Lab-Grown Burger Fails Taste Test, But Gains PETA and Vegan Groups Support (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

The lab-grown burger failed taste tests on Monday, and organizations like PETA and the Vegetarian Society are supportive of the man-made meat, but will not be eating it anytime soon.

Two volunteers participated in the tasting of the lab-grown meat in London; Austrian nutritionist Hanni Ruetzler and U.S. journalist Josh Schonwald told reporters the is was "close to meat," but not as "juicy."

The biggest animal rights advocate groups, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), is all for cultivating the meat because it is "cruelty-free food," NBC reports.

However, it is too early to tell how healthy the lab-grown meat is and what side effects can come out of it.

PETA's leader Ingrid Newkirk told NBC she won't be trying it herself anytime soon.

"I don't need to," Newkirk told NBC News. "Any flesh food is totally repulsive to me. But I am so glad that people who don't have the same repulsion as I do will get meat from a more humane source. This gets rid of the yuck factor."

Vegetarians and vegans alike share the same distaste for the lab-grown meat.

"It is not an animal-free food yet," Liz O'Neill, a spokeswoman for the Vegetarian Society, told NBC,

O'Neill added her group wasn't invited to Monday's tasting, but they are supportive of the scientific accomplishment. 

"Some people are excited by it. Some people miss the taste of meat," O'Neill said.

Professor Mark Post research team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands developed the man-made meat using cells harvested from a cow. Researchers turned the cells into strips of muscle and combined them to create the burger patties.

"We are doing that because livestock production is not good for the environment, it is not going to meet demand for the world and it is not good for animals," Post told BBC.

Professor Tara Garnett, head of the Food Policy Research Network at Oxford University, told BBC she does not agree with Post's lab creation.

"We have a situation where 1.4 billion people in the world are overweight and obese, and at the same time one billion people worldwide go to bed hungry,"Garnett said. "That's just weird and unacceptable. The solutions don't just lie with producing more food but changing the systems of supply and access and affordability so not just more food but better food gets to the people who need it."