SAN ANTONIO – An Australian meat company is hoping to save the world by using what it refers to as cultured meat and the first item up on the menu might surprise you.
The world’s first meatball made from woolly mammoth DNA was unveiled at a science museum in the Netherlands on Tuesday, March 28, local media reported.
The meat company, known as Vow, curated a team of international experts to create the meatball from DNA of the extinct woolly mammoth and fragments of African elephant DNA using advanced molecular engineering, the Wunderman Thompson agency said.
“Vow’s mission is to feed billions of humans. We want to change everyone’s conception of what meat is and what it can be. We do this by growing meat from the cells of animals instead of the animals themselves,” said Vow founder Time Noakesmith. “We call it cultured meat.”
Noakesmith said the climate change impact of cultured meat is vastly lower than the impacts associated with regular meat production.
Nearly one-third of global greenhouse gasses are generated by food production, according to the New York Times.
A report from BBC says the world population is expected to top 9 billion by 2050 and that means we will have to produce more food in the next 40 years than we have for the past 8,000.
The woolly mammoth meatball was unveiled at Nemo Science museum in the Netherlands.
Chef Philip Davenport said the cultured meat is tastier than most meats currently on the market.
“It’s achieving great flavors from animals we’ve overlooked and, I think, even from extinct animals,” Davenport said.
There is no information available about when, or even if, the woolly mammoth meatballs will be massed produced for consumers.