Slashdot Mirror
Space Meat Coming to your Kitchen
jdray writes "Australia's GizMag is running an article about the industrialization of a NASA-tested concept for artificially creating meat. The article mentions meat makers as home appliances. Carne-Matic aside, this sounds like a mixed blessing, and brings about visions of some sterile, Spandex-jumpsuit future where food production is controlled by some central authority, and real, hoof-grown meat is a rare delicacy. Remember, Soylent Green is people!" You can read a curiously familiar Slashdot story from a month ago too.
its called SPAM
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
I'm a vegetarian
sorry 'bout the mess...
For the benefit of my fellow Slashdotters, here is a place to whine about dupe articles. To wit:
0 6/1737228&tid=191&tid=14
l _meat_grown.html) could be produced to supply the world with animal-free meat products, like chickenless nuggets. This is based on experiments for NASA (link: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/03/22/fish .food/index.html), that created small amounts of fish protein cultured from single cells. According to the researchers, larger quantities could be grown in thin sheets and then stacked up to create thickness. Of course, they need to figure out a way to exercise it to make it taste like regular meat."
Large Scale Production of Artificial Meat
Posted by timothy on Wed Jul 06, '05 02:27 PM
from the vat-meat-cometh dept.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/
Fraser Cain writes "Scientists at the University of Maryland think that large quantities of artificial meat (link: http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/artificia
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I guess Giz Mag doesn't mean what I thought it did.
because they taste so good nobody will give them upo but at the moment they are bad for you, if someone could invent junk food that is actually healthy for us, the world would be a better place
of the summary? If it tastes the same, i would have zero problems with artificial meat.
I dont actually enjoy having animals slaughtered just for fun.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I wonder if this will be one of the first steps toward protein resequencers and eventually food replicators. Star Trek, here I come!
Let's hope the meat isn't sentient meat
guess what im gonna shape mine like ....
like my meat
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
"Looks like meat, tastes like meat, I'll bet there isn't any meat in here. Doubleplusgood!" - 1984
Kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich but the boss gets richer off you. --Dead Kennedys
In the future, I see no more grissle or stringy bits of fat etc. Cheapest meat will taste like the best eye fillet you can buy, and nothing had to die.
That's what we have now
Carne-Matic aside, this sounds like a mixed blessing, and brings about visions of some sterile, Spandex-jumpsuit future where food production is controlled by some central authority, and real, hoof-grown meat is a rare delicacy.
It's truly sickening to me the lengths that people go these days to ruin their eating experiences. Too many restaurants refuse to cook meat anything under "medium" - hell I'll sign a waiver to eat a burger medium rare! Too many people crinkle their nose unless you cook their meat to shoe leather and someone even asked me if I should be rushed to the hospital because my steak was "too pink".
All the fears in the world about animal borne disease (avian flu, mad cow disease, etc) have spawned even more "illness psychos" who are obsessed with the latest in 99.9% bacteria free soaps, hand lotions, and air filters. We are breeding a population of individuals that are more susceptible to illness than ever before!
Eat that fucking natural meat and cook it rare. When you are making some hamburger, wad up a ball, add some pepper and salt and eat it. I've done it since I was a kid and never had any ill effects.
I am beginning to enjoy food less and less (especially out here in the Midwest where they have no tastebuds) and bullshit like this will only make it worse. Sadly, people will love it... See, no bacteria - especially when I cook it till it's charcoal.
Blah.
Taco Bell has meat made out of used napkins and sauce, so I don't really see how this is a big deal.
...is brought to you by Soylent red and Soylent yellow, high energy vegetable concentrates, and new, delicious, Soylent green. The miracle food of high-energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
So I gotta hire a pastamancer now?
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
1.) Ability to control nutrients that go into meat -- Good thing.
2.) Ability to prevent salmonella poisoning from ever occurring in the general population in the far-off future -- Better.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
that a site called Gizmag would be telling me about the coming of man-made meat?
They had a sketch about the "sequel" to Soylent Green, Soylent Green 2, with Phil Hartman:
"Soylent green is STILL made out of people, . . . they didn't change the recipe like they said they were going to! It's still PEOPLE! " - Phil Hartman as Charleton Heston in the never-before-seen "Soylent Green 2".
"The article mentions meat makers as home appliances. Carne-Matic aside, this sounds like a mixed blessing, and brings about visions of some sterile, Spandex-jumpsuit future where food production is controlled by some central authority, and real, hoof-grown meat is a rare delicacy."
Yeah, because I know all my home appliances are controlled by the government. I get a Toaster Use Coupon every Tuesday in the mail so I can use the toaster 3 times a week between the hours of 4-6 PM. Thank god for the central authority.
I don't see what the problem is. If the meat tastes like meat and has roughly the same protein and calorie content but costs much less then this can only be a good thing, right? Maybe we won't need to raise millions of cows just for meat production and we can change some of the food crop over to something more useful like grains.
I just don't understand how being able to synthesize food in every home in America means there would suddenly be a shortage of non-synthesized food, strictly controlled by the government.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
While this could help with hunger in third-world countries, I would imagine most other people would reject it as "Franklin' Nuggets". It'll be interesting to see PETA's stance, since those type of people tend to also be against artificially created food (and even genetic engineering).
For those vegetarians who support stem cell research, how can there be any ethical complaint about this kind of meat?
Of course, there are many excellent reasons to be vegetarian. (Health, nutrition, efficient use of resources, etc.) This doesn't mean vegetarians have to start eating meat.
But I would love to hear what the militant PETA-types who say 'meat is murder' have to say about this!
Spandex-jumpsuit future where food production is controlled by some central authority
Uh, FDA? USDA?
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
I want the Lie detector glasses!
Some of the text of the article (as we have managed to make the site go KAAABOOOM!)
A new lie detection technology promises remarkable benefits in determining whether people are telling you the truth IN REAL TIME. The technology is already being tested in a wide variety of applications such as anti-terrorism, law enforcement, and insurance claim assessment and has even been built into a pair of glasses with internal LED lights which will run a real-time analysis of conversations of the wearer, reporting on the veracity of the person the wearer is speaking to with a claimed accuracy of better than 95%.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Opposed to what, a sterile, buisness-suited present where food production is controlled by large corporations who are more concerned about the bottom line than the welfare of either the customers or the animals used to make the food?
/. that every submitter comment try and pass off a technological innovation as being Orwellian/reckless/sinister with some sort of boneheaded Luddite comment?
Decentralized 'meat' production where there's no suffering involved, the risk of dangerous bacterial contamination from slaughterhouse processing is gone, the consumer has moer direct control over what antibiotics and hormones, if any, go into their meat is such an Orwellian idea.
Since when did it become required in
Well, I see two ways of this going
1) Meat quality increasing and price decreasing (since anyone can "grow" their own) thereby leading to more healthy eating which would be the utopian way
OR
2) The demand for meat overtaking the quantity that can realistically be produced and thereby allowing a few people to grow/sell meat for a huge profit, thereby increasing the cost.
What this all hinges on of course is if they make this technology available to the everyday person in their home.
Where exactly did you get the idea that the meat you were eating now was somehow natural?
I'd love to see meat machines sucking CO2 and CH4 out of the air, generating proteins for humans to eat. Every McDonalds burgur (they're fake anyway) represents hundreds of pounds of Greenhouse gases pumped into the air from petro fuels, fertilizers and pesticides. If this machine were made energy-efficient, it could cut out tremendous waste of both energy and exhaust. Like a solar oven that literally makes its own sauce. Carbon sequestration that tastes better than pine forests.
--
make install -not war
Jeez, lighten up. There are plenty of technologically-induced distopias to worry about. This one ranks near the bottom of the list. First of all, food is pretty much already controlled by a central authority (ADM anyone?). Besides, have you ever been inside an abattoir, or within 5 miles of an industrial hog farm? The idea of eating meat without killing cows (and mad cow disease!) seems pretty good to me.
If you absolutely must freak about technology, worry about what happens when your health insurance company can do genetic screening on you. The go watch GATTACA.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
I approve of this, as the meats' being synthetic may remove certain taboos currently in the way of good eatins. I'll be first in line at my area's new Manburger stand.
I'm not too sure people are going to line up to buy Carn-o-matics. There may be an insurmountable psychological barrier to getting people even try meat grown in a lab/machine. It sounds kinda disgusting and maybe it's because I have seen "Soylent Green".
I could, however, see this as a useful thing as an aid in sending humans into space. What better for long trips than a self-generating source of protein.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Unless you grow it yourself, this is already effectively the case, isn't it? If you're not making a deliberate effort to the contrary, the bulk of the food you eat is likely to come from large operations and national chains.
Mind the Gap
If the meat is wholly synthetic, and never came from a living animal, I think that most vegetarians would find it difficult to say no to it.
However, haven spoken to my vegan wife about a similar issue just yesterday (cloned meat), if the fake meat originated from the cell of one real animal, it still goes against the basic constructs of veganism.
It's not all about how the animal is treated, it's just that it is animal flesh.
