Cientistas produzem primeiro hambrguer de laboratrio

(Fonte: UOL cincia 05/08/2013 8h47 / Original: BBC)

O primeiro hambrguer feito em laboratrio ser apresentado e degustado nesta segunda-feira, numa conferncia cientfica em Londres. Cientistas holandeses utilizaram clulas retiradas de uma vaca para reconstituir os msculos de carne bovina, que foram combinados a outros ingredientes para fazer o hambrguer. Os pesquisadores dizem que a tecnologia poderia ser uma forma sustentvel para suprir a crescente demanda por carne. Mas crticos da ideia dizem que comer menos carne seria o jeito mais fcil para compensar a j prevista falta de comida no mundo. Segurana alimentar A BBC obteve acesso exclusivo ao laboratrio em que o projeto para produzir a carne foi implementado ao custo de cerca de R$ 750 mil. Na Universidade de Maastricht, na Holanda, a pouco mais de 200 km da capital Amsterd, o cientista frente do experimento destaca a preocupao ambiental do estudo. "Vamos apresentar ao mundo o primeiro hambrguer feito em laboratrio a partir de clulas. Estamos fazendo isso porque a criao animais para abate no boa para o meio ambiente, no vai suprir a demanda mundial (por comida) e tambm no boa para os prprios animais", ressalta Mark Post, professor da Universidade de Maastricht. Para Tara Garnett, que chefe da Food Policy Research Network (um centro de pesquisas da rea de alimentos) da Universidade de Oxford, na Inglaterra, os tomadores de deciso precisam olhar alm das solues tcnicas na rea de segurana alimentar. "Ns temos uma situao onde 1,4 bilho de pessoas no mundo ficam obesas da noite para o dia e, ao mesmo tempo, um bilho de pessoas no mundo todo vo para a cama com fome", ressalta. "Isso simplesmente estranho e inaceitvel. As solues no se estabelecem na produo, mas na mudana dos sistemas de suprimento e acesso, com barateamento. E mais e melhores alimentos para pessoas que precisam deles", critica. A receita As clulas-tronco so as "mestres" do corpo humano, que podem se desenvolver em tecidos em diversas formas, tais como nervos e pele. A maioria dos centros de pesquisa atuando nessa rea de estudos tenta reproduzir tecidos humanos que possam ser usados para transplantes, reparando danos em msculos, nervos e cartilagem. Os cientistas da Holanda querem utilizar tcnicas similares para produzir msculo e gordura dos alimentos. O professor Mark Post comeou extraindo clulas do msculo de uma vaca. No laboratrio, as clulas so colocadas numa cultura - soluo - com nutrientes para promover o crescimento e multiplicao das clulas. Trs semanas depois, as mais de um milho de clulas-tronco geradas so divididas e colocadas em recipientes menores onde elas se tornam pequenas tiras de msculo de aproximadamente um centmetro de comprimento e apenas alguns milmetros de espessura. As pequenas tiras so ento coletadas e juntadas em pequenos montes, que ento so congelados. Quando alcanam uma quantidade suficiente, elas ento so descongeladas e compactadas na forma de um hambrguer antes de serem cozidos. Tem gosto bom? Os cientistas tentaram recriar a carne, que inicialmente tinha a cor branca, da maneira mais autntica possvel. A professora Helen Breewood, que atua com Post nos estudos, vem tentando fazer com que o msculo criado em laboratrio fique vermelho adicionando um composto existente na carne de verdade chamado mioglobina. "Se no se parece com a carne normal, se no tem gosto de uma carne normal, no se tornar vivel", afirma Breewood. No momento, porm, este um trabalho em progresso. O hambrguer a ser apresentado hoje foi colorido com suco de beterraba. Os pesquisadores tambm adicionaram farinha de po (ou farinha de rosca), caramelo e aafro, que ajudam no sabor.

