Starting off the news this week are reports from the U.K. ona new burgerthat is all boots, no saddle, all hat, no cattle.

The in-vitro beef patty, produced from stem cells of a dead cow, was released this week in Great Britain as the answer to the global food crisis. Heralded by groups such as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the 5-ounce buerger went on the plate at an audience in London's Riverside Studios.

The in-vitro lab patty is produced from tens of thousands of strips of beef. The final verdict? "It's close to meat," said Austrian food researcher Hanni Rutzler, "It's not that juicy, but the consistency is perfect."

Oh, yeah. It also cost 250,000 British pounds to produce - or $330,000.

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The burger is made from cells in a cow, said Dutch scientist Mark Post, one of the biologists at the University of Maastricht who engineered the cultured burger. The product could be a sustainable, ethical and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional meat production, he said.

The BBC has a report and video documenting the entire product and its processing.

Hearing the doctor criticize the traditional and proven methods for beef production, one must wonder whether the consumer world will be as critical of cultured-burger science as they are of genetically modified organism corn. end mark