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
Remember, Soylent Green is people!
Augh! Now you've ruined the ending for me!
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
...would it be Kosher?
:)
and if so, Pareve or Fleishik?
Think of the possibilities!
-phozz
Academic Paper Says Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab on Industrial Scale
August 16, 2005 Experiments for NASA space missions have shown that small amounts of edible meat can be created in a lab. But the technology that could grow chicken nuggets without the chicken, on a large scale, may not be just a science fiction fantasy. In a recent paper in the Tissue Engineering journal, a team of scientists has proposed two new techniques of tissue engineering that may one day lead to affordable production of in vitro - lab grown - meat for human consumption. It is the first peer-reviewed discussion of the prospects for industrial production of cultured meat. "There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat," says University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny, who studies agricultural economics and public health. "For one thing, you could control the nutrients. For example, most meats are high in the fatty acid Omega 6, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems. With in vitro meat, you could replace that with Omega 3, which is a healthy fat.
"Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat."
Prime Without the Rib
The idea of culturing meat is to create an edible product that tastes like cuts of beef, poultry, pork, lamb or fish and has the nutrients and texture of meat.
Scientists know that a single muscle cell from a cow or chicken can be isolated and divided into thousands of new muscle cells. Experiments with fish tissue have created small amounts of in vitro meat in NASA experiments researching potential food products for long-term space travel, where storage is a problem.
"But that was a single experiment and was geared toward a special situation - space travel," says Matheny. "We need a different approach for large scale production."
Matheny's team developed ideas for two techniques that have potential for large scale meat production. One is to grow the cells in large flat sheets on thin membranes. The sheets of meat would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked on top of one another to increase thickness.
The other method would be to grow the muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The mature cells could then be harvested and turned into a processed meat, like nuggets or hamburgers.
Treadmill Meat
To grow meat on a large scale, cells from several different kinds of tissue, including muscle and fat, would be needed to give the meat the texture to appeal to the human palate.
"The challenge is getting the texture right," says Matheny. "We have to figure out how to 'exercise' the muscle cells. For the right texture, you have to stretch the tissue, like a live animal would."
Where's the Beef?
And, the authors agree, it might take work to convince consumers to eat cultured muscle meat, a product not yet associated with being produced artificially.
"On the other hand, cultured meat could appeal to people concerned about food safety, the environment, and animal welfare, and people who want to tailor food to their individual tastes," says Matheny. The paper even suggests that meat makers may one day sit next to bread makers on the kitchen counter.
"The benefits could be enormous," Matheny says. "The demand for meat is increasing world wide -- China 's meat demand is doubling every ten years. Poultry consumption in India has doubled in the last five years.
"With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that's better for the environment and human health. In the long term, this is a very feasible idea."
Matheny saw so many advantages in the idea that he joined several other scientists in starting a nonprofit, New Harvest, to advance the technology. One of these scientists, Henk Haagsman, Professor of Meat Science at Utrecht University, received a grant from the Dutch government to produce cultured meat, as part of a national initiative to reduce the environmental impact of food production.
SPACE MEAT!
Well, it all started in 1962... Utilizing advances in modern food synthesis, scientists at NASA began work on a germ hostile space meat to be used into long expeditions in deep space! Only recently has their hard work paid off. As even more advances in the field of space meat have been made and applied to what is now known as operation meat. Seeing this as a way to end their streak of being sued by angry costumers poisoned by their burgers, the Mac Meaties corporation decided to try this miraculous space meat. Not having access to that technology, we make ours out of napkins.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
A Muslim co-worker and I (I'm an Orthodox Jew, for reference) had a brief discussion of whether you could actually eat artificial pork. I'm _reasonably sure_ that under halakha, you could - meat is really defined as something that comes off an animal, and whatever this stuff is, if it doesn't come off an animal, it wouldn't have the halakhic status of meat. He also agreed that Shaaria would _probably_ not have an issue with it, either.
/., methinks.
I think the ideological implications are more interesting (fake bacon is one thing, but this...), but those aren't really of any concern on
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
NASA prolly has never been to Arby's. They've been doing that for years! Same goes for their cheese.
What is wrong with people that they feel that they have to mess with my food so that they can make a bigger profit?
To be honest, I doubt that I will ever have to eat the ultimate in processed food, so I won't get too upset about it, but I wonder about all those less blessed than myself that will have no choice, or are to ignorant to make the choice.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Chicken Little, the immortal chicken tumor, finally comes of age!
I stayed at a Hotel in the UK called the Solent Green...
They've been serving this stuff in school lunch rooms across the nation for decades! Usually covered with cold greasy brown gravy.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Excellent. Maybe now we can use some of those stem cells to create man meat. It wouldn't even be cannabalism because stem cells aren't people. Yummy.
--Kevin
Can anyone still be vegetarian if the meat is synthetic? The ethical and environmental reasons go straight out the window if it grows on trees or in a steel box.
Can I use my Super Bass-O-Matic 76?
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Jasper: Moon Pie! What a time to be alive.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
So now we got no reason what ever to keep living animals on this earth?
Have you notis that almost every not eatable animal is dangerus close to being extinct?
brings about visions of some sterile, Spandex-jumpsuit future where food production is controlled by some central authority, and real, hoof-grown meat is a rare delicacy. Remember, Soylent Green is people!
:\
And I thought Slashdot's unlimited, completely baseless paranoia had reached its pinnacle
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I'll have the soylent green with a slice of soylent orange and some soylent coleslaw.
Technoli
Perhaps iRobot could combine the Carne-Matic with a Roomba like lawnmower? Cowbot anyone?
There are several reasons why i'm vegetarian, and a couple of them have simply to do with how many animals are raised. Vat-meat surely avoids the cruelty of penned-up animals but the idea of meat which literally just sits there as it grows is really unappealing. If i were to eat meat, i'd prefer it to be free-range. It can only be healthier.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Look what it did to the webpage! Unable to connect to DB - Access denied for user: 'root@localhost' (Using password: NO) OMG DOD IS COMING RUNNZER!
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
Unable to connect to DB - Access denied for user: 'root@localhost' (Using password: NO)
Are we celebrating Australia Day today on Slashdot? I for one, welcome our new Australian overlords.
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in an election.
...produce a substance that's almost, but not quite, entirely unlike steak!
If they can do this, why not GMO the cell line to add seasonings. Genes for the synthesis of various flavor molecules, sugars, acids, and capsaicins could make the meat any flavor you want.
The company could sell a range of preflavored cell line starter kits for ChiliBeef(tm), CurryLamb(tm), and LemonPepperChicken(tm). No more unsightly spice racks in the kitchen, no more crying over cut onions, no more confusion over how much seasoning to add.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
(page 1)
August 16, 2005 Experiments for NASA space missions have shown that small amounts of edible meat can be created in a lab. But the technology that could grow chicken nuggets without the chicken, on a large scale, may not be just a science fiction fantasy. In a recent paper in the Tissue Engineering journal, a team of scientists has proposed two new techniques of tissue engineering that may one day lead to affordable production of in vitro - lab grown - meat for human consumption. It is the first peer-reviewed discussion of the prospects for industrial production of cultured meat. "There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat," says University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny, who studies agricultural economics and public health. "For one thing, you could control the nutrients. For example, most meats are high in the fatty acid Omega 6, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems. With in vitro meat, you could replace that with Omega 3, which is a healthy fat.
"Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat."
Prime Without the Rib
The idea of culturing meat is to create an edible product that tastes like cuts of beef, poultry, pork, lamb or fish and has the nutrients and texture of meat.
Scientists know that a single muscle cell from a cow or chicken can be isolated and divided into thousands of new muscle cells. Experiments with fish tissue have created small amounts of in vitro meat in NASA experiments researching potential food products for long-term space travel, where storage is a problem.
"But that was a single experiment and was geared toward a special situation - space travel," says Matheny. "We need a different approach for large scale production."
(page 2)
Matheny's team developed ideas for two techniques that have potential for large scale meat production. One is to grow the cells in large flat sheets on thin membranes. The sheets of meat would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked on top of one another to increase thickness.
The other method would be to grow the muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The mature cells could then be harvested and turned into a processed meat, like nuggets or hamburgers.
Treadmill Meat
To grow meat on a large scale, cells from several different kinds of tissue, including muscle and fat, would be needed to give the meat the texture to appeal to the human palate.
"The challenge is getting the texture right," says Matheny. "We have to figure out how to 'exercise' the muscle cells. For the right texture, you have to stretch the tissue, like a live animal would."
(page 3)
Where's the Beef?
And, the authors agree, it might take work to convince consumers to eat cultured muscle meat, a product not yet associated with being produced artificially.
"On the other hand, cultured meat could appeal to people concerned about food safety, the environment, and animal welfare, and people who want to tailor food to their individual tastes," says Matheny. The paper even suggests that meat makers may one day sit next to bread makers on the kitchen counter.
