Test Tube Burger!

We could soon be growing burgers and steaks in the lab - without the need to harm a single animal

- Craig Brierley

Would you eat a burger that had been grown in a lab? It may not be long before this is a choice at your local supermarket. Given the environmental cost of rearing cattle for meat, this is a development that cannot come soon enough.

Today on the menu at the Clinical School are two burgers: bacon cheeseburger and falafel chickpea burger. I opt for the latter, conscious that I ought to choose the vegetarian option, for today at least. I have just come from a meeting with Dr Mark Kotter in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences. Although not a vegetarian himself, over the course of our interview he does not hold back when describing the ethical impact of eating meat.

“It’s quite brutal, really,” he says. “You raise animals, which are complex organisms, which display behaviour that is in some ways similar to ours, and you just slaughter them in order to eat the muscle tissue. It’s quite barbaric.”

Added to this is the environmental impact of rearing meat. It’s estimated to take 15,000 litres of water to produce one kilogramme of beef (that’s just under a year’s worth of showers). And methane from cattle flatulence is a not-insignificant contributor to greenhouse gases.