$325,000 Burger Is Most Expensive Meat Ever; Burger Grown In Lab By Scientists

This isn't your standard McDonald's burger. A burger grown inside a laboratory in The Netherlands is officially the most expensive piece of meat on the market, with a $325,000 price tag. The five-ounce, $325,000 burger was created by assembling tiny bits of beef muscle tissue grown in the lab. The lab burgers have now been sent off to London, where they will be sampled at several culinary events over the next few weeks.

Known as in-Vitro meat or cultured meat, the burger required the creations of tens of billions of cells which were cultured from the neck of a cow obtained at a slaughterhouse. The burger essentially consists of 20,000 thin strips of cultured muscle tissue.  The meat was cultured through the use of stem cells and medical research that recently examined how to grow tissues and organs in a lab, a practice known as tissue engineering.

The goal of the lab burger is to eventually become completely meat-free. Fetal calf serum was still used to grow the cells, but the scientists eventually hope to replace that with non-animal parts. They also hope the burger will also lower methane gases.

However, there are also some major downfalls with the lab burger. It's not even close to being a cost-efficient venture at this point and many in the scientific community are concerned it won't be safe for consumption on a mass scale. Other researchers worry that the burgers simply won't live up to the taste consumers have come to expect.

The first round of funding was provided to the team via an anomymous donor. The researchers are now hoping to obtain additional funding for more research from different venues.

In other pricey food news, a $120 egg sandwich was also put out on the market today.