On March 29, 2023, the crowds of the NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam vibrated with excitement as the first-ever meatball comprised of woolly mammoth meat — grown in a lab using mammoth DNA from the long-extinct species — sat on display.
The mammoth meat was created from myoglobin proteins made by Vow, an Australian biotechnology company. Though not intended for human consumption, the meatball still sparked a dialogue about eating extinct cultured meat.
“Cultured meat products [are] expected to hit restaurants in the U.S. later this year,” explained Vow’s chief scientific officer, James Ryall. “We needed to bring cultured meat into the spotlight to get consumers familiar with this new [kind of] product. The mammoth meatball news story was viewed by hundreds of millions of people, with the most common response being ‘Would you eat it?’”
Why Create Mammoth Meat?
Ryall and the Vow’s team created the meatball out of mammoth meat as a broader statement about climate change.
