The elephant in the dining room: A startup creates a mammoth meatball

Australian startup Vow is aiming to start a conversation about the future of cultivated meat products with its surreal innovation using genetic code from a mammoth.
Throw another mammoth on the barbie?
An Australian company on Tuesday lifted the glass cloche on a meatball made of lab-grown cultured meat using the genetic sequence from the long-extinct pachyderm, saying it was meant to fire up public debate about the hi-tech treat.
The launch in an Amsterdam science museum came just days before April 1 so there was an elephant in the room: Is this for real?
“This is not an April Fools joke,” said Tim Noakesmith, founder of Australian startup Vow. “This is a real innovation.”
Cultivated meat — also called cultured or cell-based meat — is made from animal cells. Livestock doesn’t need to be killed to produce it, which advocates say is better not just for the animals but also for the environment.
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