U.K. and Utrecht

University<http://www.uu.nl/uupublish/homeuu/homeenglish/1757main.html>in

the Netherlands, he said.

The company’s main mission is serving as a “clearinghouse for information

and research findings,” its founder said.

To that point, he has worked hard to draw people onto the nonprofit’s

board<http://www.new-harvest.org/aboutus_board.htm>“with expertise,

people who have strong backgrounds in public health or

biology.”

This includes son, a professor of Applied Bio-Science, at

Touro College’s School of Health Sciences at Touro College in Bay Shore, New

York. son has worked with National Aeronautics and Space

Administration to develop “edible muscle protein” -- in this case, fish

--that can be grown on long space flights.

*Cow in Space*

“You can’t bring a cow into space,” Matheny said.

Also on the board is Kosnick, vice president of research and

development at closely held Tissue Genesis of Honolulu and a visiting

scientist in the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of

Human Sciences and Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Vladimir

Mironov, a scientist at the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Medical

University of South Carolina in ton who is working to develop in

vitro chicken.

It was an academic paper on the feasibility of cultured meat co-written by

Matheny and published in 2005 that persuaded the Dutch government to fund

Post’s research at Eindhoven. In response to the environmental threats, the

Netherlands is funding a national effort to develop so-called cultured meat

from laboratories.

Cultured meat uses 35 to 60 percent less energy, emits 80 to 95 percent less

greenhouse gas, and uses 98 percent less land, according to a lifecycle

assessment performed by Hanna

Tuomisto<http://oxford.academia.edu/HannaTuomisto>,

of the University of Oxford, and M. Joost Teizeira de Mattos, of the

University of Amsterdam.

The research under way by Post is among the most advanced in the field.

Still, the scientist acknowledges that there are challenges to be surmounted

before his in vitro pork can move onto dinner plates. One problem is flavor.

Post admits he hasn’t tasted his own handiwork but has been told by those

who have that it doesn’t taste like the real thing.

Pig farmers everywhere can breathe easy -- at least for now.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124 & sid=aI9nZXjYAzeE

--

Ortiz, MS, RD

" I plan on living forever - so far so good "

" Cause of obesity, heart disease and cancer: Look at the end of your fork "