Would you eat lab-grown steak? A recent study from the Good Food Institute — a nonprofit thinktank — indicates that about 40% of US and UK consumers are “highly likely” to try lab-grown meat.

Hojae Bae, professor at Konkuk University, is planning on giving those consumers what they want using 3D printing and polymers to create the perfect synthetic steak.

One hurdle with lab-grown meat is making it commercially available. Manufacturing practices need to be set up to ensure enough can be made (and sustainably), and that the texture and taste accurately resemble naturally grown meat. In a new paper published in Advanced Science, Bae and his colleagues report a means of making this possible.

[One] issue to overcome is the cost of the steak. “The cultured meat we produced in the lab costs roughly about $700 [per kilogram], more than 90% of which is spent on purchasing cell culture media,” said Bae. He does expect that mass production of the cell culture media will lower the cost. Still, he says, “We expect that high productivity at a lower unit price will be the major hurdle for a while. Also, regulatory approval will probably be one of the major hurdles before the commercialization.”

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here