The CEO of a company called Modern Meadow revealed the details of his company's plan to 3-D bioprint leather and ultimately meat, starting with punch biopsies of donor animals
“Mark is growing muscle fibers one by one, putting them all together and grinding them up,” Forgacs says. “We’re looking to do things in a much more efficient, high-throughput way. We need to perfect this technology at a reasonable cost and bring prices down by orders of magnitude to make this a widely consumed product.”
This article is reproduced with permission from Txchnologist. The article was first published on September 18, 2012.
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13 Comments
Add CommentIf this saves animal lives and their lot in the world, I am all for this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis reminds me of the movie Soylent Green! (1973)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf this technology is so far advanced,why is it not being applied to regenerating human tissue for burn victims?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Soylent Green is people!" lol
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it is, actually.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo if engineered meat was to become mass produced at a cost lower than standard meat (in a century or so), what happens to all the cows and pigs? I would figure any left overs would be slaughtered and the herd not replenished. If there is no money in livestock, there will be no livestock.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGuess they'll just start throwing away all that cowhide that now ends up as leather? Can't really see any reason to do this, if it lead to fewer animals being killed it would be nice. However, cowhide is a byproduct of our lust for red meat and as long as we kill to eat there will always be a ready supply of hides.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read a prediction in a Nostradamus book about artificial meat. It will become reasonable priced. This will happen after the destruction of ruminants and people. Artificial meat has already been invented. The engineers used sewage as an ingredient.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdon't hold your breath waiting for it. Even if they get the issues worked out to permit industrial manufacture, the political and social resistance will be substantial. Rural states will lobby to block it and the GMO freaks will have a coronary.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is. Do some research before commenting. There are quite a few studies of "artificial skin", from types grown like those procedures shown here, to fully-artificial versions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@unksolder, you are absolutely right. It will not make business sense, the animals get slaughtered anyway, and anything for a hide will be better than nothing. Quite a couple of years ago a friend of mine got a breakdown from the abattoir where he sent a herd of goats to slaughter. They paid for a skin 8 cents. Hardly anything but still more than nothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust that much closer to replicated meat. I think it will just be a matter of time before we regard the idea of killing animals for their meat as an abhorrent practice of the past, even while enjoying a nice fabricated steak from the ol' Nutri-Mat 3000. As for the livestock animals, yes, they'll largely go extinct. No way that a lot of those animals can survive on their own.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is great news. So it not only makes us humain meat eaters, but it stops the suffering of these animals that are treated poorly. It's only a matter of time before they perfect this technique of making leather and meat to be exactly like the real thing.
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