Scientists make meat from poo
July 15, 2009 by green team
Filed under Food
(Documentary - The Fabulous Story of Poop)
Japanese fetish or a future menu item at McDonalds? McPoop Burger? If you remember Kevin Costner in his infamous survivor role in the movie Waterworld, he resorted to distilling his urine for liquid sustenance. Then in the cycle of life, meat poo makes perfect sense and as usual, the Japanese are ahead of the curve in this area.
green team
Scientists make meat from poo
Is this the next environmental innovation?
The livestock industry is responsible for around 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, due largely in part to emission of methane from the animals. But researchers in Japan may have a solution – that may be a little difficult to stomach.
What he calls “sh*t burger”, scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda Environmental Assessment Center in Okayama was part of the development team that first found a way to turn human excrement into a meat substitute back in 1993.
The process involves extracting proteins from the solids in sewage and then mixing it with soya and flavouring it with steak sauce derivative. The final product is high in protein with a similar texture, consistency and taste to beef.
“The sewage department wants to show citizens that sewage isn’t really such a dangerous and dirty thing, that it can be recycled into something useful,” Ikeda had told reporters. Due to expensive research costs, the meat substitute is priced around 10 to 20 times higher than regular meat, and the project had no commercial aims.
