The Google co-founder Sergey Brin bankrolled the project at Maastricht University to produce the world’s first synthetic hamburger, which will be cooked and eaten at a press conference in London.
“I was expecting the texture to be more soft,” said Hanni Rützler of the Future Food Studio, who researches food trends and was the first to taste the synthetic beef hamburger at the event on Monday.
The €250,000 cost of making the burger was paid by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who said he got into the idea for animal welfare reasons. Dr. Mark Post, the scientist behind the burger and his team at Maastricht University used the money to grow 20,000 muscle fibers from cow stem cells over the course of three months. These fibers were extracted from individual culture wells and then painstakingly pressed together to form the hamburger that was eaten on Monday. Watch the video below.