Giant meatball with woolly mammoth DNA unveiled by cultured meat startup

Giant meatballs made from cultured meat using DNA from extinct woolly mammoths were unveiled Tuesday at Nemo, a science museum in the Netherlands.

Meatballs made by the Australian cultural meat company Vow, which – promise this is not an April Fools joke – said it wanted to get people to talk about cultural meat, calling it a more sustainable alternative to real meat.

“We wanted to create something that is totally different from what you can get now,” Vow founder Tim Noakesmith told Reuters. He said an additional reason for choosing the mammoth was that scientists believed the animal’s extinction was caused by climate change.

The meatballs are made from sheep cells infused with a single mammoth gene called myoglobin.

“When it comes to meat, myoglobin is responsible for aroma, color and flavor,” said James Ryall, Vow’s chief scientific officer.

Just don’t eat it

Since the mammoth DNA sequence obtained by Vow had several gaps, African elephant DNA was inserted to complete it.

“Just like they did in the movie Jurassic Park” Ryall said, stressing the biggest difference is that they don’t make real animals.

While making cultured meat usually means using the blood of dead calves, Vow uses an alternative, meaning no animals are killed when making mammoth meatballs.

Meatballs that smell like crocodile meat are no longer for consumption.

“The protein is literally 4,000 years old. We haven’t seen it in a long time. That means we want to run rigorous tests, which we will do with any product we bring to market,” Noakesmith said.

Environmental benefits

Processed meat could reduce the environmental impact of global meat production in the future. Today, millions of hectares of land are used for agriculture around the world.

Seren Kell, manager of science and technology at the Good Food Institute, a non-profit that promotes plant- and cell-based alternatives to animal products, said he hopes the project “will open up new conversations about the extraordinary potential of cultured meat.”

“By raising beef, pork, chicken and seafood, we can have the biggest impact on reducing emissions from conventional animal farming and meeting global demand for meat while meeting our climate targets,” he said.

The pledge hopes to put cultured meat on the map in the European Union, a market where meat as food is not yet regulated.