Researchers from the Netherlands unveiled a burger made entirely from lab-grown stem cells Monday, cooking and tasting the test tube meat at a media event in London. Dr. Mark Post, a professor at Maastricht University, heralded today's public tasting as an important step toward wide-scale adoption of synthetic meat — a transition that some see as a solution to looming environmental and agricultural crises.

The 5-ounce "cultured beef" burger was constructed from 20,000 protein strands grown from cow stem cells. The strands were compiled over the weekend and removed from a deep freezer on Monday. It cost $325,000 to produce, and was financed entirely by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. For Post, today's tasting marks the culmination of five years of research.

"we need to come up with an alternative, there's no question."

"The cells do the work on their own."

"The cells do the work on their own, we just provide the right conditions," Post told reporters Monday.

Post acknowledged that it will likely be "10 to 20 years" before cultured meat arrives on the market, citing high costs, low-volume production, and consumer apprehension as primary obstacles, though he remains confident that lab grown food could mitigate what many experts regard as an impending crisis. In a video released by Post's team, Brin said, "There are basically three things that can happen going forward. One is we will all become vegetarian -- I don't think that is really likely. The second is we ignore the issues, and that leads to continued environmental harm. And the third option is we do something new."

The world's population is expected to reach 9.6 billion by the year 2050, according to the latest projections from the United Nations. This growth is expected to put extra strain on global food supplies, and on meat, in particular. Worldwide demand for meat has increased dramatically in parallel with population levels, with consumption reaching 268 million tons in 2007 compared to just 70 million tons 50 years earlier. Demand is expected to increase with the growth of economic prosperity and middle class consumers in emerging markets like China and India.

Global crises loom on the horizon

Some estimate that food production will have to double over the next 50 years in order to feed the world's mushrooming population. But doing that through traditional agriculture will likely become more difficult due to climate change, widespread urbanization, and limited water supplies.

Post and others say artificial meat could offer a solution. A 2011 study from Oxford University found that synthetic meat would require just one percent of the land and four percent of the water that traditional livestock production currently uses. It would also present significant environmental benefits, the study found, reducing livestock-produced greenhouse gases by up to 96 percent, and using 45 percent less energy than conventional means.

But critics note that Post's technique still relies on genetic materials that originate from animals, and it's not clear whether a purely synthetic solution is on the horizon. Because the myosatellite cells he uses cannot reproduce infinitely, Post's technique will always rely on a supply of cow tissue.

Other researchers are pursuing similar projects. Scientists from Utrecht University have been working to extract embryonic stem cells from pigs and cattle, while researchers at the University of Missouri are developing a stem cell that could be derived from adult cells and reproduce indefinitely.

Skeptics have already labeled it "Frankenburger"