Neysa Lawrence
Wooly Mammoth
How would it be like if a meatball was created with the DNA of an extinct animal, would you eat it? Well, maybe you could try it soon, because an Australian company, Vow, has collaborated with the creative agency Wunderman Thompson, to create the world's first cultured meat made out of the extinct woolly mammoth. One meatball alone is made out of 20 billion cells, which is also accompanied by the DNA of the closest relative of the Woolly Mammoth which is the African Elephant. This is said to fill in the missing sequences in the genetic code and create the mammoth muscle protein. The question whether this is safe for consumption is still investigated as this protein has been unknown to mankind for thousands of years, so we don’t know how our immune system would react to it. Such unique, phenomenal meat was manufactured due to the CEO’s goal that the world needs to transition a few billion meat eaters away from eating conventional animal protein to eating things that can be produced in electrified systems. And they believe the way to achieve this is to invent meat by using cells and DNA rather than slaughtering animals. The meatball is accessible, ridiculously simple to make and affordable so the company hopes that this will help highlight the negative impacts of animal agriculture and meat production on climate change.
