Mark Post

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Mark Post created, working in a laboratory, the «in vitro meat». In August 2013, he presented the world’s first hamburger from cow muscle stem cells. He received the World Technology Award from AAAS/Times/Forbes for invention with the biggest potential for environmental impact.

In 2013 he became involved in a program funded by the Dutch government to investigate “in vitro meat”, becoming the first in vitro meat cultivator in the world.

Mark Post set out to create meat by an alternative method to the current production systems, which are very environmentally unsustainable. According to FAO, greenhouse gas emissions produced globally by the livestock sector account for 18% of total emissions. This finding, in a context in which the demand for proteins increases with the improvement of the standard of living of countries such as China and India, pushes the scientific community to explore new ways to generate food that is less polluting.

He is CSO and co-founder of MosaMeat and of Qorium, two companies that aim to commercialize meat and leather applications of tissue engineering. Also, he is CEO of Cell2Tissue, which is a developer of technologies in tissue engineering for consumer and health applications.

He is co-authored 165 papers in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals and received during his career over 50 million dollars in funding and awards from different sources including government, charity and industry.

Mark Post believes that the advance of cultivated meat can be an opportunity for producers to migrate to a new way of producing or from livestock to agriculture. In the same way, the price at which these products would have to be sold is high to counteract the expensive manufacturing process.