A giant meatball made from flesh cultivated using the DNA of an extinct woolly mammoth was unveiled this week at Nemo, a science museum in the Netherlands.
The meatball was created by Australian cultured meat company Vow which ‒ promising this was not an April Fool’s joke ‒ said it wanted to get people talking about cultured meat, calling it a more sustainable alternative for real meat.
“We wanted to create something that was totally different from anything you can get now,” said Vow founder Tim Noakesmith, adding that an additional reason for choosing mammoth is that scientists believe the animal's extinction was caused by climate change.
The meatball was made of sheep cells inserted with a singular mammoth gene called myoglobin.
“When it comes to meat, myoglobin is responsible for the aroma, the colour and the taste,” said Vow's chief scientific officer James Ryall.
Since the mammoth’s DNA sequence obtained by Vow had a few gaps, African elephant DNA was inserted to complete it.
“Much like they do in the movie Jurassic Park,” Ryall said, stressing the biggest difference is that they were not creating actual animals.
While creating cultured meat usually means using blood of a dead calf, Vow used an alternative, meaning no animals were killed in the making of the mammoth meatball.
The meatball, which has the aroma of crocodile meat, is currently not for consumption.
“Its protein is literally 4 000 years old. We haven’t seen it in a very long time. That means we want to put it through rigorous tests, something we would do with any product we bring to the market,” Noakesmith said. - Reuters
The Independent on Saturday