AMAZING FEAT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 17, 21 January 1933, Page 10

AMAZING FEAT.

SYNTHETIC CHICKEN. / BIRDS KEEP GROWING. Beefsteaks, pork, mutton, lamb and chicken grown in biochemical factories. Choice meats produced without animals. This is one of the prospects to which scientific research is to-day leading us. We may soon be able to produce any food anywhere, irrespective of climatic conditions.

A piece of chicken meat has been made to grow in a glass tank. It has grown year after year, and from time to time slices have been cut from it and it has gone on growing. This amazing thing has taken place in the laboratory of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research, under the direction of Dr. Alexis Carrel, the great bio-chemist. So far the experiments have been on a tiny scale. The preservation of the exact conditions for growth, and the preparation of the medium in which the meat grows, have been extraordinarily delicate and difficult —but, undeniably, the meat has grown. Further research must lead to the simplification of the process, and eventually to the commercially practicable manufacture of other meats as well as chicken.

The tiny slice of chicken that grew for Dr. Carrel is of as great importance as the wireless signal first flashed across the Atlantic by Marconi. Startling dis; coveries may be made at any momen , or progress may lag for years and then bound forward unexpectedly. _ . This astonishing achievement is being discussed by scientists at Oxford, some of whom stated that they looked on i as the germ of a process which nM? revolutionise life in countries whose capacity is limited. "Just now in Germany," said one pro fessor, "a factory is being put up 0 make sugar from waste wood and sawdust. That could be done in Englan . One by one, the products of nature are being made, not imitated, in ® laboratory, and no one can place boun to the advances that will be achieved. "We may find ourselves with factories for growing choice meat, bee steaks, chicken, anything we like, wi out the irrational waste of growing whole animal in order to get a few ea able pieces." .....