"The benefits could be enormous," Matheny says. "The demand for meat is increasing world wide -- China 's meat demand is doubling every ten years. Poultry consumption in India has doubled in the last five years.
"With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that's better for the environment and human health. In the long term, this is a very feasible idea."
Matheny saw so many advantages in the idea that he joined several other scientists in sta
In related news, Apple will be introducing the iBurger, available for production from their authorized iFood appliances only. Also, Apple will introduce the iWhiteCastle, for the fast-food-nation.
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/t en.2005.11.659
meat dress
I believe the correct term would be "Franken-nuggets". Let's leave Benjamin Franklin out of this...
100% of the people I've talked to who have played Russian roulette have never had any ill effects either.
There are substantial environment benefits to making meat and other foods in the lab. Farming causes more environment distruction then any other industry. While some industries pollute the land, the damage can be reduced with better technology.
Farming converts vast tracts onto a monoculture completely replacing the natural environment. North America used to have vast amounts of grasslands and millions of Bison. Now the whole area is covered with farms and people are only dimly aware that there was ever anything else there before.
Most species are made extinct by habitat distruction and most habitat distruction is mostly caused by farming.
Stuff like this will never see the light of day... too many ranchers, their offspring, etc to consider.
Why exactly is this terrifying?
Now you would think that considering the HUGE resistance the market already has shown to:
1) Irradiated food
2) Genetically modified food
Somone is bound to ask themselves "yes but, will people actually eat this stuff"?
Yeah I know it's funny how people think nothing of biting into their testicle-and-intestines "100% beef" burgers, yet refuse to eat something because it has a few extra DNA base-pairs. But I doubt very much the public would go for this.
Of course, there's always someone on some board of directors of "Burgers Inc." that is thinking "yes but do we have to tell them?"
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I thought that was your sig.
whereas todays article is from Australia! Which makes it all the more relevant.
The cost of mammalian cell tissue culture is enourmous. Sterile conditions, special media, possible use of bovine calf serum (itself an issue of vCJD concern), recombinant cytokines, cell isolation, TCPS vessels. Not to mention the completely unknown issue of taste and texture. I really hope that no chemical engineers were involved in this.
There is already a very cheap, self assembling, self reproducing meat machine known as the cow. I am disgusted by this pathetic example of wasted research time and money. Mycoprotein production would be far more efficient for space flight.
Googled and found a pdf of a contributing "science journalism" masters student's mini-thesis on this. An estimate quoted in the paper is $5 million per kg.
You can read a curiously familiar Slashdot story from a month ago too.
Its not bad enough that the editors "accidentally" post dupes, they have to go looking through the archives to make sure it is a dupe first? What the hell is going on here? I've stumbled into a world where meat is grown in my kitchen and slashdot editors purposely post dupes.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
"Mmmmm. Space meat....gaaaarrrgggg..."
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
The carne-matic will come online about the time we have working fusion power: many many years from now.
You'd be hard pressed to find a vegetarian who'll eat this stuff...
with spray bacon
Now we can ship mass quantities of synthetic meat to the 3rd-world countries (thus solving part of world hunger and getting them to shut up), and keep all the home-grown meat for us.
Sounds like win-win.
I'm a vegetarian out of wanting to live without cruelty (shame about my dress sense, and humour). So the reasons I wouldn't eat cultured meat are firstly, that I just don't want to. Secondly, for the same reason, I don't wear fake fur (apart from just not liking it that is), that if people like the fake, they might like the real thing even more.
Anna, Cambridge UK
Of course they're All Beef Patties. They come from the All Beef company after all.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
But do honestly think that the average consumer of a Big Mac is going to be able to notice?
Most vegans (including myself) aren't against eating animal-derived products simply because they're derived from animals (though as a coping mechanism, you do eventually see things like a plain glass of milk or a block of cheese as pretty gross..which, if you think about it, they really are), but because of how they're derived. Good for instances include milk and eggs; in both cases, when you're mass-producing either product, it's practically inefficient to keep around very many males around, as only a few are necessary for the continuation of product, and extra animals hanging around consume a large amount of resources. I mean, milking a cow isn't intrinsically wrong, though it is weird when you think about it, but continually inseminating in animal in order to continually retrieve a product (or in this case, a raw good..either way, though) from it is pretty messed up from my POV.
Back to those male cows though: you've got a lot of them, but you can't just kill them, that would be resource consuming in and of itself, so what do you do? You sell them off for veal. They, more often than not, have their hooves nailed to the tiny cages they'll spend the rest of their lives in, before being slaughtered for a delicacy. If I chose not to eat meat, but consumed a lot of dairy, I'd be directly funding one of the most inhumane (again, POV) parts of the industry I was personally boycotting. Male egg chicks are at least disposed of quickly, but usually not disposed of, generally just discarded, i.e. in a dumpster or elsewhere.
So yeah, those are my main reasons for not partaking in animal products. It'd require some deep thought, but initially I'd say that yes, it is possible that I'd consume products that were derived from an animal, so long as it was humane, sterile, and non-harmful to the animal. This seems, again initally, like a pretty non-invasive procedure, and there will probably always be host animals around, hopefully ones living happy lives.
*Note: I'm not in anyway trying to proselytize here; I'm not telling you what to do, think, eat, or say. The above information is accurate, as far as I'm concerned.
--- What
I'm sure when you typed that, you KNEW that someone would ask you about this - I actually thought your post was well written, but WHY in the world can't you type the word MEAT? That is the worst omission I have ever seen.
MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT.
as long as you've processed it properly. The problem in modern industrial processing which is so hygenically challeneged that there is a reasonable chance that there are bad bugs in your ground beef. Since the restaraunt you eat in doesn't know that your family isn't going to sue them for a billion dollars when you die from food borne illness, they cook it 'til most of the bugs (and taste) are dead.
I'm sure they'll serve you up a real hunk of meat as rare as you like it, as long as the outside has been seared. That's what is so great about real steak. The meat iteself is almost never contaminated except at the outside surface and where the cells have been cut. Personally, I prefer my steak just on the rare side of medium (very warm, pinkish-red center). Medium rare is a little to squishy for me, and rare adds the "yuk" of being cool in the center. Opinions vary, of course. In fact, if you're meticulous, you can grind your own beef and still eat it rare (Steak Tar Tar anyone?), though its not a particular taste/texture I prefer.
BTW - as far as medium priced chains go, I've found that the Outback Steakhouse does the best job of bringing you a hunk-o-beef that has been cooked closest to your desired doneness. Most other restauraunts cook to one level above where you ask. (And don't tell me Mortons does a good job, too. They do, but I don't count them as medium priced. Medium priced to me does not mean $50 a plate).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Don't even ask what J-E-L-L-O is made of!
Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 37 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In the article, the following is seen:
One of these scientists, Henk Haagsman, Professor of Meat Science at Utrecht University, received a grant from the Dutch government to produce cultured meat, as part of a national initiative to reduce the environmental impact of food production.
Who doesn't want to grow up to study "Meat" Science? Personally, I think it ranks right up there with Astronaut, President of the U.S., and DotCom Billionaire.
http://www.clevercaption.com/221.html
I'd eat it if it was nutritious. I'm a vegetarian simply because I don't want to kill animals and I could probably use the protein.
EVERYTHING has to die sooner or later, whether you eat it or not.
Interestingly, the anti-script image is "victim."
One of the other reasons I'm a vegetarian is that meat is a lousy way to convert sunlight into a form that people can eat. From plants to animals to people, the steps involve a significant loss of energy. The Earth has limited resources, especially useful land, and six billion people wanting their daily hamburger scares me.
It's hard finding facts on how many pounds of grain translate into pounds of meat. The beef.org site lists 2.6 pounds while other places list dozens. Just to pick a number, let's say 90% of the calories from plant material is lost in making non-edible cow parts, reproduction, etc. That's still a considerable loss of energy.
Now it may be that this new process is more efficient, but I doubt it. The mechanical energy spent on "exercising" the muscles alone seems rather unnecessary.
I suspect that a carefully chosen vegetarian diet would save far more energy than trying to grow sheets of meat. On a spacecraft, wasting lots of energy isn't something you can casually do.
Utilizing advances in modern food synthesis, scientists at NASA began work on a germ hostile spaaaaace meeeeeeat to be used into long expeditions in deeeeeep spaaaaaaaace!
Only recently has their hard work paid off.
As even more advances in the field of spaaaace meeeeeat have been made and applied to what is now known as operation meeeeeeat.
Seeing this as a way to end their streak of being sued by angry costumers poisoned by their burgers, the Mac Meaties corporation decided to try this miraculous spaaaaace meeeeeat.
Not having access to that technology, we make ours out of napkins.
--Credits go to Invader Zim.
Soylent Green. Need I say more
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." Linus Torvalds
One of my best mates is vegetarian, sterilises everything in site, won't eat anything that doesn't come from a shop in a little plastic packet, won't eat food that's within a week of its "Use By" date, and won't drink anything other than bottled water unless it's been boiled and filtered. He's always got a cold, or a throat infection, or a stomach bug, or some damn thing.