At o momento, os cientistas podem apenas produzir pequenos pedaos de carne por vez. Quantidades maiores iriam requerer um sistema circulatrio para distribuir nutrientes e oxignio. Os primeiros resultados sugerem que o hambrguer no ter gosto to bom, mas Breewood espera que ele tenha um sabor "bom o bastante". Sofrimento animal A pesquisadora Helen Breewood, apesar de atuar no projeto para produzir carne em laboratrio, vegetariana e acredita que a produo de carne gasta muitas fontes de energia. Ela afirma que se comesse carne, iria preferir a feita em laboratrio. "Muita gente considera carne feita em laboratrio repulsiva num primeiro momento. Mas se eles soubessem o que acontece nos abatedouros para a produo de carne normal, tambm achariam repulsivo", ressalta. Numa nota, representantes do grupo Pessoas pela tica do Tratamento aos Animais (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Peta) ressaltaram os benefcios da carne de laboratrio. "(Carne de laboratrio) ir favorecer o fim de caminhes cheios de vacas, frango, abatedouros e fazendas de produo. Ir reduzir a emisso de gases de carbono, economizar gua e fazer a rede de suprimento de alimentos mais segura", destacou a nota do Peta. Mas a escritora especializada em alimentos Sybil Kappor diz que sentiria dificuldades em comer a carne de laboratrio. "Quanto mais longe voc vai do normal, de uma dieta natural, mais corre riscos de sade e outras questes", ressalta. O ltimo levantamento das Organizao para Alimentao e Agricultura das Naes Unidas sobre o futuro da produo de alimentos mostra crescimento da demanda por carne na China e Brasil - e o consumo s no cresce mais porque muitos indianos mantm a dieta amplamente vegetariana por costume cultural. Assim, h o risco de que a carne produzida em laboratrio seja uma aparente soluo, cheia de problemas.

World's first lab-grown burger is eaten in London

(Fonte: BBC News science and environment - 05/08/2013 12h35) Scientists took cells from a cow and, at an institute in the Netherlands, turned them into strips of muscle that they combined to make a patty. Researchers say the technology could be a sustainable way of meeting what they say is a growing demand for meat. Critics say that eating less meat would be an easier way to tackle predicted food shortages. The burger was cooked by chef Richard McGowan, from Cornwall, and tasted by critics Hanni Ruetzler and Josh Schonwald. Upon tasting the burger, Austrian food researcher Ms Ruetzler said: "I was expecting the texture to be more soft... there is quite some intense taste, it's close to meat, but it's not that juicy. The consistency is perfect, but I miss salt and pepper." She added: "This is meat to me. It's not falling apart." Food writer Mr Schonwald said: "The mouthfeel is like meat. I miss the fat, there's a leanness to it, but the general bite feels like a hamburger.

"What was consistently different was flavour." Prof Mark Post, of Maastricht University, the scientist behind the burger, remarked: "It's a very good start." The professor said the meat was made up of tens of billions of lab-grown cells. Asked when lab-grown burgers would reach market, he said: "I think it will take a while. This is just to show we can do it." Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, has been revealed as the project's mystery backer. Prof Tara Garnett, head of the Food Policy Research Network at Oxford University, said decision-makers needed to look beyond technological solutions. "We have a situation where 1.4 billion people in the world are overweight and obese, and at the same time one billion people worldwide go to bed hungry," she said. "That's just weird and unacceptable. The solutions don't just lie with producing more food but changing the systems of supply and access and affordability, so not just more food but better food gets to the people who need it."

An independent study found that lab-grown beef uses 45% less energy than the average global representative figure for farming cattle. It also produces 96% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and requires 99% less land.

Stem cells are the body's "master cells", the templates from which specialised tissue such as nerve or skin cells develop. Most institutes working in this area are trying to grow human tissue for transplantation to replace worn-out or diseased muscle, nerve cells or cartilage. Prof Post is using similar techniques to grow muscle and fat for food.

He starts with stem cells extracted from cow muscle tissue. In the laboratory, these are cultured with nutrients and growth-promoting chemicals to help them develop and multiply. Three weeks later, there are more than a million stem cells, which are put into smaller dishes where they coalesce into small strips of muscle about a centimetre long and a few millimetres thick. These strips are collected into small pellets, which are frozen. When there are enough, they are defrosted and compacted into a patty just before being cooked. The scientists have tried to make the meat - which is initially white in colour - as authentic as possible. Helen Breewood, who is working with Prof Post, made the labgrown muscle look red by adding the naturally occurring compound myoglobin.
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We are doing this because livestock production is not good for the environment, it is not going to meet demand for the world and it is not good for animals" End Quote Prof Mark Post Maastricht University A lot of people consider lab-grown meat repulsive. But if they consider what goes into producing normal meat in a slaughterhouse I think they would also find that repulsive
End Quote Helen Breewood Project scientist and vegetarian

