A Magic Solution: Chicken Meat without Slaughter

Dutch tissue engineer Mark Post made international news last year when he cooked up a beef burger made from lab-cultured cow muscle tissue.

The Modern Agriculture Foundation (MAF) in Ramat Gan, Israel, joined the quest to mass-produce cultured meat, launching the only such project to concentrate on chicken — the second most popular meat on the planet, next to pork.

The all-volunteer nonprofit organization was founded in March of 2014, and by January launched the world’s first feasibility study to determine the cost, timetable and resources to create commercial cultured chicken breast. That privately funded study, headed by Prof. Amit Gefen at Tel Aviv University, is to be completed by January 2016.

Compared to current meat-producing industry, cultured meat production would require between 7 and 45 percent less energy, 90% less fresh water and 99% less land, and would result in 80 to 90% less greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere.

Cultured meat is not “Frankenfood” and involves no genetic engineering. It is not a meat substitute, but 100% meat.

If the process becomes economically feasible, the ecological and ethical considerations would make cultured meat irresistible.

Source: Israel21c