KFC announced recently that it will begin making some of its famous chicken nuggets with a 3-D printer. This “meat of the future” is being developed in partnership with 3D Printing Solutions, a research laboratory based in Russia. The lab will develop the food using “using chicken cells and plant material, allowing it to reproduce the taste and texture of chicken meat.”
There are a number of benefits of 3-D-printed chicken nuggets. It’s healthier because the chicken cells aren’t exposed to all the additives that live chickens are in farming environments. Also, no live chickens are killed to make them, so it’s more ethical. And last, according to Mashable, the American Environmental Science and Technology Journal reports that the technology “has minimal negative impact on the environment” because it significantly reduces energy consumption and greenhouse gases while using a lot less land.
The nuggets will become available in the fall of this year in Moscow, but there’s no word yet on when they might make their way over to the U.S.
