An artificial meat cultivation company in Australia has created a mammoth meatball, thereby reviving the meat of long-extinct species.
The Mammoth Meatball was produced by Vow, an Australian company, as reported by the Guardian on March 28.
Vow created the mammoth meatball to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells without the need to slaughter animals. (Photo: Aico Lind/Studio Aico).
The project aims to showcase the potential of researching and developing artificial meat from cells without animal slaughter, while also highlighting the connection between large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis.
Many companies are researching alternatives to conventional meats such as chicken, pork, and beef. However, Vow aims to mix and combine cells from various species to create new types of meat.
The company has researched the potential of over 50 species, including alpacas, buffalo, crocodiles, kangaroos, peacocks, and various types of fish.
The first cultivated meat that the company plans to sell to consumers is Japanese quail, which will be available in restaurants in Singapore this year.
“We face challenges in changing behavior when it comes to meat consumption,” said George Peppou, CEO of Vow.
“The goal is to shift the behavior of several billion people from consuming conventional animal protein to eating products that can be produced in electrified systems,” he stated. “And we believe the best way to do that is to invent meat. We’re looking for cells that are easy to grow, truly delicious, and nutritious, and then blending and combining those cells to create truly tasty meat.”
“We chose the woolly mammoth because this species symbolizes biodiversity loss and climate change,” said Tim Noakesmith, co-founder of Vow alongside Peppou. This creature is believed to have gone extinct due to human hunting and global warming following the last Ice Age.
The mammoth meatball will be unveiled on the evening of March 28 at Nemo, a science museum in the Netherlands.
According to CNN, from laboratory research, cultivated meat, also known as slaughter-free meat, is transitioning to production at several commercial facilities.
In addition to reducing animal slaughter, this type of meat could also help slow the process of climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide and methane, as the food system is responsible for about one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, most of which comes from livestock agriculture.
