Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal has revealed that in October he will be cooking up the first burger ever created in a laboratory. The “test-tube burger” will be grown from stem cells cultured by Dutch stem cell scientist Dr Mark Post, of the University of Maastricht.

The aim of the research, which has been funded by a mystery backer, is to address the issues facing livestock farming as the human population grows, along with the demand for meat, over the course of the century, putting an untenable strain on resources.

Dr Post said that artificial meat produced in this way would hold many benefits over "unsustainable" farmed livestock. He said, "These animals are very inefficient in the way they convert vegetable matter to animal protein; Cows and pigs have an efficiency rate of about 15 per cent, which is pretty inefficient. Chickens are more efficient and fish even more.

"Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years. Right now we are using 70 per cent of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock. You can easily calculate that we need alternatives. If you don't do anything meat will become a luxury food and be very, very expensive."

Livestock production is also a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions; livestock produce more GHG emissions worldwide than transport vehicles. They are responsible for 39 per cent of all methane, 5 per cent of carbon dioxide and 40 per cent of nitrous oxide emissions.

Dr Post believes that, as well as reducing the need for millions of large animals which compete with humans for food, and increasing the efficiency with which meat is produced, “test-tube burgers” could provide an answer to questions of food security. He said, "If we can raise the efficiency from 15 per cent to 50 per cent it would be a tremendous leap forward."

However, the burger Heston Blumenthal will be expected to cook in October will certainly be a ‘luxury food’; the burger will cost €250,000 (£207,535). The minced meat used will have been grown from bovine muscle and fat stem cells, which are created separately and mixed together for a more authentic appearance and (hopefully) taste.

Although Dr Post is currently working with half-millimetre thick strips of tissue cultured from cells, he is confident that the process will be ready to make a full burger in eight months’ time. He claims that, by October, he will manage to create a burger “that looks like and feels and hopefully tastes like meat.”

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