Written by Rooster for True Grit.
Well, well, well, it looks like we’ve reached a new level of food abomination. A company called Vow from Australia has used DNA from a woolly mammoth to create a lab-grown meatball. Yes, you read that right, a woolly mammoth meatball. Apparently, this appetizer is meant to help fight climate change. What a load of bull!
The mammoth meatball was unveiled at the NEMO science museum in Amsterdam, but let’s be honest, who in their right mind would want to eat a prehistoric animal? According to Ernst Wolvetang, a researcher at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering at the University of Queensland, it was ridiculously easy and fast to create. They used mammoth muscle tissue with myoglobin, elephant tissue, and sheep myoblasts to make it happen. They even had plans to create a dodo-bird chicken nugget, but unfortunately, the necessary DNA sequences do not exist. What a shame.
Wolvetang admits that it’s unlikely anyone will eat the mammoth meatball. After all, we haven’t seen this protein for thousands of years, so who knows how our immune system would react when we eat it? But if they did it again, they could certainly make it more palatable to regulatory bodies. How comforting.
Vow claims that they chose the woolly mammoth as a marketing tool to push their climate change message, despite the fact that the reason for their extinction remains a mystery. The mammoth is apparently a symbol of diversity loss and climate change, so why not create a meatball out of it, right? It’s a great way to promote your company and your message. I’m sure the woolly mammoth would be thrilled to know that it’s been turned into a synthetic meatball.
As if that’s not bad enough, lab-grown meat is on its way to regulatory approval via the Food and Drug Administration and the United States Department of Agriculture. The FDA has already completed its first cell-grown human food market consultation for a synthetic chicken product from a company called Upside Foods. The review stated that the FDA had “no further questions” about the product. Upside Foods is now waiting to hear back from the USDA for additional approval.
And to top it all off, a Dallas-based startup called Colossal Biosciences has announced its own plans to “de-extinct” the dodo bird by replicating its genome sequences using DNA from its closest known surviving relatives. What could possibly go wrong?
