He produced and tasted the first ever specimen of cultured meat and is now dreaming of McDonalds
As early as 1931, Winston Churchill said “we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium”. But the person who developed the first cultured meat and tasted it was Mark Post, professor of vascular physiology at the University of Maastricht. His ‘Postburger’, the prototype for the in vitro hamburger, was cooked and served in August 2013 after five years of research and development in the lab. The production costs were €250,000, an investment made by the founder of Google.
Although Post advocates eating less or even no meat, he sees cultured meat as a high class alternative to traditional meat, whether free range or factory farmed. His research into the development of in vitro meat, Cultured Beef, is steaming ahead. “My dream is for McDonalds to approach me at some point in the future and ask me to produce all their hamburgers, all over the world.”