I'm not exactly sure how a wadded up ball of ground chuck with a bit of salt and pepper qualifies as haut cuisine (maybe in the Midwest?) With this kind of appetite, I don't see how pseudo-beef would be that unappealing to you...now give me 16 oz. of Kobe beef done rare and an ice cold Big Rock beer, and then your talking goot eating!
On another note, I wonder if this is thrilling the pants off people in India (sorry for the visual); burgers off the hoof, so to speak...or would this be regarded a corruption of something sacred?
----
I'm drowning here, and you're describing the water!
1) Ability to control nutrients that go into meat -- terrible, because expensive nutrients can be harvested (leaving a lot of people with deficiencies), as well as not-well-know-but-important nutrients can be forgotten and left out.
2) Ability to prevent salmonella poisoning from ever occurring in the general population in the far-off future -- worse, lowering overall population's immunity and effectively creating the possibility of a biological weapon. I am immune to small-pox and chicken-pox, are you?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
This makes me feel like running through a crowd yelling like a maniac.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Takes like chicken.
Someone should've told that to Stephen Hawkins before he did the awful "keep talking" ad for British Telecom :-)
Seriously though, I can't imagine what spin you could put on this to tempt the general public (let alone vegetarians) to eat this pseudofood... Probably just as well I'm not in marketing...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
At least in the US, where such an innovation will crush (or at least severely cripple) an entire industry. I'm quite sure the government won't allow that to happen, lest they lose a nice stream of moolah. (Just like we'll never be allowed to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels.)
s/in site/in sight/
Yes, and Al Gore invented the internet.
Yes, just like artificial sweeteners taste like the finest quality cane sugar or honey. Truly an age of marvels we live in.
I couldn't agree more... Oh, here he is, I'll order for us.
I'll have the SynthVeal(tm) and my friend here will have the SynthFlankSteak(tm), with extra sarcasm.
Oh.. and a diet coke.
And, keep the soylent chips coming my good man!
Heck, school cafeterias have been serving it up for years!
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Mcdonalds's new slogan. Try our new nuggets, picked fresh daily!
M**t is just muscle tissue, isn't it? So would it be possible to make this stuff move? Obviously you would have to arrange to supply it with glucose and oxygen, and get rid of the lactic acid that resulted, but if you could take care of that you ought to be able to give it a slight electrical stimulus and have it do more mechanical work than you put in electricity {the extra energy coming from burning up some of the glucose}.
.....
If you coupled the muscle to a loudspeaker cone, and fed an audio signal into the muscle, you would effectively have an amplifier that runs on sugar water! But more sensibly, have some sort of crank mechanism which could be used to turn an alternator. The speed of rotation, and thus the output frequency, would depend on the input frequency. So you could certainly use this thing in a power grid situation.
The next stage would be making artificial chlorophyll, so you could manufacture the glucose to run your bio-engine by photosynthesis. Build in the plant to decompose lactic acid to CO2 {to feed the photosynthesis} and it's now a closed cycle, powered by daylight
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Does this mean and end to the inflatable partner?
So you'd choose butchered animal over non-animal? The ick-factor outweighs the fact that a life would be ended?
Given that attribute a moral value to the actual life of the critter (by not eating them at all, as opposed to finding free-ranged meat available in your area), this position seems morally indefensible. This is regardless of your statement that you do not plan of eating meat, of course.
Personally, I wouldn't mind eating vat-grown meat. It'd have an odd shape, not being used for things like locomotion, but it would be healthier, more plentiful (cheap!), potentially better tasting and more widely available.
I enjoy the occasional steak, but for the most part meat in my diet is a flavoring or small side dish.
I'm quite aware of where my food comes from and have on occasion in the past handled that from beginning to end for most forms of food. I'm neither ignorant of or shirk from the realities of meat in our society.
With that said: I would be quite happy with a meat product that was not produced by killing animals. I would be especially happy with one that was healthier for me, the added benefits of quality control and improved taste and varieties. Last but not least, I would be happy to increase my consumption if I could do so without compromising my health.
Amazing:
People will be against it because it's not natural.
People will refuse to accept it as a protein source for disadvantaged because it's not natural.
People will harm other people while protesting against it.
Amusing:
People will have tremendous arguments about calling it meat.
People will argue religious positions for and against it based on religious rules about various animals.
People will create artificial shortages of good quality varieties in the name of profit. And will manipulate governments to make laws protecting their profit margins.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
The nice thing about lab meat is you can have such a wide variety of styles and flavors built in from the factory floor. You can have beer massaged Kobe beef at a fraction of the price. You can have built in italian, bbq, greek, etc. seasoning. All this and more for a fraction of the cost.
Hell, I eat meat and I still prefer good veggie burgers to meat ones due to the lack of flavor in the vast majority of meat burgers and the amount of time it takes to make one. I can spend 20 minutes making the perfect Mexican-flavor-esqe burger or I can microwave an equally tasty Morning Star Fajita Burger in 1 minute.
YMMV,
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
SPAceMeat
with Jdray. "Sterile", or humane? And home appliances would of course be much less centralized than the current system. But more importantly, artificial meat could be one key to a sustainable future.
A lot of people have moral qualms about killing animals for food, and their numbers are growing. I think this growth may, ironically, be correlated with increasing urbanization: as fewer people are involved in the process of raising -- and butchering -- farm animals, there's less desensitization to it. Urbanites experience animals most often as pets, rather than as servants or foodstock. Of course, most of these people still eat meat -- but even that is a less visceral experience than it used to be, with undifferentiated meat prodcuts like hamburger and chicken "nuggets" making up a large portion of what's consumed. So, although it's become easier for the average person to avoid confronting the realities of the slaughterhouse, it makes more of an impact when they finally do.
I think these changes are all to the good. I'm not (yet) a vegetarian myself, but I gotta admit, I'm sympathetic. And if artificial meat makes the switch easier, I think that's wonderful.
There's an even deeper problem with (natural) meat, though -- one which I even believe could, in combination with the spread of vegetarianism, lead to its complete abandonment within the next century. The problem is the cost. Not simply the monetary cost, which is an imperfect reflection of the true cost; but the fact that meat is incredibly inefficient. You can feed grain to cattle, and then feed the cattle to people; or you can feed grain directly to people. Skipping the cattle step lets you feed several times as many people. The price of meat already reflects this, to some extent, and it's only going to go up. But one of the largely uncounted costs is deforestation, as more and more land is cleared to create grazing grounds for larger and larger herds. This is a major factor in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, with very far-reaching consequences. We haven't paid much of that cost, yet -- but one way or another, we will. The sooner we can replace those herds with artificial meat, the less the blow will be.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Second, it will only be a matter of time before human meat is grown by this method. And you thought bacon was tasty!
A small sideways thought: I wonder what rabbis will have to say about this. Since the pork chops wouldn't come off of an actual pig, would it be kosher or not? Also, that bit at communion where Christians say "this is my body," wouldn't it be cool if they could use actual human flesh?
This is not my sandwich.
Yah, someone needs to spank the DB admin. Or at least take away his cookies.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
it's also worth noting that cows can be used for a lot more useful purposes than dairy / beef products... ie, you can have sex with them !
Arthur C. Clarke's last book of the series covered the issue of artificial meat. The premise was that an animal borne sickness like "Mad Cow" spread too animals making meat products too dangerous to eat. (I believe he is a vegetarian). He used a repulsive term to describe the "barbaric" idea of eating animals, corpse-food? While the idea of disease spreading enough fear to drive mankind to other solutions is interesting the whole of the novel came off as a giant preaching session.
It isn't as if raising cattle, pigs, and chickens is more efficient than raising soybeans. The issue has always been taste and texture. Usuallly they can get close on one and miss the other. Hopefully they get it perfected before we don't have a choice
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Doesn't Civ CTP have a "Beef Vat" that sounds awfully like this - except it actually adds to your polution levels...
Splenda comes damn close and this is coming from a former pastry chef. I just wish you could bake a creme brulee with it.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
If nutrients only go to grow muscle cell the efficiency can go from 10 to 20 parts of food to 1 part of meat to only 2 or 5.
That is a very large saving of resources, it might be something to consider in the future.
They could just take a tissue sample by a biopsy. Then the "donor pork chop" wouldn't actually have to die.
Or would that still be too much harm?
Putting moderation advice in your
Sorry, can't help myself...
... sounding more and more like a poll ...
We could call it:
Not Dogs
Fakin Bacon
Bogus Burgers
Faux Fish
Fake Steak
FLR
Artificial sweeteners aren't sugar, while artificial meat will be meat, it will have the same makeup
How about us unscrupulous, unethical vegetarian types?
It may come across as some sort of pure metals, ramrod-straight-backbone ethical decision from the outside, but most vegetarians choose their diet for a variety of reasons. Has some to do with how animals are raised and slaughtered on corporate farms, maybe, and some to do with health, and lots with taste.
