Scientists who have grown meat in a Dutch laboratory are hopeful that their breakthrough could eliminate the need for factory farming within a decade.

"People realize that there is a clear threat to the environment and to animal welfare," said Mark Post, the team's lead researcher at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Post's team took cells from the muscle of a living pig – myoblasts – immersed them in a nutrient-rich "serum," and cultured them in a petri dish. The serum is derived from the blood of pig fetuses.

The cells divided exponentially into skeletal muscle tissue that Post describes as looking "like a piece of scallop." It is completely white, since it's bloodless. It's also quite stringy.

Those judgments are made on the basis of observation. Nobody has eaten the results.

"Of course, you can at this point," Post said. "But it really doesn't make any sense."

There is also the small matter of taste, which appears to be a bigger mystery than creating in vitro meat in the first place.

"Nobody knows where the particular flavour of different meat comes from," Post said. "Why does lamb taste like lamb? We're not sure. It's a particular mixture of blood, iron and fat, perhaps."

Since Post's scallop-y pork has little to none of those things, it's not clear if it's going to taste like "pork."

Large-scale meat farming is an expensive business. The vast amounts of food required to feed the animals and the waste they produce, never mind the greenhouse gases, are a threat to the environment. Though Post lards caution in with optimism, he's hopeful that his team's discovery can be a boon to the planet as well as the hungry.

The study is backed by a sausage manufacturer and funded by the Dutch government. Post's hope is that the surge of publicity will encourage bigger backing.

He figures the team is at least 10 years from producing an edible product ready for market. Sadly, that's too late to collect a $1 million prize offered by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. They've offered the money to anyone who can bring an "in vitro chicken" product into grocery stores by 2012.

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Post is reaching out to governments, food scientists and the industrial farming industry in the hopes of creating a global flavour to his research.

"If I were in the cattle business, I would tap in to this as well," Post said. "Who knows where this could lead us?"