Race to serve up artificial chicken for
$1 million prize
Warmer
1. Watch the following video: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/30/tacobells-new-green-menu_n_223358.html in which the Onion reports that Taco
Bell's New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature
2. How often do you eat meat?
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every day
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three or four times a week
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once or twice a week
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once or twice a month
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only on special occasions
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never
3. Do you eat meat more or less often than you did five years ago?
Key words
Write the key words from the article next to the definitions below.
Anonymous donor
Cultured
commercialization
embryo
suffering
consumption stem cell
indistinguishable
tissue engineering
synthetic
in vitro
vast
1. grown in a scientific experiment _________________________________
2. If two things are __________________________________, you cannot see any difference
between them.
3. someone who gives money to a project but doesn’t want his / her name made
public __________________________________
4. a cell that is taken from a person or animal at an early stage of development
and is capable of developing into cells of any type __________________________________
5. made from artificial materials or substances __________________________________
6. an animal or human before it is born, when it is beginning to develop and grow
__________________________________
7. a form of science that deals with repairing or replacing tissues (bone, cartilage,
blood vessels, bladder, skin, etc.) __________________________________
8. produced in a laboratory __________________________________
9. the development of something so that you can sell it and make a profit
_______________________________
10. extremely large _________________________________
11. the process of buying and / or eating something __________________________________
12. mental or physical pain __________________________________
Race to serve up
artificial chicken
for a $1m prize
Five-year challenge to make meat
that tastes like the real thing
John Vidal 21 January, 2012
A small group of people will meet in
Washington later in 2012 for what
10 they hope will be a lunch to change
the world. The meal should consist of
fried chicken and nothing else, but
while it may look like chicken, have the
texture of chicken and even taste like
chicken, it will never have lived or
breathed.
In 2007, PETA, the world’s largest
animal welfare group, gave scientists
20 until 30 June 2012 to prove they
could make “cultured”, or laboratory,
meat in commercial quantities. The
first scientist to show that artificial
chicken can be grown in quantity and
be indistinguishable from real chicken
flesh will be awarded $1 million.
“We really do not know who will
apply,” said Ingrid Newkirk, president
30 and founder of PETA. “Five years ago I
thought no one would. But I cannot
tell any more. There is a real chance
someone will claim the reward. A lot
of researchers are keeping very quiet
and have their cards close to their
chest. Progress is being made. They are
overcoming obstacles. We are very
optimistic.”
40 Leading the race to show that it is
possible is Mark Post, Head of the
department of Vascular Physiology at
Maastricht University in the
Netherlands. Post has been given
$300,000 by the Dutch government
and by an anonymous donor, believed
by Newkirk to be a media magnate, to
develop his stem-cell research. He has
claimed he will produce a synthetic
50 beefburger in 2012.
Post cannot win the PETA prize
because he is working with beef, not
chicken, but he has successfully grown
strips of meat a few centimetres long.
His work is slow, however, and it is
proving hard to grow the meat any
thicker or in large quantities.
60 Another group of scientists, at Utrecht
University in the Netherlands, is
experimenting with stem cells
harvested from embryos. One stem cell
meat, with a long-term goal to grow
could potentially produce tonnes of
muscle tissue. Potentially, any animal’s
meat, with all the stem cells from one
muscle tissue could be grown through
cow being enough to feed an entire
the in-vitro process, as well as milk,
country.
cheese and eggs. So far all the meat
“made” has been nearly colourless,
“But this is very complex science and
tasteless and lacking texture. Scientists
70 harder than we thought. We have
found we cannot yet cultivate cells
may have to add fat and even lab-
110 grown blood and colourants.
from embryos, only in principle from
Professor Julie Gold, a biological
adult animals and then not very
physicist at Chalmers Technical
efficiently. I think it is a decade away
University in Gothenburg, Sweden,
and we need research money,” said
said it could take years before
Bernard Roelen, Professor of
commercialization. “There is very little
Veterinary Science.
funding. What it needs is a crazy rich
person.”
Coming from a different direction is
80 US scientist Vladimir Mironov, former
director of the NASA-funded
But the prize of being able to one day
120 grow hundreds of tonnes of meat from
Bioprinting Research Center at the
stem cells is potentially vast, say
Medical University of South Carolina in
animal welfare groups and food
Charleston, but now working with a
manufacturers. The UN’s Food and
Brazilian meat company. Mironov
Agriculture Organization expects world
works with tissue engineering and has
consumption of meat to double
taken embryonic muscle cells from
between 2000 and 2050, and last
turkeys and successfully grown muscle
year the Royal Society said the
tissue, but only in very small
challenge of increasing global food
90 quantities.
supplies could require “novel” solutions
130 like artificial meat.
Mironov is certain tissue-engineered
meat will eventually be developed: “Of
Cultured meat has the added
course there are people who think this
advantage of requiring far less energy
is Frankenstein food. They see it as
and space to grow. Analysis by
unnatural, but there is nothing
scientists from Oxford and Amsterdam
unnatural here. We use animal cells
last year showed the process could be
and grow them in a cultured media.
engineered to use only 1% of the land
The only difference is that we don’t kill
and 4% of the water used for
100 any animals.” The first-generation
products are most likely to be chopped
conventional meat.
140
For vegetarians, the prize is less animal
© Guardian News & Media 2012
suffering. “More than 40 billion
chickens, fish, pigs and cows are killed
150
every year for food in the US alone, in
First published in The Guardian,
horrific ways. In-vitro meat would
21/01/12
spare animals from this suffering,”
said Newkirk.
Comprehension check
1. What is the significance of each of these figures in the article?
a. one million dollars
b. three hundred thousand dollars
c.
five years
d. twenty-fifty
e.
one per cent
f.
forty billion
2. Are these statements true (T) or false (F) according to the article?
□
The lunch in Washington will consist of artificial chicken and nothing else.
□
Mark Post is most likely to win the award.
□
Meat produced from one stem cell could feed the population of a whole
country.
□
The meat that has been artificially produced so far does not taste like
chicken.
□
People all over the world are eating more and more meat every year.
□
Commercial production of artificial meat would lead to an increase in
water usage.
Language
1. Find an expression in the first half of the article that means to not tell people
what you are thinking or planning.
2. Think of an alternative title for the article.
Writing
1. Do you think artificial meat is “Frankenstein food” or a way to end the
“horrific” killing? Is artificial meat the food of the future? Share your opinions.