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.
You might say this in jest, but I'd be interested in hearing what ethical vegetarians think about eating cruelty-free meat.
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.
"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!
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
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
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.
I for one would not eat this. It skeeves me out like you wouldn't believe. Tank-grown, faux-critter isn't on the list of things I'm likely to try.
And, for many of us vegetarians, it's a combination of the ethics of meat combined with the fact that meat-heavy diets are held up as unhealthy overall.
I think you'll find that for vegetarians, this stuff is a non-starter -- it's still meat. The fact that it's a lab experiment is even creepier.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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
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.
On the other hand if it were "guaranteed" that with that one animal you could (and would) clone all the "meat" you want and no animals would be eaten after that point (i.e. all now-meat-eaters would become artificial-meat-eaters), then they would be pragmatic enough to support that.
Suppose the vegan himself was the tissue donor. Could he cannibalize his own derived tissue without any ethical quandry?
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
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
What goldspider said.
We could get a long perfectly well seeing in black & white, or a gross shade of brown, like dogs do. But we in fact, see colors because it's... better.
Same with taste. Why does everything have taste? More importantly, why does everything edible taste good and (most) everything harmful taste bad? We don't even have to have taste to get sustenance. But we do because it's... better.
And there are more efficient ways to eat than meat, but enjoyment isn't always the result of effeciency. And what is the point of life if it isn't as enjoyable as possible?
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
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.
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?
Even if it were possible, it would never happen. You've neglected the emerging field of "Meat-oid IP". Big Companies and their lawyers will patent or copyright or whatever the best cuts of meat, and charge all the market will bear for them. In order to avoid the IP of the big companies, small companies will add extra elements like pseudo-gristle, imitation blood vessels, and ersatz stringy fat, all so they can make "cheap" meat that's more complex and more expensive to make than the "expensive" meat.
Take a look at the nano-forge in Joe Haldeman's "The Forever Peace" for what happens to such promises.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Actually, as much as I hate McDonalds food (for christ sake, they can't even do ketchup right), they do, however, use real beef.
-gjr
> just like artificial sweeteners taste like the finest quality cane sugar
One supposes the artificial meat would have to be rather better than that, before people would give up the real stuff.
It is worth noting that it's possible (indeed, not that hard) to make real sugars (including sucrose, i.e., table sugar) chemically in a lab, and in that case they taste just as good as the white granular stuff you buy at the store today. (Artificial "brown sugar" might be rather harder to arrange, and making artificial honey taste right is probably impossible, at least with today's technology. OTOH, I would have thought artificial meat would be really hard to do as well, and they're apparently already starting to research a means of doing it.)
The thing that makes artificial sweeteners taste bad is that they're designed to be chemically different from sugar, in order to not raise your blood sugar as much (for diabetics), not have as many Calories, and so forth. One supposes the artificial meat would not be designed, intentionally, to be so different from real meat, because that would defeat the purpose. Unless the purpose is to make low-fat meat, or low-protein meat, or PKU-safe meat... I suppose if they get the regular kind mastered, those would be obvious variations on the concept.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Beaf is awesome. I'm a vegetarian, and Beaf is just about the best way to make roll your own gluten without spending a few hours in preperation. I wish McDonalds put Beaf in their burgers.
Beaf is most fun when you pronounce it "Bee-Aff", as in, "Hey, Horace, pass me the bee-aff!".
Also, from the perspective of someone who's a vegetarian because he doesn't want to kill animals, I suppose I'd prefer somewhat creepily grown meat to meat from dead animals.
To reiterate, I love Beaf.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Most of these folks live in a Disney world. I doubt they've ever spent any real time working on a farm, much less gone hunting. They anthropomorphize animals because they don't know any better and don't want to know any better. Whatever illusions they harbor are more precious to them than actual facts.
As an example, I worked for a few years at a wildlife rehab center. We had a very high turnover rate for volunteers because many of these folks had never had any actual experience with an animal other than a pet. They seemed to think that they and the animals would somehow live in happy harmony, with the animals recognizing (in some mysterious, unexplained fashion) the generosity and kindness of their would-be benefactors, and rewarding them accordingly with warm fuzzies.
The reality of the situation was considerably different. Even after training, the idiots who thought this sort of thing would deliberately go and do something stupid, apparently on the assumption that since *they* were somehow different/more moral/of a purer intellect than the rest of us, the things we had told them about the behavior of the animals wouldn't apply to them. They racked up an impressive number of interesting injuries while trying to 'bond' with our furry and feathered patients.
Of course, this didn't change their opinion of their own exalted nature. They simply blamed us for the actions of the animals (I never did quite figure out *how* we were to blame) and quit. The idea that they were wrong, that the animals did indeed fear and hate them just like they feared and hated everyone else, was something they simply couldn't accept. To the animals they were nothing more than a predator who could eat them at any moment; how they could expect anything different was beyond me. Perhaps they thought their 'auras' would make the animals all friendly and happy? I don't know.
We used to take bets on who would last and who wouldn't. The people with realistic expectations (mainly folks who grew up on farms) lasted longest; the ones who had some sort of "environmental" agenda were often no-shows after two or three shifts, at most (as long as it took them to acquire their first injury from trying to be 'one' with nature). I thought it amusing that the people most vociferous about 'saving the Earth' and 'helping the animals' were the most miffed that the animals couldn't give a shit about their motivations, and treated them just like they did any other human being.
Can't say this experience endeared me to these people. I saw first-hand, repeatedly, that these folks didn't have the first fucking clue, and lived in a la-la land that didn't bear even a remote resemblance to actual reality. It certainly didn't do much to give them any credibility in my eyes.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?