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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."
I browsed through an old story, found the first post, and cloned it.
I want the chance to vote with my dollars.
I don't think we know enough about the process and long term issues to go nuts with this now. Test it. Test the hell out of it.
But let me choose whether or not to buy it.
My mom says I'm cool.
Even if we could "grow" perfect steaks without the rest of the animal, somehow the practice will be banned. Yes, I'm looking at you, animal-rights extremists and religious wackos.
Unless you can exercise the meat that is "grown" it will be mostly tasteless.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
That would require a lot of genetic engineering... I don't claim to be an expert on such things, but basically you'd have to eliminate the genes that grow everything but the meat. Then you'd have to give it sustenance somehow so it would grow.
Of course, it would still be "alive" before killing it but just as much as plants are.
There's no ethical issues with raising an animal for food with me. Keep your ethics to yourself, and I'll take the steak that once had legs.
According to this article at Popular Science cloned beef may be coming soon
That sounds like the plot of a b-horror-porn movie starring a resurrected John Holmes.
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I hope you would stay vegan for dietary not for ethical reasons. Grown beef would be just as ethical as grown plants that are GMO.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
Yeah, right. Steaks made from clones. No potential for "media induced panic" there!
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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Begun, this clone BBQ has.
Why not?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Damn Interesting ran an article last year about NASA research into vat-grown meat for long space journeys. It points out that "meat developed in this way is essentially a cultured muscle tumor", and so isn't very appetizing:
What about cloned sex workers?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
...as far as I can see, nobody has posted the Bob the Angry Flower comic yet. AWESOMELY funny and somehow totally on topic at the same time :-)
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
Cloned beef and cabbage. Yummm!
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.
Ethical issues? We've been raising animals for food for thousands of years, it has been one of the keys to our dominance as a species. Don't believe everything PETA tells you.
Electrons are free; it is moving them that becomes expensive.
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.
Deja Food... the feeling that you've had this meal before.
That green slime had it coming.
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.
I think he's thinking more like Bob's invention!
http://angryflower.com/vegeta.gif
Fellowship 9/11
Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't eating meat entirely natural?
Personally, I'd like to see this progress to the point where we can grow Shakey's Pizza restaurants without the use of embryonic stem cells.
The only truly ethical solution is to genetically engineer a cow that wants to be eaten. Preferably, the cow should be engineered to be sufficiently intelligent to go up to the diner and tell them how delicious it is, and ask them how they would like to eat it.
I am far more concerned about the long term effects on the genetic diversity of our live stock vs is it healthy to eat.
I'm not much for biology, but if you figured out the way that various stem cells are "programmed" to grow into certain structures, couldn't you do it that way? That wouldn't require removing all the genetic information from the genome besides the "meat" portions, it would just require falsifying the messages that assumedly must be sent to stem cells that tell them what structures to develop into.
Of course, I'm not sure that this would produce meat in the conventional sense that we think of it: a bunch of muscle cells in a jar wouldn't taste much like filet mignon, because they wouldn't be formed into those muscular structures, which are then exercised while the animal is alive, have a certain fat content, etc. In short, meat is more than just muscle tissue, it's a part of a particular animal. I have this feeling that the net result of trying to grow meat in jars would be closer to tofu than beef. Maybe it would be acceptable for foods that end up being processed beyond recognition anyway (hamburgers, sausage), but I doubt it would work for beef.
If anyone who's more schooled in biology wants to fill in my misunderstandings, I'd be interested.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Pigs get stressed more than most animals when they are housed in high density pens. So there is now a move to selectively breed the "stress" out of pigs. There are also much more advanced methods of slaughter now, such as Temple Grandin's Stairway to Heaven.
The larger problem is actually meat consumption. It takes 12,000 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef... and that's the natural way of growing beef! Imagine doing it in a factory... each pound of beef requires six pounds of corn that could be eaten by us instead. When you look at the numbers for meat, its a depressing story.
Economic and environmental issues dictate that the final solution will be processed foods grown where species can be raised most cheaply. They will probably be adequate as a food source for us, albeit a rather boring one. Not much meat in it. Heavily cooked. Fortified with vitamins and additives to make it worth eating.
If someone else can think up something more interesting and more likely I'm all ears.
Tofu's good, but I hate it when people try to turn tofu into some bastardized meat. Tofu is tofu. It's not beef, or pork, or any other meat. It's just what it is. And it's good.
I can buy organic beef at my local supermarket for about double the cost of regular beef.
Wow, you're getting ripped off.
The organic beef at my local supermarket is only about 20% more than the "regular" type. My wife and I picked up two cuts from each type, and were surprised at how much more tender and better tasting the organic beef was. We've only been buying the organic beef ever since.
"We are seeing organic & "air-chilled", "premium" chicken breasts advertised on TV "
Don't be daft. In Amerika there are no breasts on TV.
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Leela: "Animals eat other animals. It's nature."
Free Waterfall Junior: "No it isn't. We taught a lion to eat tofu."
Lion: *cough* *pause* *cough*
"Note: I do eat meat, but that's because I am spoiled and like how it tastes."
As a vagitarian I... oh never mind.
Need Mercedes parts ?
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.
Let's take it to next logical step. Why not clone human flesh? I mean after all there'd be no ethical issues involved with it. They could take those new ethicly created stem cell lines to make human meat. And since breast milk is the best, why clone giant boobies to produce all of our dairy needs. No I see no ethical problems at all.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I would love to see us progress to the point where cows are well fed, happy and healthy.
