Throughout the years, technology keeps getting more advanced. You hear something new every day that is being discovered or that’s being created! This story is one that I never thought I would hear about.
Inside Edition shared a video about a mammoth meatball that was created with extinct DNA. Not only is it mammoth in size, but it’s also made with meat that hasn’t been seen in thousands of years: the woolly mammoth.
Food scientists in Australia from Vow, a sustainable food start-up, injected woolly mammoth DNA into the muscle cells of a sheep. To replace the missing strands of genetic code, the scientists at Vow added African elephant DNA since they are the woolly mammoth’s closest non-extinct relative.
The combination was grown in a lab, and the ending result was 14 pounds of meat. Tim Noakesmith, founder of Vow, said, “It’s super fascinating to think that adding the protein from an animal that went extinct 4 thousand years ago gave it a totally unique and new aroma. Something we haven’t smelled as a population for a very long time.”
Of course, this woolly mammoth meat won’t be hitting the shelves of the grocery store anytime soon, or possibly ever. The creators of the mammoth meatball haven’t even tasted their own masterpiece!
The reason behind their hesitation to try their creation is the lack of knowledge of the allergens that could have existed thousands of years ago. This experiment was less about the taste of the meatball and more about the process of their experiment and how it could benefit society.
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Tim Noakesmith said, “We wanted to get people excited about the future of food being different to potentially what we had before but there are things that are unique and better than the meats that we’re necessarily eating now.”
I will say that I wouldn’t be against trying meat made in a lab, but I would be a little timid if I had to try woolly mammoth meat. Hopefully one day that’s not all the meat that’s available in stores!
To view the whole story, click the video!
