JAKARTA - The giant Meatball made of meat, which is cultivated using the extinct mummoth DNA, was launched on Tuesday atELAH, a science museum in the Netherlands.
The meatball was created by a cultural meat company from Australia, Vow, that wants to make people talk about cultural meat, and calls it a more sustainable alternative to real meat.
"We want to create something completely different from anything you can get now," Vow founder Tim Noakesmith told Reuters.
He added that another reason for choosing a mammoth was because scientists believed that the extinction of these animals was caused by climate change.
This meatball is made of sheep cells inserted with a single mammoth gene called myoglobin.
"In terms of meat, myoglobin is responsible for aroma, color and taste," said James Ryall, Vow Chief Scientific Officer.
Because the sequence of mammoth DNA obtained by Vow has several gaps, African elephant DNA is inserted to complete it.
"Just like they did in Jurassic Park," Ryall said, stressing that the biggest difference was, they didn't create real animals.
While making cultured meat usually uses dead calf blood, Vow uses other alternatives, which means no animal is killed in making mammoth meatballs.
Unfortunately, the meatballs that have the aroma of crocodile meat have not yet been consumed.
"The probe is literally 4,000 years old. We haven't seen it in a very long time. That means we want to test it through a tight test, something we will do with whatever product we bring to the market," explained Noakesmith.
Vow hopes to place farmed meat on maps in the European Union, a market where such meat as food has not been regulated.
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