The lab grown meat is presented as a great future alternative, both for vegetarian people as for those who want fight climate change from the kitchen. There are many companies that have already produced it. But, until now, no one had created it from a extinct animalAs the mammoth. It may sound like science fiction, but that’s exactly what an Australian company called wow.
In fact, they have not been limited to just producing cultured mammoth meat. They have also cooked some dumplings with her. At the moment it has only been a test, but in the future they hope to do it with more animals, both living and extinct. It would be an interesting way to eat exotic animalswithout the need to damage them.
But they have not chosen the mammoth by chance, but precisely because these animals were victims of climate change. A climate change that, unlike the current one, had nothing to do with the human being. But even so, it happened so fast that they didn’t have time to adjust. His is an example of what can happen today if we don’t look for new sources of power. That is where cultured meat comes into play, which is why they have decided to make this bizarre combination.
Cultured meat is that which is obtained in the laboratory from muscle cells extracted from the animal in question. Therefore, it is not necessary to sacrifice the animal, just a biopsy.
In the case of extinct animals, there are some well-preserved enough to be biopsied. This is the case of the mammoth, although some modifications need to be made. Specifically, what these scientists did was extract the DNA sequence of a muscle protein from this extinct animal. It was not fully preserved, so there were some gaps in the sequence, which were filled in with elephant dna. Finally, it was introduced into muscle progenitor stem cells, extracted from sheep embryos. From that point, the procedure was as with any cultured meat.
So once they had it, they could cook anything with it. In this case they chose meatballs, but it could have been another dish.
Haute cuisine with exotic animals
As explained in Food Dive Those responsible for this company, their objective is to obtain meat grown with exotic animals, not necessarily extinct. For example, zebra, yak or Galapagos tortoise.
They think that perhaps the general population might be reluctant to try it. However, it could be interesting for haute cuisine restaurants. In these it is more common to find people willing to try new things and pay for it.
Why did the mammoth become extinct?
There are several extinct animals that could have been chosen. However, these scientists chose to manufacture extinct mammoth meat because of its relationship with climate change.
It should be said that the woolly mammoth generally fed on grass. She was able to push away the snow and keep the still tender leaves of the trees. frozen grasslands. However, with the advent of climate change, the icebergs melted, flooding the grass they fed on. In addition, many grasslands were replaced by trees, more adapted to the wetlands. The mammoth was left with nothing to eat. Also, the first humans began to hunt them, but that was not the main reason. It was definitely climate change.
That is why mammoth meat is now so useful to remind us of the damage that the climate change that we are causing can do. We have to change our way of eating. maybe eat mammoth dumplings may not be the solution, but lab-grown meat may be a good option in the future.