Business Insider: We tasted the first lab-grown sausage and here's how it tasted

[Techno-Druid]

(Source)

For the first time in the roughly five years since a smattering of researchers and companies began talking about making real meat without slaughtering animals, one startup is letting people see how its sausage gets made.

Well, almost. On Monday evening, the startup, called New Age Meats, let a handful of journalists and potential investors taste its prototype product — a pork sausage made from many of the same ingredients in the kind of breakfast sausage you'd buy at the store, such as pork muscle and fat, spices, sausage, casing, and vegetable stock.

But unlike other breakfast sausages, this meat was made from animal cells, without killing any actual animals.

Creating this kind of meat been the primary objective of several startups ever since Dutch scientist Mark Post became the first person in the world to make a beef burger from cow cells in 2013. Since then, at least six companies have emerged with the aim of slashing food waste and emissions while reducing animal suffering and improving human health. All of them are working on transforming meat or fish cells into edible flesh.

At a brewery in San Francisco, New Age Meat's team cooked and doled out the first samples of its farm-free (also known as "cell-based" or "cultured") meat. Here's what it was like.

On Monday evening, New Age Meats co-founders Brian Spears and Andra Necula served three freshly-cooked pork sausage links made using fat and muscle cells generated from a single sample of a live pig named Jessie (after the street where their headquarters is located in San Francisco).

"This is the most product and the fastest production from any cultured meat startup we've seen so far," Gupta said.

As Spears, a chemical engineer by training, and Necula, a cell biologist, watched, the sausage sizzled in a pan with a little grapeseed oil. Slowly, it began to brown on each side like conventional sausage. The room filled with the smell of breakfast meat. After a few minutes — just before the sausage casing began to blister — we dug into our bite-sized samples.

It tasted like meat. Then again, it is meat.

The texture was distinctly sausage-like. After I'd chewed my bite, I wasn't sure I would have been able to tell the difference between this pork sausage and any other. Perhaps it was a little drier, a little more crumbly? It was hard to tell from just one bite, but I was pretty sure there were no glaring differences.

I'm happy that we at least have anecdotal confirmation on what cultured meat tastes like, although I don't think I ever truly doubted that meat made from animal cells would taste much different from...meat made from animal cells.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Nothing will ever beat the meat off the bone for me but more power to the people that wanna eat this stuff.

[LedZeppelin]

Where is the thrill of the hunt?

[Techno-Druid]

Nothing will ever beat the meat off the bone for me but more power to the people that wanna eat this stuff.

I don't see why we couldn't advance to the point where we could also grow bone.

[Draco-Onis]

Nothing will ever beat the meat off the bone for me but more power to the people that wanna eat this stuff.

You tear your sausage meat off the bone

[Deleted]

I will never eat meat that was grown in a lab. I don't care how it tastes.

[Techno-Druid]

I will never eat meat that was grown in a lab. I don't care how it tastes.

Even if it was the most environmental and ethical choice?

[petej0]

This is actually great news, I cant wait for it to become mainstream. Question, would vegans eat it?

[Khaza-R]

Even if it was the most environmental and ethical choice?

Does it really surprise you that people aren’t interested in the environment or ethics. Just whatever fuels their own selfish desires

[StayTuned]

Even if it was the most environmental and ethical choice?

Only if it was absolutely proven, though very long studies, that it isn't harmful.

Cancer is a bitch already, no need to throw more lab grown stuff into my body. Although how the whole food industry works nowadays, it's only a matter of time anyway until I get my first tumor.

[Techno-Druid]

This is actually great news, I cant wait for it to become mainstream. Question, would vegans eat it?

Mostly, at least the ethical and environmental vegans would. You also have 'health vegans' (like Vegan Gains) who are also vegan because of supposed dietary reasons

[Vash The Stampede]

I don't see why we couldn't advance to the point where we could also grow bone.

He wants to tear the meat off the bone himself, and hear the crys of the unfortunate animal that has crossed his path. Just like his ancestors did before him.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

I don't see why we couldn't advance to the point where we could also grow bone.

Still not something I'd eat. You're free to do so though.

[Independent voter]

If it's a good value, cheaper, tastes good I'll eat it.

I don't think the vegans will eat it cause it's still made from animal cells.

[The Stormbringer]

Where is the thrill of the hunt?

Where is that now in modern society? Only a fraction of a fraction of people in the modern world actually go hunting, and some do it simply for trophy hunting rather than to eat what they kill.

[StayTuned]

Where is that now in modern society? Only a fraction of a fraction of people in the modern world actually go hunting, and some do it simply for trophy hunting rather than to eat what they kill.

Standing in line after work during "grocery rush hour" is almost like a hunting thrill.

[Deleted]

Even if it was the most environmental and ethical choice?

I don't think it's unethical to eat animals and I don't see how it's bad for the environment either.

[NED funded]

I will say it again. Just stop eating beef.

[Anoikis]

I'm sure it wouldn't work with a steak or ham and probably will never do.
I suppose they choose sausages because it's meat that goes through a grinder so you can't tell the diffrence
between natural fibers and cultered meat.

[Slant]

Nothing will ever beat the meat off the bone for me but more power to the people that wanna eat this stuff.

If nothing else, it'll be hilarious to watch the main veggie argument vanish without a trace.