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Imagine a world where animal meat as we know it no longer exists and is replaced by artificial meat made from human cells that you created yourself, with the added benefit of better traceability. American researchers created a steak from human cells taken from the inside of the cheeks.
They have developed a kit – which for now is only a prototype – to scrub the inside of the cheeks in order to recover their own cells. They will then need to be kept warm for three months in the expired human blood serum, he explains The Science Times. And this recreated meat from scratch has a name: “The Ouroboros Steak”, referring to the Egyptian symbol of the snake biting its own tail.
Between artistic and scientific project
The project, certainly uninviting, is halfway between an artistic and a scientific approach. The prototypes were first exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of the Arts. If you want to see the project in full size, some pieces of this new genre steak are currently on display at the Design Museum in London, they have been selected as part of the Beazley Designs of the Year.
The project was designed to respond to the many criticisms that have been hit with laboratory-grown in vitro meat. Artificial meat is sometimes made from fetal bovine blood serum, which it requires “slaughtering pregnant cows to obtain whey from the calf”, explains Marie-Pierre Ellies-Oury, agricultural engineer and doctorate in animal sciences at the University of Burgundy, who is also responsible for the specialization “Sustainable animal sectors” at Bordeaux Sciences Agro. Therefore, the use of human cells and human blood serum no longer used would avoid the suffering of this animal.
Contacted by Konbini News, Marie-Pierre Ellies-Oury specifies this, however “The companies working on artificial meat have managed to reconstitute a whey that allows the growth of cells without bovine serum. Several start-ups in the sector have already found a palliative”, which would undermine the argument put forward by The Ouroboros Steak project.
Ethically unthinkable
Of this project remains a crucial question and on everyone’s lips: that of ethics. According to one of the creators of Ouroboros Steak, it wouldn’t be “legally” reports on cannibalism Slate. But for the agricultural engineer there is no doubt:
“The collection of human cells and the cultivation of human cells, with the exception of the tissue reconstitution aspects, is something that is not feasible from a dietary point of view. given how the ethics committee works, I don’t even imagine it will be studied in 2050. There will be many other avenues that will be considered by then, in particular artificial meat, but from animal cells. You cannot start with a human cell. “
A project that does not pass on an ethical level for Marie-Pierre Ellies-Oury, who compares this experiment to that of cloning. “It is very regulated and these are impossible things to do”, she states. As for the commercialization of such a prototype, let’s not talk about it. This “work of art of meat” is not yet ready to hit supermarket shelves. “Already for the artificial meat of animals it will be necessary to change mentality to be able to commercialize it”, so for meat obtained from human cells, the idea for the moment seems completely absurd. Especially since the “digestibility” it may prove difficult to recognize the engineer.
Artificial meat soon on our plates?
On the other hand, artificial meat created from animal cells could be marketed in France in the near future and arrive on our plates. “Since 11 November there is a restaurant in Spain that has opened and offers cultured meat. Therefore, the development of cultured meat has a very close deadline, progress is important. Gourmey in France had announced that he would be able to produce foie gras by 2022 “, explains the engineer. Meat created by human cells can therefore remain at the prototype and artwork stage, and it may not be worse.
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