If I'm any representative, and I'm at least someone who doesn't tend to order or prepare meat when I have other decent choices, well... ick? I don't eat "tofurkey" for Thanksgiving dinner, why do I want someone else's take on pretend meat?
As far as the ethics of meat that doesn't come from an animal go, I dunno, ask me when I'm confronted with an actual system. Lots of stuff that doesn't seem to carry any particular moral weight -- transportation, for example -- does if you consider it in context. Buying a Hummer would not be my choice, and that's partly for reasons to do with ethics, yeah... (Also taste, again.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Come on, the first thing I thought about was culturing human cells. It's TOO EASY. Same goes for genetically altered meat cultured for particular flavors and nutritional properties.
No, the real future is not cultured human meat, but cultured meat from A human. How about that well-marbled Pamela Anderson? Or fresh-faced Lindsey Lohan? Maybe a slab of vintage Schwartzenegger is more to your liking, or a Lebron James fillet.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Fake meat already exist... It`s called a Big Mac from Mc Donald. Ok, Ok, I know that the 1% of real meat in it is 100% beef...
Remember... A boomerang IS NOT the best way to deliver a bomb.
I for one believe that we dont have complete understanding of all inter linking realtionships to be able to generate artificial meat , sure it may taste and feel the same , but food that is sterile can have unknown effects - reduce your immunity for one.
Thank goodness the Whole Foods crowd is so politically correct that they'd never pick up a gun or a bow and go hunting for game. There's nothing better than venison, or leaner than upland game bird meat. Since getting it yourself requires real work, an understanding of true wildlife conservation, and a willingness to actually connect your own actions to the death of the animal you're going to eat... there will always be fewer yuppies and more good old boys out procuring the very best meat there is.
Of course, there are exceptions - somebody has to pay for those $20,000 designer quail shotguns and book rooms at those $1000/night lodges. But those are the upper-class people who actually get it, so they're welcome aboard.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I prefer ground up raw Gungan. Tar Tar Binks!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Try the new Kitchen-Aid CarneMatic, you can't beat our meat.
Sure, if it looks like meat, tastes like meat, and if my body doesn't know the difference, I'll give it a shot.
However, having grown up on a dairy and beef farm, there is nothing more satisfying than a good slab of heated cow flesh.
I'm an omnivore, have always been. I hate plants as well as animals.
There was a militant vegan in my office. Ignoring her leather shoes and so on, she used to scoff me for my lunch. Smirkingly and smarmingly eating a banana like she was -superior- to me. "You know. Cows are superior to Bananas." "Impossible!" "Sure. After I'm done eating -MY- lunch, -I- can wear the peel."
Unlike her, I've -seen- cows in person. I grew up on a farm. I -know- just how mind numbingly stupid cows are. I mean, they're nearly as dumb as your average member of $political_party. I mean, the cow's -ONLY- saving grace, is that they are tasty. (Mind you, I'm not of the faith that considers cows to be sacred.)
I eat steak, chicken, fish, you name it. If its the flesh of a formerly living creature, there's a good chance I'd consider it food. Make it as rare as safe. I want to -taste- the meat. Steak Sauce? Sure, but -only- if I really, really f'ed up the cooking. She? Strictly Vegan, has been most of her life.
I take practically no sick leave from work. If I'm out sick, people are surprised, and wonder about me when I return. Her? She was out sick constantly. Anyone so much as wrote 'Germs' on a post-it, and she had a three day cold.
I'd like to think that -maybe- my diet contributed to a more formidable immune system.
As far as I am concerned, this is a cheap shot at Linda Rondstadt. There is nothing wrong with Spandex, and this prejudice is hurting the future. People will no doubt be bothered by food replicators and cheap fusion power. People may fight food with extra vitimens, and also believe that bionic eyes and ears are bad. When will this "everthing coming from the dirt is good and everything originating from our imagination is bad" prejudice end?
Speaking as a vegetarian of eight years (and a vegan of three), I would love to see this technology actively pursued. I abhor the practice of raising and killing other animals for their meat, and hate the fact that we continue to do it. However, realistically, the only way that said practice will be ended is if a suitable replacement is found. People (Buddhists aside) are just not going to give up meat in large numbers--it's already too deeply ingrained in us, and in our culture. If it was possible to separate the production of meat from the cruelty of farming, then not only would this dilemma be ended, but an enormous waste of food energy might be eliminated as we remove the need to feed livestock (rule of 10% and all that). I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and I wish the folks at NASA well.
PTR
when is Space Meat coming to Kingdom of Loathing?!?
I'm sure my level 10 Pastamancer could use some.
I haven't seen anyone talk about this yet, but this will open up a much bigger can of worms then most people think. Examples:
* Monkey Meat - People will no longer have the taboo associated with eat Chimm Chimm.
* Cannibals - Someone with phrack one of these units and take a human muscle sample (your own, a friend, a famous person, ect.) so they can indulge in eating human flesh.
* Faked Identities - take someone's DNA, grow it, and use it in an examine.
* Faked Deaths - take your own DNA, grow it, and put it into a house fire.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!
is that the meat is safer now that it ever has been, what with the saner approach to antibiotics and the more sterile environments the animals are exposed to and slaughtered in as well as irradiated meat being available.
They should mark the irradiated meat with a big colorful logo, I would only buy the stuff because it's virtually guaranteed to be sterile with no loss of nutritional value: you could eat it "warm" with no more worries than the pinhead who had it cooked "well done"* (which anyone who likes steak will tell you is not synonomous with "done well")
*and one fewer: burnt meat is a known carcinogen. I'll take my chances with a case of food poisoning now over cancer later any day of the week.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
let me say: I don't care.
Wake me up when they start growing carrots in space.
You can't handle the truth.
They're made out of meat
If it tastes the same, i would have zero problems with artificial meat.
What if somebody cultured meat from a human cell?
Who knows, maybe it tastes really good. But most people won't eat it just because it's too creepy.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
One thing I've come to realize is that if you think about it, every single thing we eat is "pretty gross".
.... and that's not even to mention what may be in the soil itself that surrounds them. Then, if you didn't just pick them yourself and fix them immediately, they've been handled by who knows who, and spent quite a while sitting in less than "clean" environments before they reach you, the consumer.
Those naturally grown veggies have had all manner of bugs crawling all over them, not to mention being rained on by water containing who knows what pollutants
And that's about the *least gross* scenario I can think of for food. No point even getting into the whole thing of rat hairs and worm parts found in your canned food goods..... or the amount of chemical preservatives holding together everything from our bakery goods to desserts.
Ultimately, everything about food is a "point of view" issue. One man's "disgusting ants" he'd *never eat* are another person's delicacy when covered in chocolate syrup.
So with that in mind, I personally would be rather "put off" by the idea of eating synthetic meat. I just don't like the mental image of eating something that's not really what it purports to be. But I'm also sure I'd eventually get used to it, if it became popular enough and tasted just like the "real thing". Certainly, it would become a non-issue within one more generation, as kids grow up eating it.
Where do you think those chicken pucks come from?
On a more serious note - what if the meat cells came from an animal killed by natural causes - say, a cow killed by wolves? Or a deer killed by a bumper?
Believe it or not, there are PETA/vegan types that will tell you it's "un-natural" for a deer to be killed by a car, even though the predators that normally would have kept their numbers vastly lower than they are now are absent. In other words, we have a hugely unnatural deer population, and they cross highways looking for territory into which they can balance the population pressure. Human hunters help some, taking the role of mountain lion and wolf, but suburban restrictions against even bow hunters have left the deer population exploding right where the least can be done about it.
Of course, I'm discounting the PETA-ish view that we should be running around with dart guns full of birth control medication, tagging most of the does so that they won't bear as many fawns. Great idea! There are only a few million of them, so doing that every year should be a piece of cake. Or... howzabout putting the surplus meat in the freezer, and require less agro-industry farmland use for raising wildly inferior beef?
Your point is a good one, though. The vegans that have so anthropomorphised the rest of the mammal stock always seem to stop right at the point where large animals with pointy teeth rip the throat out of Bambi. I guarantee that when I shoot a deer through the heart, it's a better way to go. Likewise, that quail that I kill with a shotgun (yum! Quail stew!) isn't really going to have too many preferences between that and having its back broken by a hawk, and then being eaten alive by Mrs. Hawk's kids back at the nest. Ah, nature! What a warm, fuzzy place!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Whether you believe it or not, you are being poisoned. It may or may not be intentional, and I don't care if it is or isn't. But the fact of the matter is that the food production chain in most western nations is destroying the health of the consumers. There are a high number of chemicals that have found their way into the food supply due to their inexpensive provision of preservative, aesthetic and texture properties. Many of these chemicals may be the underlying cause of various chronic illnesses that are becoming epidemics in the western world. But we will never know because to compound the problem we are also being overmedicated.
