OREANDA-NEWS. The Ochakovo Food Ingredients Plant (OFIP) created artificial meat for food production and after three series of full-cycle experiments cooked the first “cutlet” from lean ingredients.

“The first 40 grams of cultivated meat were grown in the OFIP laboratory, and it costs 900 thousand roubles (about 14 thousand US dollars. – Ed.). The work has been carried out over the past 2 years,” the press service of the company reported.

To obtain artificial meat the specialists created a tissue engineering laboratory. The supervisor of the project is the Russian molecular pharmacologist, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Nikolay Shimanovsky. He noted that “flask meat” is not imitation of meat, which is a vegetarian product and is made from soy or wheat protein. Cultivated meat is safe for men, its shelf life is twice higher than traditional due to sterile growing conditions.

A basis for getting such meat is a piece of muscle tissue of the calf aged 2–3 days of the elite breed, obtained under local anesthesia. Cells are placed in a nutrient solution – a gel of amino acids, salts, vitamins and other microelements, and then meat grows.

The developers expect that Russian cultured meat may appear in stores by 2023, if the legal status of this product is resolved. Nowadays the cost of “flask meat” is quite high – about 90 dollars per kilogram for retail purchases. The plant’s experts expect that in 5 years this product will cost about 800 roubles (about 12.5 dollars).