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An Australian lab-grown meat company has created a so-called mammoth meatball made using mammoth DNA. Source: studioaico/ Wunderman Thompson

Scientists Create Potentially Deadly Prehistoric “Mammoth Meatball”

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Scientists have successfully created a hybrid of elephant, sheep, and mammoth DNA in a laboratory, which they have misleadingly dubbed the “mammoth meatball”. Despite their success, producers of the unusual concoction have hesitated to try it, citing concerns about its safety.

The so-called prehistoric “mammoth meatball” has been manufactured by the Australian “cellular meat” company, Vow. This culinary conundrum will be displayed this Thursday at the Nemo Science Museum in the Netherlands.

In this seemingly sci-fi experiment, scientists extracted the DNA from an ancient mammoth, a beast that went extinct some 10,000 years ago, and combined it with genetic material from an elephant. This hybrid DNA sequence, that shouldn't rightfully be called a mammoth, was then set in myoblast stem cells from a sheep.

The experiment produced approximately 20 billion cells that were then used to cultivate what some are calling mammoth meat. However, according to a report in the Daily Mail, the producers “are too afraid to eat it in case the ancient protein proves deadly.” In other word, there are concerns that the mammoth meatball may be harmful.

This Is Not A “Mammoth Meatball”

Professor Ernst Wolvetang of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering at the University of Queensland, was the brainchild behind the supposed "mammoth meatball.” He explained that his team of scientists took the DNA sequence from mammoth muscle protein, known as myoglobin.

Distantly related to haemoglobin, Myoglobin, is an iron and oxygen-binding protein that is found in the skeletal muscle tissue of vertebrates and most mammals. According to Wolvetang, gaps in the mammoth DNA were “filled in” with DNA coding from the mammoth's close living relative, the African elephant.

Finally, this new DNA sequence was placed into a sheep's stem cells and the genetic soup produced around 20 billion copies that were then used to make the ill-named “mammoth meatball.” However, this is “not” a mammoth meatball. It is a sheep and elephant meatball, built on mammoth DNA.

The mammoth is an extinct species of elephant that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. Now scientists have used ancient mammoth DNA, combined with other genetic material, and created what has been dubbed a mammoth meatball . (WILD HARE / Adobe Stock)

The mammoth is an extinct species of elephant that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. Now scientists have used ancient mammoth DNA, combined with other genetic material, and created what has been dubbed a mammoth meatball . (WILD HARE / Adobe Stock)

Racing to Warp the Future

Professor Wolvetang told The Guardian that the process of making the mammoth meatball was completed in a “couple of weeks,” a time frame which he described as “ridiculously easy and fast.” However, he warned that because the meat was thrown together so quickly “we have no idea how our immune system would react” if it was eaten by a human.

Wolvetang stated that if his team were to produce additional mammoth meat products, they would ensure they were “more palatable to regulatory bodies.” It is worth noting that he referred specifically to regulatory bodies, rather than consumers' bodies.

The team actually set out to reintroduce dodo meat. According to a 2003 estimate published in Nature, this flightless bird went extinct at the end of the 17th century. But lacking dodo DNA, the team abandoned this quest, and the idea to create a “mammoth meatball” came from Bas Korsten, at creative agency Wunderman Thompson.

The ‘mammoth meatball’ was unveiled at in the Netherlands. (studioaico/ Wunderman Thompson)

The ‘mammoth meatball’ was unveiled at in the Netherlands. (studioaico/ Wunderman Thompson)

Mammoth Meatball Myths: A Billion Dollar Crash Course with Reality?

According to Vow, the company's overarching goal is “to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells as an alternative to the slaughter of animals.” Furthermore, Vow associates global warming with large-scale livestock production. The company explained that they chose “mammoth meat,” even though it isn’t mammoth meat, because the mammoth “is a symbol of diversity loss and a symbol of climate change.”

The internet is full of scientists claiming “meat without slaughter,” or lab grown meat consumption is inevitable, because cultivated meats use much less water and land than livestock. Lab grown meat also produces no methane emissions.

However, these tropes are becoming widely contested by sceptical researchers. “Splashy headlines have long overshadowed inconvenient truths about biology and economics,” decried a 2021 article in The Counter. Now, extensive new research suggests the cellular meat industry may be on a “billion-dollar crash course with reality.” But, why?

“Most of us have a limited appetite for 50-dollar lab-grown chicken nuggets,” stressed The Counter. Meanwhile the Food Health Agency has explained that “unlike animals, cells do not have a fully functioning immune system, so there is a high likelihood of bacterial or fungal growth, mycoplasma, and other human pathogens growing in vats of cells.” Because this science is so new, there are no long-term trials to support spurious claims that these food products would be safe and healthy for human consumption.

Transitioning, No Matter What the Human Cost Might Be

In this most recent attempt, lab-grown meat companies, which is also known as cultured meat, aimed to produce palatable mammoth meat. But some producers remain hesitant to consume it due to concerns that the ancient protein could be harmful to humans. Notwithstanding, some lab-grown meat companies, including the California-based Upside Foods, have passed the approval process for their product in the United States.

