Organic. Farm Raised. Local. Lab grown?

An Australian doctor turned laboratory rancher is birthing a beef supply without the hassle of, well, birthing cattle. Dr. Mark Post is growing your next hamburger in a petri dish using stem cells. Beef without the hassle of costly feed? A burger without all the grazing, farmland and transportation costs that drive food costs skyward? It’s happening.

The demand for protein will grow, the available food for inefficient feeding of cattle will shrink and the Big Mac is doomed. Add in the methane gas that is said to cause even more damage to the already eroding ozone layer and a Frankestein approach may be exactly what the doctor ordered. Enter Post’s solution: snatch a small piece of muscle from a donor steer and let the lab do the work. Using advanced technology surpassing his efforts from a year ago when a mere Quarter-Pounder rang up a $250,000 price tag, Post is dropping the burger price to around $40 a pound. And that is just the beginning. Furthering the development of the process, Post hopes to bring the beef alternative to a competitive level in the near future. Will consumers take a bite out of the new supply? The lab-burger is probably a bit off from causing Texas cattlemen to get nervous. Kind of like shaking oil producers with the threat of feeding corn gasoline to fuel cars.

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