One of the worst ingredients that has found it's way into too much of the food supply is white processed sugar. One can of soft drink can contain up to 14 tablespoons of sugar in it. Sugar also has some light preservative qualities and tends to make everything taste better. In small quantities, sugar is mildly harmful. But at the rate that we ingest sugar, it is downright dangerous. Don't believe me? Next time you are at the grocery, pick up most prepared foods and look at the ingredients. You'll find that sugar or high fructose corn syrup is in nearly everything. It's a bit frightening especially since I had a personal health issue that no doctor could solve until I cut food with sugar out of my diet. Compounded with the medications that doctors tried to give me to cure my sinus infections, I continued to get more and more ill rather than get better. But once I stopped taking the antibiotics and the prevacid and dumped white sugar, white rice, white flour, corn syrup and honey ouf of my diet, my various illnesses went away. It's been about three years now and my health is better than ever.
So now I read this story about "space meat" and it makes me cringe. I can only imagine what kinds of horrible effects this artificial food stuff is going to have on some people. (remember even if one person gets sick because of a chemical reaction it's one person too many) I have this feeling that if this becomes standard "food" for anyone they will need a whole slew of drugs to combat various ill effects caused by this new toxin. I don't call that living, I call it chemical bondage. Why can't we just start to work on improving organic farming???
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I mean sure, it takes a lot more grain to have a hamburger as opposed to eating an equally filling ammount of grain directly, but if humans were meant to get energy from as closely to the sun as possible, we'd be green and sprouting leaves.
Arguing thermodynamics is pointing at carnivores and omnivores, telling them how misguided and inefficient their diet is.
I suppose you could sell it in Australia if you marketed it under the name 'Carnimite'.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Mirror:
Original Article at UMD is here. And it's not slashdotted like that gizmo page
Soylent Green is still made of people! They didn't change the receipe like they said they would...It's people!!!
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22mezzerow+loves+c ompany
Not earlier apparently but still pretty early.
Soylent-Green anyone? >:D
Ummmm... Space Meat!.....
*drools*
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Could be part of the problem though, he won't eat anything "unusual".
"Vegans are not rational people (IMHO) - they do not subject their belief structure to any kind of real scrutiny - they will not eat unfertilized hen's eggs which had no chance of being life, but will kill a carrot plant to eat it. Life is life, and life is also death."
:P.
Ok, you drew me out of the woodwork here... I've been vegan for 16 years, and I consider myself fairly rational
My belief structure is simple.. I do not wish to hurt others. This includes enslaving others.
Now, you say that life is life, and that a carrot is just like a hen (or a hens egg). Are you implying that you would also kill and eat a human just as easily as you would eat an egg? Or even a cow? You may answer yes to this question, but the vast majority of people who are not vegans will not. Eating a human is considered cannibalism.
The whole point is that the line gets drawn somewhere.. Most people draw the line at eating their own species, vegetarians draw the line at eating any species, and vegans draw the line at hurting/enslaving any species. But really, it doesn't end there. Fruitarians only eat fruit, no nuts or seeds... The hardcore ones eat the fruit, and spit out the seeds into the earth. That way, they are not even taking the "life" of a carrot.
So really, vegans do have scrutiny, just as much as any non vegan. They choose to draw their line further away from "just killing and enslaving other humans is bad" and replace humans with animals.
To try and protect this argument a little further, you will probably mention that animals still get killed by tractors in the fields, or by pesticides, or by transport trucks running over bunnies on the way to the market. But the point is, we do what we practically can to minimize what we view as wrong. It is analgous to a non-vegan who is against slavery but buys products that may have been created by child slave labour.
Everyone draws their line somewhere, and I don't see how drawing the line in a different place from the rest of society automatically makes these people irrational.
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
I for one welcome our artificial meat overlords.
2 005.11.659
The original review article with far more information is free to download:
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ten.
The main obstacle to making this viable for large-scale production is not the cells or scaffolding, but the media. What and how much does one have feed this artificial meat to make it grow? Most cell culture systems rely on blood serum, typically from newborn or fetal cows for all of the embryonic growth factors and nutrients needed to ensure rapid cell division. What is most impressive about these advances in myoblast cell culture is the use of serum-free growth media. One lab even supported growth with maitake mushroom extract!
Humans are part of Nature, and thus their little toys too.
What, in the submitters mind, makes him belief, thing Humans do, are sometimes NOT "natural"?
I really wonder, since the meaning of Nature seems to recently be something like : everything except the things that -I- particulary do not like about Humans actions.
I wonfer what color it would be when grown in a lab...would this become "the other red meat"??
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
What's wrong with spandex jumpsuits???
Personally, I would not eat vat-grown proteins in this way. There are enough potential problems as is (BSE, etc.).
--Chag
Food of the Gods, by Arthur C. Clark.. Brings Soylent Green to a whole new level.
where food production is controlled by some central authority, and real, hoof-grown meat is a rare delicacy.
Since when is dog meat hoof-grown?
Speaking of space meat, have you read Terry Bisson's excellent short story"They're Made Out of Meat"?
"Remember, today is Soylent Yellow Day!"
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
For my money a nice juicy fatty piece of rib steak is the best food ever made. And maybe I'm being irrational here, but it seems to taste a hell of a lot better with the bone in.
Nice rows of cow muscle cells just sounds like a crappy flank steak to me.
I wonder what impact this could have on world hunger? Rearing cattle takes up considerably more space than growing crops in terms of the food:land ratio (anyone have any figures to back this up?). As the world population continues to grow and space becomes less plentiful, animal meat is likely to become more of a luxury item. We're already seeing cattle farming devastating the amazon, which is an essential part of the biosphere and a massive carbon sink to boot. But what is perhaps most hopeful about this is the potential to "improve" the diet of millions of people. Now, if only we could remove the causes of hunger in the first place, like stupid dictators and idiotic tribal wars. Is this a small step away from scarcity to abundance? I hope to think so.
Is that a ding I hear? GET BACK IN THE MAGIC HOUSE!!!
This jacka** plainly failed to read the article, fools like this should be banned.
And what was he thinking when he bought that shirt, jeez.
Well... you've just ruined my lunch! I'm not a big fan of worm parts either.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
...the term meat-space meant something entirely different!
Just another day in Paradise
You can read a curiously familiar Slashdot story from a month ago too. Heh, /. editors should append this to front-page stories more often!
But what about zymoveal?
So much for "cruelty" or "flatulance-driven global warming" as credible reasons why some of the more extreme PETA folks want to put a gun to my head to force me to eat tofu.
If this meat can be grown without gristle, if; even it can be genetically modified to contain less harmful stuff, and more helpful nutrients, I say; I, for one, welcome our new lab-grown filet overlords!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It's gonna be strange eating something that never had parents, but hey, if it tastes good...
but then, what do we do with all the cows, pigs, etc, we have stockpiled right now? the dairy industry would continue, but I bet millions of cows and pigs would be slaughtered just to get rid of them. some types of live stock may even go extinct!
I've read some where that the best way to ensure a species survival is to eat them.
This reminds me of s scene from the second Hitchhiker book "Resteraunt ar the End of the Universe", where the group meets the "Dish of the Day".
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
Go on. Tell me where it's from (no Googling, either!)...
---Whether you believe it or not, you are being poisoned. It may or may not be intentional, and I don't care if it is or isn't. But the fact of the matter is that the food production chain in most western nations is destroying the health of the consumers. There are a high number of chemicals that have found their way into the food supply due to their inexpensive provision of preservative, aesthetic and texture properties. Many of these chemicals may be the underlying cause of various chronic illnesses that are becoming epidemics in the western world. But we will never know because to compound the problem we are also being overmedicated.
Lemee guess... You're one of those enviro-wackos from say, Seattle, Oregon?
"Underlying chemicals", eh? DO you cook your meat under any sort of heating appratus? Do you have any idea what that meat turns into? There's tons of carcinogenic chemicals in that cooked meat. Also, do you wash your fruit? You just washed off most all the water solulable vitamins they have.
---One of the worst ingredients that has found it's way into too much of the food supply is white processed sugar. One can of soft drink can contain up to 14 tablespoons of sugar in it. Sugar also has some light preservative qualities and tends to make everything taste better. In small quantities, sugar is mildly harmful.
Mildly harmful? WTF? Hows about quantity, not "OMG ITS CANE SUGAR!!!111". Hell, even diet coke has been shown that it messes with the body sugar regulation.
---But at the rate that we ingest sugar, it is downright dangerous. Don't believe me? Next time you are at the grocery, pick up most prepared foods and look at the ingredients. You'll find that sugar or high fructose corn syrup is in nearly everything.
Well, what would you suggest? Have you ever baked anything? Many things have sugar or require sugar.
---It's a bit frightening especially since I had a personal health issue that no doctor could solve until I cut food with sugar out of my diet. Compounded with the medications that doctors tried to give me to cure my sinus infections, I continued to get more and more ill rather than get better. But once I stopped taking the antibiotics and the prevacid and dumped white sugar, white rice, white flour, corn syrup and honey ouf of my diet, my various illnesses went away. It's been about three years now and my health is better than ever.
