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Scientist makes first synthetic burger

Published: 1:05PM Tuesday February 21, 2012 Source: ONE News

A Dutch scientist has created the world's first hamburger made with synthetic meat, but it won't be rivaling McDonald's as a cheap lunch.

The meat, grown from bovine stem cells into strips of muscle, is the first made from a petri dish and costs around $393,000.

Grown in a lab in the Netherlands, the muscle is then mixed with layers of fat, also grown in the lab, to make the burger.

    Dr Mark Post, of the Maastricht University in the Netherlands, said his objective is to recreate meat but with a more resource-friendly approach.

    "My eventual dream is to produce meat that tastes and looks exactly like [real meat] so that you wont be able to distinguish it from the livestock meat.

    "But you know that it is produced in an environmentally friendly, animal friendly and resource friendly way."

    Researches say the method is more effective than farming, with one animal supplying meat for over billion burgers.

    Animal welfare groups have welcomed the idea, and with economists predicting a rise in meat prices, Dr Post hopes the technology will hope to feed a fast-growing and increasingly hungry world.

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