3D-printed meat makes the cut

The future of beef-eating may lie with ink cartridges filled with liquefied offal and mince.

Farewell steak and chips: the future of beef-eating may lie with ink cartridges filled with liquefied offal and mince transformed into pretty shapes, swirls and hamburgers by hi-tech 3D-food printers.

That was the new era of meat consumption painted yesterday at a Monash University conference by national red meat organisation Meat and Livestock Australia, which claimed 3D-food printers will soon be as common in our restaurants as coffee machines and microwaves.

MLA Tomorrow’s Food manager Michael Lee said if the red meat industry didn’t embrace the new 3D-food technology, it could instead pose a threat to Australia’s 50,000 beef cattle and lamb producers rather than an opportunity.

“This is real; this is happening now; we are not saying this technology will replace all sausages and steaks but that on some occasions, 3D printed meat will be available and sometimes preferable,” Mr Lee said.

“This may also present a value opportunity (to the industry); currently one-third of each animal (slaughtered) ends up as low-value burger trimmings for retailers like McDonald’s — why not see if this new technology gives us the opportunity to create more value for our farmers?”

Mr Lee said that while top Australian steak cuts exported overseas sold for $50 a kilogram, mince delivered much lower returns to processors and farmers.

But rather like coffee capsules — where the cost of replacement capsules quickly exceeds the cost of the coffee machine itself — Mr Lee said using low value meat cuts and byproduct wastes to fill 3D food printer cartridges with “real” meat could return as much as $300/kg.

Some of the 3D-printed meat. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Backing up Mr Lee’s message yesterday was a small briefcase-sized ByFlow 3D printer from Holland, costing less than €3000 ($4300) and spitting out delicate flower-shaped morsels of reconstituted beef. They were quickly transformed by MLA chef Sam Burke into gourmet plates of canapes and restaurant meals, complete with edible flowers, squid-flavoured tapioca shards and avocado smears.

ByFlow 3D-food printer business development manager Frits Hoff said the food-ink cartridges could be filled with either “real” food — such as beef that has come traditionally from cattle — or from chains of peptides that are identical in composition to meat proteins but that have “bio-synthesised” by bacteria and algae in a Petri dish environment.

“But what we are finding in Europe is a preference for ‘real’ 3D printed food over fake or bio-synthesised food; people definitely want natural food ingredients (in the cartridge) with no additives,” Mr Hoff said.

“This level of acceptance may change as the price of synthesised food comes down and the taste improves; two years ago the first synthesised meat hamburgers cost $250,000 each to produce and now are 10; so who knows when it will be cheap enough for McDonald’s to look at synthetic meat proteins using 3D printers as a real option?”