W
WHENMARK POST
stepped awkwardly
onto a hyper-lit stage in a West Lon-
don television studio this past August,
he did so with the trepidation of a
cooking show contestant hoping his
creationwill delight the judges. If hewas
nervous, it was understandable.
A professor of vascular physiology at
MaastrichtUniversity intheNetherlands,
Post was about to introduce the world’s
mostexpensiveandhistoricallysignificant
hamburger—a patty that represented
five years of work and a $330,000 invest-
ment and which, while technically beef,
had never been a ached to a cow.
What Post and his fellow researchers
hadcreated, kni ed together from20,000
strands of lab-grownmuscleprotein, was
radical—a proof-of-concept prototype
that could revolutionize howwe eat. His
experiment aims to demonstrate that
mankind can grow meat without the
messy interimsteps of raising, slaughter-
ing and processing animals.
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
•
NOVEMBER 2013
•
ILLUSTRATION BY MONICA RAMOS
63
INDUSTRY
MEATANDGREET
THIS SUMMER SAW THE UNVEILING OF THE WORLD’S FIRST “STEM CELL BURGER,”
WITH DECIDEDLY MIXED RESULTS
BY PETER GUEST