Ok. You just sound like a hypochondriac. You're prolly just some slob who was feeding his face 1 too many whoppers per day and came to the conclusion that you might be killing yourself. But now its the big nasty bugaboo "SUGAR!!!"not how you ate, you fatass tub of lard. And, by the way, docs cant help you if you dont follow the doctor reccomended course of action. And that means staying away from those fucking twinkies.
I'd eat it -- if only they could first make it aware of its surroundings and then kill it.
Vegans are utterly nasty individuals.
All they want to do is pull poor helpless living plants from the warm embraces of Mother Earth. How do you think the poor vegetables feel?
To top it off these Vegan's often eat the stuff raw. Imagine eating a raw carrot in the park... how to you think all the other plants feels after see a fellow plant eaten raw right in front of them. I bet these bastards also walk on poor helpless grass.
Become a 'natural forager' eating only items that have naturally fallen from a tree or have naturally died!
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
Nobody wants "cruelty free" meat. The cruelty is where all the flavor comes from!
I recall in one of my Environmental Science courses, there was an Author up in Berkley California who advocated eating soy as a means to reduce our reliance on beef.
//imagines a hippie eating a faux-meat steak
The catch here is that, according to the author (who's name I've long since forgotten due to one too many a post final party) most of the agriculture in the world is dedicated to producing feed for cattle, and not humans. The basic premise of the author was that we stop eating your typical BigCompany(tm) grown steaks, and use the land that was dedicated to growing food to feed the slaughter bound cows to help whipe out world hunger.
Granted, the author didn't take into account the already fragile livelyhood and prosperity of US domestic farmers - subsidies to keep them afloat, and with so much food for US production being produced at relatively cheap (as in beer) prices, making it very hard for farmers to get any sort of profit - but i'd be interesting to see her (yes, it was a she) take on this and if she'd approve of such meat.
I've got a video of how they did this already with pork. Its called
Muppets from Space!
Space pork: The other other white meat from a galaxy far far away.
And they said zombies weren't real!
We grow and tend to vegetables the way a shepherd tends to his flock. The sexual reproduction can be guided, but the system still allows for diversity, giving us a little protection from blight and disease that could easily destroy or contaminate a homogenous population of cloned food sources.
This is changing as more and more crops are genetically modified. Articles like this make me think that meat production is heading in the same direction.
I for one welcome our new space meant overlords.
You say, "This... brings about visions of some sterile, Spandex-jumpsuit future where food production is controlled by some central authority, and real, hoof-grown meat is a rare delicacy." You fail to realise that that's exactly how it is now, though! In the developed world, the vast majority of people have no direct contact with production of food. A very small number of companies, large farms, and government regulatory agencies control it all from top to bottom. Unless the broadcast flag will apply to these, er, Meat-O-Matics (pirated salmon formulas! oh no!), this situation would be exactly the opposite, food production being finally extremely widely distributed again. Though with meat this cheap spandex may be right. And hoof-grown meat will be as much a delicacy as organic products are now.
I really want to try this stuff. But the site sells more t-shirts than they do actual hufu! The only food item they have is "backordered" yeah right... They need to start producing and selling some hufu so we can have cruelty-free Aztec human sacrifice festivals!!
These things are going to be just like Bread Makers in the 1980's and Fondue Sets in the 1970's. In the year 2025 will every garage sale in the universe have a used Meat Machine that the owners received as a Wedding Gift...
I generally think that the spandex-clad THX1138/Logan's Run future ain't all that far fetched. Whether it will look like the curvy 1960s modern architecture is up for debate, but it's hard not to see a micromanaged human future dependant on synthetic food and mind control drugs.
There are plenty of technologically-induced distopias to worry about.
;-)
Yeah, like the horrid age of computers where people can't spell...
Line Caught Fish, they live a happy life, die a relatively natural death (caught by a dominant animal) and you can enjoy something healty once in a while.
we'd be green and sprouting leaves.
No, we'd make special machines that can take us to the sun.
Arguments like "if x was meant to y then z" are worthless, along with arguments of the form "x is natural so y" and "x is unnatural so y", because they stem from the delusion that the universe and it's contents have some purpose known to the speaker that we all must support, else some unspecified fate worse than death shall befall us.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Wow, 600 comments and no one's made the appropriate obscure Invader Zim reference. You've really let me down.
Don't you remember? McMeaties burger meat is made of SPAAAAAACE MEAT developed by NASA, though that was too expensive so now they make it from old napkins.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. --Ford Prefect
I just don't like the mental image of eating something that's not really what it purports to be.
Imitation crab meat seems to be doing well.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
You're one misinformed motherfucker aren't you? Sugar is overused. It's NOT needed in everything that the food industry shoves it into. Go look at a can of black beans in the grocery. You'd think a can of black beans wouldn't need sugar or corn syrup right? Well you'd be wrong. I've only been able to find one brand of canned black beans that doesn't have sugar in it and it's the only one I'll buy. You also have the option of using something like stevia leaf extract when you drop sugar from your diet. It's safe and it's been in use in Japan for over 100 years. It's basically a tea leaf that has the interesting property of tasting very sweet. Stevia is what I use to cut sugar intake.
Stevia also has the added benefit of not being a simple carbohydrate (the most evil of all food substances). Eating fruit and ingesting those sugars is fine because it requires your body to work in order to get the energy out of the carbs. This means a much slower release of sugars into your body. Simple carbs (sugar, honey, corn syrup) just about go straight into your body and produce... fat stores which make people fat.
Before I shifted away from sugar, I was a vegetarian. I've never had a weight problem. In fact, I only gained about 15 lbs after high school and lost that weight when I dropped sugar. So at 35, I'm still at my high school weight. So again, you're a misinformed little turd. Why don't you pull Bill Gates vienna sausage out of your mouth and Ballmer's 2x4 out of your ass before you speculate about things you don't know? Sugar in the quantities that most Americans consume it is evil and dangerous. It used to be a rarity in the diet but the 20th century changed all that and that's why we've got a morbidly obese population now. (Of which I'm pretty sure you are one) Nice meeting you.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
They grow fake meat in vats already, and it tastes great. It comes from a fungus, but who cares? It's just as good as chicken, and it's in stores now. It's my favorite fake meat. http://www.quorn.com/
Hmmmm... I wonder if cannibals will accept this rather than killing people to get their protein?
Also, would zombies prefer fresh brains or would vat-grown brains satisfy their hunger?
I'm sure there's a market for these ideas somewhere!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Next to porn of course.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
and I'm a vegan. Well, it would have to pass a few criteria, but in principle, eventually this can be called cruelty-free. Animals will probably have to die to start the process off, but if it is truly efficient and self-sustaining, this is probably no worse than the quantity of animals that die from, say, pesticides used to grow plants. That said, they'd better not need to continually inject fresh slaughter to sustain the system and not use various questionable flavorings.
This could be the greatest thing ever for cannibals. Growing a human liver for transplant? Run off a few more to sell to that devoted market. Guilt free cannibalism! I can see the resturants now. The upper class always felt the rest were like cattle well now they can eat them like cattle for a couple of hundred a plate and still be politically correct. Ain't america great!
This has bugged me for years. On the menu are: (1) McChicken Sandwich; and (2) Chicken McNuggets If McChicken is not Chicken WTF is it?
If you can grow any meat to eat you'd start to see human on the menu. It would be right next to spotted owl, bald eagle, and black rhino.
And conversely meat-moderate or meat-light diets can be extremely healthy, healthier in fact than an all vegetarian diet which can be extremely dangerous from the stand point of getting enough essential B vitamins and other essential nutrients that are in higher abundance in meat. If you have to KNOW a great deal about how to avoid getting sick on an all vegetarian diet (and you do) then your body was probably not optimized from a evolutionary standpoint for a completely vegetarian diet.
Why do people jump from too-much-meat-is-bad to so-no-meat-must-be-better? You can consume too much fluid or water and possibly die (messes up your electrolyte balance). Applying this logic, consuming no-fluids or water should be healthier.
As for the yuck factor of vat grown food, it's just that your not use to it. Visiting a slaughterhouse would have a higher yuck factor to most in my opinion. There is probably also some quasi-religious reasoning going on in your head about the food lacking a soul, or being grown against the wishes of God or some other such superstitious nonsense. Other posters are assuming the artificial meat will have to taste bad - and that's all it is - an assumption. If it tastes like meat, even if slightly different than natural meat, it will be adopted quickly. Initially some will stay off the bandwagon, but eventually the majority of meat will be grown this way if it makes sense economically.
My prediction: people 100 years from now will only eat vat-grown meat. They will assume they have greater moral character than the barbarians that use to kill for their meat. They would never dream of eating something not grown in a vat, not just because you had to kill it, but because they would assume vat grown meat is cleaner, healthier and disease free. They would also assume non vat grown would taste awful, and the only reason people ate it was lack of choice. Vat grown meat will come in hundreds of varieties constantly being modified to create new tastes the public will enjoy. The traditional Beef, Pork, Chicken flavors will be tinkered with too, the various corporations always trying to have the best Beef, Pork, or Chicken flavor. 4 out of 5 people agree New Coke Vat Beef tastes better than Pepsi Vat Beef.
