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Cloned Beef Coming Soon?
An anonymous reader writes "According to this article at Popular Science cloned beef may be coming soon. It talks about using meat within 48 hours of slaughter to allow cloning the best possible specimens, something that is not possible to determine while the animal is still alive. Apparently only 1 in 8000 animals is truly the best. Personally I'd love to see us progress to the point where it was possible to grow just the meat itself without the animal. That would end all the ethical issues with raising an animal for food, potential issues from mad cow disease, bird flu and whatever the next media induced panic is."
Personally I'd love to see us progress to the point where it was possible to grow just the meat itself without the animal.
Personally, I would love to see us progress to the point where cows are well fed, happy and healthy. The meat will taste better, we'll be healthier and there's less cruelty to the cows. I would never eat meat grown in a lab.
I was just talking about this the other day as I was enjoying a burrito. I love this idea so much, and yet there are those who find it somehow repulsive.
How can growing meat be seen as more repulsive than the murder assembly lines at slaughterhouses?
My more stable-minded vegetarian friends gladly welcome this - as their food choices are equally health and ethics based.
Don't go thinking that all vegitarians hate the taste of beef. That red meat has got some major building blocks in it - and meat is a very good source of the basic building blocks your body needs.
You can think of meat as "pre-fabricated" building materials for your body - since the animal who owned it before you has already done much of the work needed to convert the raw materials into useful proteins.
I love this idea, I would much rather make my own meat than take it from a nice, innocent bovine who happens to be using it at the moment.
And this actually brings up a somewhat...uh, weird question.
If meat is a great building-block food - and certain meats are better for certain things...then might we design the "perfect" meat for human consumption?...if so, and this is the disturbing part, might we actually splice our own DNA into the transgenic mix?
Could this be considered a form of cannibalism?
Ah the future, so fun to turn everything on it's head.
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Consider that the dangerous bacteria and viruses you're talking about, would only have a single organism to target, and we'd run the risk of a single lucky virus taking out the world's entire meat supply.
Unless of course, they are right, and there is no evolution- and every organism is the same as it was when the planet was summoned into existence over the course of a particularly shady six day run. In which case, we have nothing to fear, because new viruses are not mutating into existance, and we only need to protect this meat from the dangers that exist right now and just wait until all the mad-cow viruses go extinct.
I'm not sure I want to live in either world, so excuse me while I go take a chew on this helpless animal here.
From dictionary.com:
vegan (vgn, vjn) n. A vegetarian who eats plant products only, especially one who uses no products derived from animals, as fur or leather.
The dictionary definition doesn't distinguish them, why should we? We have a name for animal rights activists: animal rights activists. You calling someone who doesn't eat meat for diet reasons a "fakeatarian" is elitism, and purposfully insulting. Bad things!!! Just ask Germany. (a leap, I know, but I couldn't think of anything else).
Personally, I have always seen the dietary reasons as some of the best not to eat meat. Eating higher up the food pyramid means it takes more energy to feed you, which is inefficient and a little unfair considering that people starve in this world.
Note: I do eat meat, but that's because I am spoiled and like how it tastes.
I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint.
I ask why the poor have no bread, they call me a communist.
It's far more likely that textured vegetable protein, which has had millions of years of evolution behind it, will end up be more efficient to produce than grown steaks. Another issue is that the stuff inside steak that's "tasty", also happens to be bad for you if it's a significant portion of your diet. Saturated fats and high protein diets seem to cause long-term issues.
Now, I happen to be vegetarian, but certainly not for your standard ethical reasons. I'm all for animal experimentation, for example. I just find that our country's meat-heavy diet is expensive and inefficient. We're depleting our fresh water aquifers at a rapid rate, trying to grow feed for our cattle. American's waists are expanding, in part from our high-calorie meat diet.
And, to end on a lighter note, here's a funny little story called They're Made Out of Meat that's hysterical.