2011 | Grown-in-a-lab meat comes to life

Soylent Green will not be people: Dutch researchers announce they have grown thin, bloodless strips of pork in a lab, laying the groundwork for eventual commercial meat production. A proof-of-concept lab "hamburger" would cost about $330,000, lead researcher Mark Post says (not far north of the cost of fancy burgers in some upscale Manhattan restaurants these days), but it predicts the launch of a new, ecofriendly industry. Heston Blumenthal, molecular gastronomy–minded chef behind Britain's much-lauded The Fat Duck, signs on to be the first to cook the mystery meat in the fall of 2012.