Vow, an Australian meat startup, has created what it describes as a “mammoth meatball.” The aim of this project, according to the company, is to draw attention to the possibility of cultured meat from cells, without the slaughter of animals, but also how large-scale animal production is linked to the climate crisis.

On Tuesday, the meatball will join the collection at the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave — a science and medicine museum in the Netherlands, according to CNN

“We need to start rethinking how we get our food. My biggest hope for this project is… that many more people around the world start hearing about cultured meat,” said James Ryall, Vow’s chief scientific officer.

How it was created

“Mammoth meatballs” are definitely not meant to be eaten.

The scientists who worked to create them naturally and did not have access to a frozen layer of tissue from a mammoth to base their efforts on. Instead, they focused on a protein found in mammals called myoglobin that gives meat its texture, color and flavor, by sequencing the DNA for the mammoth version in a publicly available genome database. They filled in the gaps in the mammoth myoglobin DNA sequence using information from the genome of an African elephant. The scientists introduced the synthesized gene into a sheep muscle cell, which was then cultured or grown in a laboratory.

The team eventually managed to produce about 400 grams of mammoth meat.

“From a genomic point of view, it’s just one gene among all the other sheep genes that is the mammoth,” said Ernst Wolvetang, professor and team leader at the Australian Institute of Industrial and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland, who was involved in the project.

Proponents of the project hope that cultured meat will reduce the need to slaughter animals for food and help fight the climate crisis. The food system is responsible for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from livestock.