too many words by laura lemay

meat engineering

Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab on Industrial Scale

In a paper in the June 29 issue of Tissue Engineering, a team of scientists, including University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny, propose two new techniques of tissue engineering that may one day lead to affordable production of in vitro – lab grown — meat for human consumption. It is the first peer-reviewed discussion of the prospects for industrial production of cultured meat.

Matheny’s team developed ideas for two techniques that have potential for large scale meat production. One is to grow the cells in large flat sheets on thin membranes. The sheets of meat would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked on top of one another to increase thickness.

“The challenge is getting the texture right,” says Matheny. “We have to figure out how to ‘exercise’ the muscle cells. For the right texture, you have to stretch the tissue, like a live animal would.”

(aghast) Ew! Ewwww!!!

(I got it from boingboing{.broken_link}.)