$330,000 Burger Made Of Test Tube Meat, Expected In October

Burger aficionados will be able to sink their teeth into a $330,000 burger by October, if researchers have their way. The burger biter will have to have a strong stomach, however, for what's likely to be the world's most expensive burger will have meat from a petri dish.

The burger will come from a $330,000 project headed by Mark Post, physiology chairman at Maastricht University in the Netherlands in an experiment to transform stem cells from cows into thin strips of meat tissue. The tissue will become mashed up into a hamburger, the first of which could be available by October, Post told reporters in February.

The potential test-tube burger isn't just a case of gastronomic Frankenstein - researchers said the efforts could curtail environmentally-destructive farm factories that generate dangerous amounts of pollution.

Animal farming is by far the biggest ongoing environmental catastrophe, Patrick Brown, a biochemical engineer at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the L.A. Times.

Brown is working on his own meat-replacement, which is expected to hit store shelves by the end of 2012.

We have a class of products that totally rocks, and cannot be distinguished from the animal-based product it replaces, even by hardcore foodies, Brown told Innovation News Daily.

Researchers are striving to find meat alternatives since meat consumption is expected to double by 2050, according to reports.

We can do more good by taking on the simple task of figuring out how to convert cheap, abundant sustainable plant materials into nutrient-dense, protein-rich foods that people deliberately choose to eat based on taste and value, Brown said, [Rather] than by coming up with imagining sustainable, renewable energy sources or a car that can run for a thousand miles per gallon.

No word yet on who will cook the patty or where it will be served.