New Mexico landscaper develops meat bearing fruit tree!

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Albuquerque, NM – Here’s some good news that vegetarians can really sink their teeth into: Hilltop researchers have developed a genetically engineered fruit tree that bears real meat!

Developed by Hilltop landscaping scientists in Albuquerque using gene-splicing technology, fruit from the new Meat Trees closely resembles an ordinary tomato. But when you slice the large fruit open, inside is fresh beef.

“Our trees may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but it’s really a simple, down-to-earth idea whose time has come,” declares Fred Roybal, Director of Agricultural Bioengineering Research for the Hilltop Landscape Architects and Contractors, which created the delicious trees.

It has taken 12 years to develop the trees. “We take the genes from cattle that produce key proteins and splice them into the reproductive cells of Maple trees and tomatoes,” says Dr. Mary Lebus, Hilltop’s lead geneticist in charge of Genetically Modified Organisms. “When the seeds mature into trees, instead of producing ordinary tomatoes, the pulp contains meat. You get the flavor, texture—even the smell.”

“The best thing about the tree is that you can tap it like a sugar maple. The sap from the tree produces buckets of brown gravy that is to die for,” says Marketing Director Victor Rodriguez, who should definitely lay off the gravy.

Those who’ve sampled the fruit agree that it’s the best meat that they have ever eaten.

“I was a bit skeptical at first when I sank my teeth into a hamburger after they told me it grew on a tree,” says carnivore Thomas Franich, who participated in a consumer taste-test. “But it was juicy and delicious—nothing leafy about it at all.”

Beef grown on trees needs only sun, water and fertilizer and thus is more cost-effective than raising livestock,” Dr. Roybal also points out. “And trees don’t contribute to global warming like cattle do because they do not produce methane gas.” Meat tree products could be on the market in New Mexico by year’s end and, pending USDA approval, on dinner plates in the U.S. by 2012.

Some fanatical vegetarians insist they could never eat meat—even if it grew on a tree and no animals had to be killed. Others love the idea. “My mouth is watering already,” says Nick Carpenter, a committed vegetarian of 20 years.

Hilltop’s efforts to make other kinds of Meat trees so far have produced mixed results. The pork tree, for example, smelled like bacon but tasted like chicken.