"If it doesn't look like normal meat, if it doesn't taste like normal meat, it's not... going to be a viable replacement," she said. She added: "A lot of people consider lab-grown meat repulsive at first. But if they consider what goes into producing normal meat in a slaughterhouse I think they would also find that repulsive." Currently, this is a work in progress. The burger revealed on Monday was coloured red with beetroot juice. The researchers have also added breadcrumbs, caramel and saffron, which were intended to add to the taste, although Ms Ruetzler said she could not taste these. At the moment, scientists can only make small pieces of meat; larger ones would require artificial circulatory systems to distribute nutrients and oxygen. Prof Post said initial sampling suggests the burger will not taste great, but he expected it to be "good enough". In a statement, animal welfare campaigners People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said: "[Lab-grown meat] will spell the end of lorries full of cows and chickens, abattoirs and factory farming. It will reduce carbon emissions, conserve water and make the food supply safer."

The latest United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report on the future of agriculture indicates that most of the predicted growth in demand for meat from China and Brazil has already happened and many Indians are wedded to their largely vegetarian diets for cultural and culinary reasons.

Lab-grown meat is first step to artificial hamburger

(BBC News Science and environment 19/02/2012 20h29 by Pallab Ghosh) Dutch scientists have used stem cells to create strips of muscle tissue with the aim of producing the first lab-grown hamburger later this year. The aim of the research is to develop a more efficient way of producing meat than rearing animals. At a major science meeting in Canada, Prof Mark Post said synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat by up to 60%. "We would gain a tremendous amount in terms of resources," he said. Professor Post's group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick. They are off-white and resemble strips of calamari in appearance. These strips will be mixed with blood and artificially grown fat to produce a hamburger by the autumn. The cost of producing the hamburger will be 200,000 but Professor Post says that once the principle has been demonstrated, production techniques will be improved and costs will come down. At a news conference, Prof Post said he was even planning to ask celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal to cook it.
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In the beginning it will taste bland. I think we will need to work on the flavour
End Quote Prof Mark Post University of Maastricht

"The reason we are doing this is not to show a viable product but to show that in reality we can do this," he told BBC News. "From then on, we need to spend a whole lot of work and money to make the process efficient and then cost effective." So why use such high tech methods to produce meat when livestock production methods have done the job effectively for thousands of years?

It is because most food scientists believe that current methods of food production are unsustainable. Some estimate that food production will have to double within the next 50 years to meet the requirements of a growing population. During this period, climate change, water shortages and greater urbanisation will make it more difficult to produce food. Prof Sean Smukler from the University of British Columbia said keeping pace with demand for meat from Asia and Africa will be particularly hard as demand from these regions will shoot up as living standards rise. He thinks that lab grown meat could be a good solution. "It will help reduce land pressures," he told BBC News. "Anything that stops more wild land being converted to agricultural land is a good thing. We're already reaching a critical point in availability of arable land," he said. Lab-grown meat could eventually become more efficient than producing meat the old fashioned way, according to Prof Post. Currently, 100g of vegetable protein has to be fed to pigs or cows to produce 15g of animal protein, an efficiency of 15%. He believes that synthetic meat could be produced with an equivalent energy efficiency of 50%. So what is the synthetic burger likely to taste like? "In the beginning it will taste bland," says Prof Post. "I think we will need to work on the flavour separately by trying to figure out which components of the meat actually produce the taste and analyse what the composition of the strip is and whether we can change that." Prof Post also said that if the technology took off, it would reduce the number of animals that were factory farmed and slaughtered. But David Steele, who is president of Earthsave Canada, said that the same benefits could be achieved if people ate less meat. "While I do think that there are definite environmental and animal welfare advantages of this high-tech approach over factory farming, especially, it is pretty clear to me that plant-based alternatives... have substantial environmental and probably animal welfare advantages over synthetic meat," he said. Dr Steele, who is also a molecular biologist, said he was also concerned that unhealthily high levels of antibiotics and antifungal chemicals would be needed to stop the synthetic meat from rotting.