A delicious lab-burger, comprising meat grown in a test tube rather than hacked from the corpse of a once-living creature, was eaten for the first time today at a news conference in London. Genetic material was taken from a cow and “turned into strips of muscle” that were then combined into a patty, reports the BBC.
Upon tasting the burger, Austrian food researcher Ms Ruetzler said: “I was expecting the texture to be more soft… there is quite some intense taste; it’s close to meat, but it’s not that juicy. The consistency is perfect, but I miss salt and pepper.”
She added: “This is meat to me. It’s not falling apart.”
Mmmmmm! PETA pledged $1m to anyone who managed to get edible lab meat to consumers by 2012; the team missed that deadline, but found mystery support in the form of Google founder Sergey Brin.