Test-Tube T-Bones: It's What for Dinner (in a Few Years)

More on the promise of vat-grown meat comes our way from Der Spiegel via Arts & Letters Daily:

Test-Tube T-Bones on the Horizon Say Researchers

…Two years ago, at an exhibit in the French city of Nantes titled "L'Art Biotech," Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr and Guy Ben-Ary dined on "tiny polymers stuffed with clawed frog cell a la Davis, flambéed with Calvados." The artists, part of the Australian "Tissue Culture Art Project," called their installation "Disembodied Cuisine." They had mounted tissue cells from frogs onto small biopolymer substrates—about three centimeters in diameter—and watched as they grew into small "steaks." The four frogs from which the tissue had been taken looked on from a nearby aquarium….

It's not just frog meat that may soon be jumping from Petri dishes onto your plate. Laboratories, some hope, may someday replace slaughterhouses and even now, researchers are working feverishly to pull steaks and hamburger out of their pipettes. Their goal is the development of giant bioreactors where butcher shop wares are grown out of cell cultures, potentially forever relegating mass-production chicken farms, veal calf production and pigsties to agriculture museums. One day, say some scientists, meat incubators could become standard kitchen equipment, allowing consumers to grow their own liver pate and meat balls, turkey sausage and smoked salami.

More–including a picture of a pretty grotesque-looking frog "steak"—here.

Hit & Run checked vat meat for doneness here.

Reason's Ron Bailey–the Liberation Biology author rumored to be slowly replacing his organs with jerry-rigged biotech alternatives–checked out the genetically altered artscape here and gave two thumbs up to pink mice and petri dishes.