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[00:01.47] An Australian company has made lab-grown meat using genetic information from a wooly mammoth, an extinct animal.

[00:13.96] The company launched the creation in a science museum in the Netherlands.

[00:19.26] It came just days before April 1, known as April Fools’ Day.

[00:28.03] “This is not an April Fools' joke,” said Tim Noakesmith, founder of the Australian company Vow. “This is a real innovation.”

[00:42.11] The lab-grown meat, also called cultivated or cell-based meat, is made from animal cells and grown in a lab.

[00:53.53] Animals do not need to be killed to produce them.

[00:59.37] Supporters of cultivated meat say it is better not just for the animals but also for the environment.

[01:10.26] The company, Vow, combined genetic information from the mammoth and African elephants, the mammoth’s closest living relative.

[01:23.55] The information was then put into a sheep muscle cell.

[01:29.39] In the lab, the cells increased in number until there were enough to make a meatball.

[01:37.63] More than 100 companies around the world are working on cultivated meat products.

[01:47.45] Experts say that if the technology becomes more common, it could greatly reduce the environmental impacts of meat production in the future.

[02:01.80] Currently, billions of hectares of land are used for meat production worldwide.

[02:10.83] Singapore is the only country so far to approve cultivated meat for humans to eat.

[02:19.86] Vow is hoping to sell its first product there — cultivated Japanese quail meat — later this year.

[02:30.22] Vow does not plan to put the mammoth meatball into production.

[02:36.59] Instead, the company created it to bring attention and get people talking about the future of meat.

[02:46.69] “We wanted to get people excited about the future of food… that there are things that are unique and better… and we thought the mammoth would be a conversation starter,” Noakesmith told The Associated Press.

[03:06.61] Seren Kell is science and technology manager at Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes plant- and cell-based food.

[03:21.21] Kell said companies usually use cells from farm animals and seafood to develop cultivated meat.

[03:31.31] She noted that lab-grown meat can help reduce emissions from animal agriculture and satisfy worldwide demand for meat.

[03:45.12] The large meatball shown in the Netherlands was only for show and not to be eaten.

[03:53.89] However, the meatball was cooked, and people could smell it.

[04:00.53] Noakesmith said people who were there said it smelled like another cultivated product the company had produced, which was crocodile.

[04:13.01] He added that it is “fascinating” to think about smelling something from an animal that has been extinct for thousands of years.