If people had a natural aversion to artificiality then most products would disappear from the store shelves. They only have a temporary aversion when these kinds of things are first introduced, and then at some tipping point they are accepted without a second thought.
BTW can I be the first to trademark Veef, Vork, and Vicken?
Letter To Iran
It ain't velvet!
Le chaim!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
SPAce Meat is already in my kitchen.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
We need more "Special" sauce. Put this mayonaisse in the sun!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I eat raw meat or fish once or twice a week (Carpaccio, Steack Tartare, Sushi). The meat dishes are beef, and prepared at the last minute (under my watchful gaze, in medium- to up-scale restaurants). I have never heard of dishes with raw pork or chicken.
I have NEVER caught anything from that. I DO get those only from places that I know or that are reputable.
On the other hand, I DID get food poisoning several times from uother foodstuffs, meats and presumbaly non-meat, at evil restaurants.
You can get food poisoning from any kind of foodstuff. I don't see cooked vs raw or meat vs vegan as a big parameter. The quality and care with which the packing / storing / cooking is done is much more important.
I fully understand why some people refuse to eat meats and such due to philosophical reasons, but I don't see any point for health reasons.
By the way, the BSE-causing prion is insensitive to heat. I did hold off from eating bone marrow for a while, and gladly went back to it a couple of years ago.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
It appears that we are steadily marching toward a future that Isaac Asimov predicted in several of his short stories. In them, humans developed food synthesizers that had the ability to create any protein from the basic elements (i.e. carbon, hydrogen, etc). In fact, there was one story that was particularly interesting. In it, eating actual plant or animal matter was looked on with the same repulsion that a vegan would have when offered a chance to brutally slaughter and eat the raw flesh of a calf. Food companies competed to create a new protein of the month (i.e. beef, pork, veal, lamb, or variation of these), and one company created a new and very popular protein that turned out to be synthesized human flesh.
"With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply."
Hmm T-Rex meat anyone?
I'd eat it -- if only they could first make it aware of its surroundings and then kill it.
Better yet: shape it into a homonculus based on an action hero of your choice -- e.g. Arnold Spammandegger -- which you hunt down and kill in the deadliest game.
-kgj
-kgj
That line of thought would make you horribly wrong. Free-range beef has high levels of Omega-3 fatty acids (EPA/DHA) that are present in much lower levels in corn-finished slaughterhouse meat. Also the free-range meat will be leaner which results in higher, protein, iron, and B vitamin concentration per ounce.
Personally, the fact that our bodies cannot make certain amino acids and the fact that the absorption of amino acids is contingent on their relative concentration in the food that you are eating. A relative concentration that can be simulated but not replicated by vegetarian dishes.
For instance five bean dishes are absorbed more efficiently with a little added chicken or fish.
That makes me a meat eater. As far as the whole health BS. Hrmmm... my family has been in the US for 200yrs and we've all been avid meat eaters and our avg lifespan is 95yrs.
On a more scientific level, lean and active meat eaters gain and retain more muscle mass, and endurance than lean active vegetarians.
I believe this meat-shell is good for a lot more activity than most give it. I am a Highland Games athlete and avid weightlifter. I have friends who are heavy weightlifting athletes who are vegetarians (in fact one is a vegan). They have to supplement their protein sources heavily with soy or pea derived proteins. Neither of which taste remotely like something I'd like to eat.
I wonder how long it will be before a left-wing group finds out about this and begins to campaign against the practice of growing the animal cells in a laboratory, on the grounds that it's a digusting and inhumane treatment of animal life.
And I wonder whether doing so will interrupt their campaign to continue stem cell research...
Your post suggests a possibility that may be too grisly to consider:
If all you need is a tongue swap to get the needed cells, why not extrapolate "you are what you eat" to the ultimate conclusion that the best food is to "eat what you are" You plug your own hair into the carnematic and pop out a you-steak in a kind of reverse soylent green.
OTOH, a popping a skin graft out of the carnematic when you burn yourself trying to properly cook "fillet du moi" for your girlfriend would be handy...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Some obvious points... And keep in mind that all of these have been made a billion times. You've just managed to not hear or read these arguments because you probably don't really care. You just want to eat meat, and have convinced yourself that it's the right thing to do.
1. Cows are stupid because they've been bred to be that way. For hundreds of years, farmers have selected the biggest, fattest, and slowest cows, so that they get the most meat with the least amount of hassle.
2. So she was wearing leather shoes. So what? This is the dumbest of all the arguments that so many anti-vegetarians make. "You're wearing leather, so all of your non-meat-eating doesn't count! Ha ha!" It should be obvious how inane that argument is. Look, compare two people: Person A wears leather and eats meat. Person B wears leather and doesn't eat meat. Which person is responsible for fewer cows deaths? Why does wearing leather invalidate being vegetarian? Just because you think it's hypocritical? Or is it logical that if we can't save every single cow's life, then we shouldn't bother trying to save any of them?
3. Why do cows deserve to die just because they're dumb? I can assure you that there are people out there who are dumber than the average cow.
4. You should know your enemy a little better... Many vegetarians, including myself, are vegetarians because they have seen what goes on inside a "factory" beef farm. It is the most appalling thing you can imagine. And I'll lay 100:1 odds that the farm you grew up on was not one of these. If it was, your views would be vary different. You might still like meat, but you would be much more understanding of why some people don't eat meat. It's incorrect to assume that all vegetarians just blindly, naively think that eating cows is wrong. Many are simply avoiding the incredible cruelty that goes on in the meat industry.
5. The idea that not eating meat has made this woman unhealthy is also misinformed. I don't eat meat, and I'm healthier than you are. Humans just need certian amounts of vitamins, minerals, and whatever else. All of it can be obtained from a healthy diet that does or does not include meat.
Why not look into the subject a little before you form your opinions? It honestly sounds like this was your very first encounter with a vegetarian.
My maker will be cooking up it's own drug cocktails.
Yes, there are also people who just don't like the taste of meat (so their vegetarianism has nothing to do with ethics/health concerns), but I imagine this makes up about 5% of vegetarians in industrialized countries.
I would also like to know how they plan to keep the culture (when it's grown industrially and not in well-controlled laboratory conditions) from getting infected. I have a feeling that antibiotics will be present in this meat, maybe even in greater amounts than in meat from livestock.
At least it'll take some wind out of PETA's sails. While I agree in principal that animals shouldn't be treated cruelly, their tactics do more harm than good by pissing everyone off.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
All of the world's supply of penicillin comes from a single strain of penicillium mould which was found growing on a catelope. Initially this strain produced very small amounts but through mutation the output had steadily increase so that now over 50,000 IU is produced per CC.
The strain is suitable for liquid culture - which is unusual for Penicllium. The early strains produced very little penicillin and were grown on stainless steel bed pans.
You can check the history of this at Tom Volk's website.
The point is that for 60 years now we have mono culture and there has not been a problem. Thus one would infer that there will not be a problem with the issue of meat cultured from a single strain. What is likely is that the quality will increase and there will be no bones.
The downside of this is what nutrients are required. While the artical does not mention this - meat cells need a very high quality nutrient source which is produced by the animal's digestive system from things like grass. So if we want to produce cultured beef then somone is going to have to build a digestive system.
Note that there has been work in this area as well.
"Soylent Green is people!"
:P
Oh thanks so much,now I guess I can skip that movie. Next you're going to tell me that Vader is Luke's father. Hahaha, that would be a good one
(ducks)
Mushrooms are not a plant. They are much closer to an animal than they are to a plant. Furthermore they can be grown at home.
The average person is not going to be able to grow meat any more than they might grow gormet mushrooms. However with work a small percentage might be able to master this.
In order to do this class 5 clean room conditions will have to be constructed and a degree in microbiology would be helpful. They will need a good microscope and an autocalve. Add to this laminar flow hoods.
It will be more difficult to culture muscle cells than it presently is to culture mushrooms. You need reasonable sterile conditions to grow mushrooms but not absolutly sterile. IE - you really can do it in your kitchen.
Also - the basic cell lines for mushrooms are available in every grocery store. This is a little easier than taking a muscle sample from your favorite cow or pig. The cells in a steak are dead. The cells in a muchroom are alive.
Also - substraits for mushrooms are much easier to come by. You can buy them by the tonne.
Meh. H. Beam Piper wrote about this, back in the 50's.
I drank what? -- Socrates
sheesh... only semi off-topic... lighten up effers!
...because Plutonians are teh suck
http://www.tronguy.net/images/headshot-web.jpg
Techically, yes. But killing a plant is generally regarded as much different to killing a large mammal.
He's English. Why he would want to live in a predominantly livestock-farming part of Scotland I do not know. We have the best food in the world up here, and he eats soggy boiled potatoes and vegetables boiled yellow. Ick.
How about cultivating human tussue and growing it? After all what could be more nutritious to humans, than humans tissue? - hmmm human!
When do we start scooping up the anti-war protesters?