Lab-grown meat could prove a substitute for the real thing

In 2008, the American animal rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) announced a US$1 million reward to anyone who could use chicken cells to develop a marketable lab-grown meat by June this year.

The contest deadline has been extended to January 1 next year because no one has succeeded as yet. But scientists are getting closer to producing the first test tube chicken nugget. According to Peta, "some promising steps have been made towards this technology, but we're still several years away from having in vitro meat being available to the general public".

Over the years there have been many attempts to create meat substitutes to please both vegans and animal rights activists. Many involve soy protein (such as Tofurky roasts and Soyrizo breakfast burritos) or wheat-gluten (such as Seitan gyros), or a combination of both.

But Peta's latest project is no meat substitute. We're talking real meat and flesh, but produced in a lab, using animal stem cells placed in a medium to grow and reproduce. No killing involved.

The Netherlands has been leading the way in research. Stem cell scientist Dr Mark Post, from Maastricht University, expects to unveil the first-ever taste test of an in vitro hamburger next month - albeit at an expected initial price of €250,000 (HK$2.5 million).

Some biologists warn that cell culture is expensive and technically difficult. But others believe costs will fall to mass-market prices once the technology becomes more common.