The idea of a mammoth meatball might make you think of a huge meatball at a county fair, but the Australian cultured meat firm Vow Food, which grows meat from animal cells without killing any animals, has created a meatball that contains DNA from the extinct woolly mammoth.
According to The Guardian, the first-ever replica of the extinct creature’s flesh aims to highlight the possibilities of water.html’ >lab-grown meat and draw attention to the massive animal slaughter that is to blame for the loss of forests, wildlife, and dependent ecosystems.
We must begin to reconsider how we obtain our food. According to CNN, Vow’s Chief Scientific Officer James Ryall remarked, “My biggest ambition for this initiative is that a lot more people across the world get to hear about cultured meat.”
The 0.88-pound meatball has very little woolly mammoth DNA and isn’t even meant to be consumed. A synthetic gene produced from the woolly mammoth’s DNA sequence discovered in a genome database was made public by the researchers.
African elephant genome data was used to fill in any gaps in the sequence, and the synthesized gene was then cultured in a sheep muscle cell.
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From a genetic perspective, there is only one mammoth gene among all the other sheep genes. It’s one gene out of 25,000, according to Ernst Wolvetang, a professor and senior group leader at the University of Queensland’s Australian Centre for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology who worked on the project, as reported by CNN.
According to The Guardian, Vow has been experimenting with merging cells from uncommon meat-producing species like crocodiles, llamas, peacocks, and kangaroos.
Later this year, Japanese quail, the first cultured meat to be sold in restaurants, will become available in Singapore.
According to Vow CEO George Peppou, who was quoted by The Guardian, the objective is to shift a few billion meat eaters from consuming [traditional] animal protein to eating foods that can be generated using electrified systems. And we think that creating meat is the greatest method to achieve that. To produce exceptionally excellent meat, we mix and match cells that are simple to grow, incredibly palatable, and nutrient-dense.
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According to BBC News: raising cattle for food production is thought to be responsible for as much as 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans. Cultured meat requires far less water and land than rearing livestock for slaughter and doesn’t emit any methane.
It feels a little odd and brand-new at first, but that’s how it usually is. But I think [cultivated beef] makes a lot of sense from an ethical and environmental standpoint, according to Wolvetang, as quoted by The Guardian. The stately mammoth is thought to have perished because of global warming after the last ice age and human hunting.
According to Tim Noakesmith, co-founder of Vow Food, “We chose the woolly mammoth because it’s a sign of diversity loss and a symbol of climate change.”
For Reasons of Safety, Neither Wolvetang nor Ryall Had Tried the Meatball.
Typically, we would experiment with and taste our products. We were afraid to instantly taste and sample the protein, though, as it hasn’t been around for 5,000 years. According to Ryall, who was quoted in The Guardian, “I have no idea what the potential allergenicity of this specific protein would be.”
We don’t know how eating it would affect our immune system, according to Wolvetang. But if we did it over again, we could undoubtedly do it in a way that regulatory authorities would find more acceptable.
The NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam hosted the world premiere of the enormous meatball.
