Is the Future of Meat Vegan?

In August 2013, Mark Post, a professor of physiology at Maastricht University, held a press conference in a television studio kitchen in London. Lifting the silver lid from a platter, he revealed a creation that seemed very humble by culinary-TV standards: a round, palm-size patty of dark pink hamburger meat. But as Post explained, his burger was no ordinary chunk of beef. Instead of coming from the flesh of a slaughtered cow, the muscle fibers in the meat had been grown from cow cells in a lab. A chef pan-fried a few and served them to a panel of food critics, who praised the meat's dense texture and the way the outside browned up in the pan, lamenting only the lack of salt, pepper, and ketchup.