George Peppou, who Ted Talks describe as “a serial entrepreneur and inventor, with over 30 patents granted,” is co-founder and CEO of food-tech startup Vow. “The goal is to transition a few billion meat eaters away from eating [conventional] animal protein to eating things that can be produced in electrified systems,” explained Peppou in The Guardian.

However, before transitioning billions of traditional meat eaters, perhaps this serial entrepreneur should himself be a part of the human trials for his own self-proclaimed “deadly” mammoth meatball. But then again, it isn’t really a “mammoth meatball.” Maybe it should be named after what it really is; a “potentially deadly fusion of mammoth DNA, blended with elephant and sheep.” Although this may not be quite as catchy.

This prehistoric monster mammoth meatball is not only a threat to our future children’s health. It’s also a hazard to more than 570 million farms worldwide, of which more than 90% are run by families who produce about 80% of the world's food today, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Top image: An Australian lab-grown meat company has created a so-called mammoth meatball made using mammoth DNA. Source: studioaico/ Wunderman Thompson

By Ashley Cowie

 

Comments

Pete Wagner's picture

I think men like Musk are highly intelligent, working to give us new forms of valuable technology.  But men like Bill Gates never impressed me, ...seems just greedy and sloth-like, using secret agreements/collusion and tricks to maneuver and position themselves, caring only about money, power, and subverting the people.  But did you see where Italy has outlawed lab-created meat and fake meat made with insects – BRAVO!

Nobody gets paid to tell the truth.

Two good questions there, Pete.

Lab meat is produced by rapid cellular division. This is remarkably similar to a pre-cancerous state. I once gave an otherwise healthy-looking cow to a pet food knackery for having the slightest hint of a tumour (that bit was discarded). It was not to enter the human food chain and this was some years ago.

Those ultimately behind this latest push are very unlikely to ever eat their own lab (vat) produce. However, they won't likely be identified by such a refusal, for they shall pretend to join in, no doubt. A very famous computer billionaire may be one.

Of course, there are a whole suite of things that could be funded instead of this lab meat production. Mainstream livestock agriculture largely ceased to constructively innovate on a broad scale at the end of the 20th century. It now runs on borrowed time, innovating non-constructively for non-existent climate threats. Meanwhile, Mr Computer Billionaire seems to be holding the ticking clock, as well as a fair chunk of farmland to go with it.

Pete Wagner's picture

The question is, who approved funding this highly dubious work?  What proposals did NOT get funded as a result?

Nobody gets paid to tell the truth.

On the subject of vacxines (which, not coincidentally, shall be used to destroy the Australian beef industry of which I am part of), I am unlike virtually all other 'anti-vacxers'.

I learnt of the vacxine genocide program through the Church of Satan decades ago, yet have continued to be vacxinated because I walk with those who are, rather than those who think they're God's gift to humanity for suddenly saying no to a Cov' jab.

I only took one of those. It was not mRNA, I was prepared for it, and it still almost killed me. I know what snake venom is like, as well as funnelweb spider venom, and what I experienced was very similar to a mixture of both.

Not all are the same. But that was mine. And I know it to have been others as well.

"Lab grown meat also produces no methane emissions."

A million wildebeest, buffalo and zebras roaming the African savannah also equals zero methane emissions, while ten cows in an Australian paddock equals climate catastrophe...

That's as fair dinkum as lab meat.

The attack on livestock agriculture is all part of the mind control, courtesy of the Church of Satan, to which I am a long-term conspiracy witness in a physical sense, not simply a 'theorist' informed by others of the same ilk.

Many that are the latter are rather more controlled than they think they are, whilst some are even as fake as the alternative 'plant meat' and ultimately working for the CoS to make non-believers as extinct as the mammorh.

But don't worry. They'll bring the mammoth back in our place.

With what I know of the CoS, which is neither trivia or trivial, I would be surprised if senior adherents would even contemplate eating lab meat other than as a public relations exercise. Even then, they'd probably switch it with prime, organically-farmed minced beef, which they enjoy, especially Wagyu.

They are careful about what goes into their bodies (ie. no vaccines) - apart from the spirit of the Devil, that is, which they take with gusto.

Again, don't worry, though. If the Devil doesn't exist, worshippers of him can't exist either... This is a common attitude of those who say Christ never existed, whilst railing against the existence of Christians (many of whom are actually fake or half-hearted, for that matter anyway). Logical extrapolation is the first casualty of the all-pervasive mind control. This applies to anthropogenic climate change as well as lab meat.

Logic would warn us that we should be wary of believing people. Unfortunately, most are wary of believing the relative few who tell the truth, preferring the many who spout the untruths without thinking. Safety in numbers is a characteristic of sheep on which human wolves may easily prey.

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ashley cowie's picture

Ashley

Ashley is a Scottish historian, author, and documentary filmmaker presenting original perspectives on historical problems in accessible and exciting ways.

He was raised in Wick, a small fishing village in the county of Caithness on the north east coast of... Read More

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