First off, that hed is terrible. And this could have gone in either Food and Drink or Environment; for that reason, I’m splitting the baby and putting it here, as the “this” referenced is still in research phases.
Inside an anonymous building in Oxford, Riley Jackson is frying a steak. The perfectly red fillet cut sizzles in the pan, its juices releasing a meaty aroma. But this is no ordinary steak. It was grown in the lab next door.
What’s strangest of all is just how real it looks. The texture, when cut, is indistinguishable from the real thing.
“That’s our goal,” says Ms Jackson of Ivy Farm Technologies, the food tech start-up that created it. “We want it to be as close to a normal steak as possible.”
Lab-grown meat is already sold in many parts of the world and in a couple of years, pending being granted regulatory approval, it could also be sold in the UK too - in burgers, pies and sausages.
The elephant in the room is the reporter got to see it and smell it being cooked, but because of the lack of approval, couldn’t speak to the taste.
I’d wager they can make it leaner and healthier than a cow as well.
Edit to fix autocorrupt.
Took me a bit to figure out the typo in “leaner” (I read “Iraner” with the sans-serif typeface) – but yeah. I’d imagine if they ever nail steaks, you could choose from different levels of marbling the way ground beef is sold today. Easily healthier, as no need for antibiotics, no chance of external pathogens such as avian flu, nothing dicey in the feed the could lead to Creutzfeldt–Jakob, and I’m likely forgetting a few other upsides.
Sorry about the autocorrupt.