Red meat is destroying the planet, and the Frankenburger could help save it

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

It was just over a year ago that the worlds first laboratory-grown hamburger was introduced to the world.The in-vitro meat (aka test tube meat, cultured meat, cruelty-free meat, and my favorite, shmeat)took four years to growfrom cow stem cells and cost a meaty $332,000.Cultured in-vitro meator frankenburger, as the press dubbed itis the brainchild of a Dutch biologist, Mark Post, of the University of Maastricht. The single burger, created from 20,000 strands of muscle tissue grown in petri dishes, got some lukewarm reviews.

It wasnt unpleasant, Chicago food writer Josh Schonwald wrote. More enthusiastically, food researcher Hanni Rutzler commented, Thats some intense flavor. Because the meat was cultured from muscle with no fat cells, it lacked juiciness, and was reminiscent of an overdone dry turkey burger. Still, the consensus was that it tasted better than expected, had the consistency of real meat, and for a first try, was not discouraging. Post told NBC News, Im very excited. It took a long time to get this far. I think this is a very good start.

While anyone who has seen videos of the horrific conditions factory-farmed cows, pigs and chickens endure in their short, tortured lives might agree that in-vitro meat is a good idea, theres an even more pressing reason to figure out a way to grow meat: the production of meat on planet Earth is killing us. It takes up more than half of our agricultural capacity, and as the economies of China and other developing nations grow, and as their citizens demand more meat on their dinner tables, that capacity will be strained even further.

Here are some of the more staggering statistics:

Already in the Gulf of Mexico, there is a dead zone the size of Massachusetts, the water so compromised that no fish can live in it. Combine this with the meat itself, often pumped full of antibiotics and hormones, not to mention potentially harmful bacteria due to the inadequate inspection protocol, and it all adds up to a catastrophe in the making.

Enter the in-vitro meat enthusiasts. A study at Oxford University demonstrated that the production of in-vitro meat is far more energy efficient than factory farming, and resulted in far fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Successfully growing meat would eliminate the enormous stresses factory farming puts on the environment, and it would meet the growing developing worlds demand for meat.

While it is doubtful lab-grown meat could take the place of the real stuff at 300 grand a burger, that price could come down, drastically, as Mark Post and other scientists perfect the process and as a market begins to emerge for it.There is money behind the effort. Big money. Sergey Brin, the billionaire co-founder of Google, has largely funded the frankenburger initiative.

Hes as determined as we are to make this happen, Post told Time magazine. A year after the burgers debut, Brin continues to fund the program, and Posts team has grown. The goal is to produce meat indistinguishable from slaughterhouse meat. The color needs work as well as the taste and texture. The first burger was artificially colored (its natural color resembled chicken more than beef). Future lab burgers will be produced with a substance called myoglobin, the protein that makes red meat red. Scientists will grow fat tissues to make the burger juicier.

To bring the price down, they will need to grow the meat in a new medium. Currently it is grown in fetal bovine serum (FBS), which comes from unborn slaughterhouse calves. Aside from the animal welfare aspects of that fact, fetal bovine serum is extremely expensive. Various vegetable and yeast-based broths are being explored asalternatives.

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Red meat is destroying the planet, and the Frankenburger could help save it