...
It would probably be more economic to just grow vat people with simple feeding requirements and a finger to push the factory button. That way the upper class could more efficiently use their vast resources to maintain their inefficient, old-fashioned naturally-grown selves
If I was a scientist, you know what I would clone? Hot dogs! Think of all the possibilities, Norm! Imagine, a world with...Hey, what's going on?...Imagine...hold on! Imagine a world with an endless supply of hot dogs! You could have a hot dog anytime you wanted! They'd be so abundant, they'd become our currency! 20 hot dogs would equal roughly a nickel, depending on the strength of the yen, I'm not quite sure, but...you know what, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's just keep praying that we can clone one of these hot dogs.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
I've tasted steak, and I've tasted tofu, and they are not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
honestly I don't see how you could "grow" meat.
I honestly don't see how they can pack a billion transistors onto a chip the size of my thumbnail, but somehow they do it anyway... fortunately human progress is not limited by the scope of any one individual's imagination.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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Only if you venture out into the wild armed with nothing but a spear and a loincloth, hunt down the animal, and stuff yourself with its still-warm raw flesh at the site of the kill.
If, on the other hand, you rely on an army of strangers to grow captive animals in large, overcrowded, stinking buildings, feed them massive doses of antibiotics to keep the inevitable disease outbreaks in check, fatten them up with genetically engineered hormones and "interesting" feed materials (including, up until recently, the nastier parts of their deceased compatriots), butcher them on an assembly line, then wrap the results in petroleum-based film to be delivered to local grocery store for you to buy.... then no, that's not very natural at all.
I'm a meat eater myself -- but I don't kid myself about my diet being "natural" in any sense of the word.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I'm all for growing meat in a lab. The more meat, the merrier... but we can't even get farm raise salmon to taste right, what makes us think that meat grown in a lab is going to taste as good as a nice kobe beef ribeye?
Gurgle... meat... gurgle. Damn, now I'm hungry.
Might have the thaw that wild boar bacon I have in the freezer. That stuff is like crack, but with more cholesterol.
Damn, am I the only who read "corn beef" coming soon?
Dang dang. Why isn't it coming soon?
as a result of mad cow disease. It is a serious health risk for many reasons; the big one is that it is untreatable. If you get it, you will die. The deadly human form can only be detected from post-mortem examination. Another reason is that it is spread by prions which can attach to surfaces (grills, utensils, surgical instruments) and cannot be removed by normal sterilization procedures. From the Wikipedia article: 'Unlike other pathogens, prions are not subject to denaturation by protease, HEAT, radiation, and formalin treatments.' (emphasis mine)
The US 80 billion$ beef industry is obviously concerned - but not about the health of beef consumers. They do massive damage control while continuing to duck inspections and responsibility.
The major media outlets have of course botched coverage by sensationalizing mad cow disease rather than educating the public in an objective manner. Fear brings in more viewers than facts. Mad cow disease is, unfortunatly, the real deal.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Yeah, if it's cooked rare and made of cow muscle.
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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.
Why can't we just breed cows without brains, wouldn't that end all ethical issues.
Sometimes the desire to criticize evil profit-doers can lead to neglecting relevant evidence, such as the fact that the US does indeed provide quite a lot of food aid. Over 4000 metric tons in 2005 (pdf), for instance. Besides, it's a *surplus*.
I eat a lot of imitation tofu. I'm personally opposed to cruelty to soybeans. So I eat tofu substitutes made from chicken, beef, pork...
Lean steaks are also tasty. The 'dangers' of fat are vastly overrated, the body needs fats to function properly. You'll find that excessive carbohydrates will do you more harm than anything. And a lack of protein is more dangerous than too much. You can eat 200g of protein a day without ill effect, but eat less and you end up losing significant strength.
Americans are fat because of too many processed foods filled with starch and sugar. The general health of Americans would be better if they cut out the donuts, cokes cakes, breads etc. and replaced them with more natural foods like steak, chicken and lamb. You only have to look at the sagging arms of most Americans to see they're not eating too much protein!
Meat is not expensive or inefficient. There is enough land for everyone to have enough meat, no-one in America is starving. People probably eat less meat now than ever, so talk about depleting at rapid rates is sheer scaremongering.
Us plebs would be scoffing down crappy cloned meat which will probably kill us, whilst execs in their skyscrapers will be licking real organic gravy off the tits of $3000 call girls.
Maybe I'm thinking too cyberpunk here.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I find this topic funny altogether! Everyone always fusses about how the human species uses other "innocent" species for our own ends... such as survival. The interesting part is that, from an evolutionary viewpoint, we are not using cows or any other species any more than "they" are using us. After all, by feeding on chicken, for instance, we have created huge infrastructures that have allowed chicken to be, perhaps, more numerous that humans, turning them (again, from an evolutionary viewpoint) more successfull than the human species. Furthermore, we invest a great deal of resources to improve theses species, as oposed to what we do with our own (yes, shocking as it may be, medicine has spoiled natural selection for us). So, if you come to think of it, could it be that our livestock is actually using US?
There is a great 'speculative fiction' novel by Margaret Atwood called Oryx and Crake where they have genetically engineered chicken to be just masses of flesh that you can 'harvest' meat from. They have no brain or heads...just the necessary organs to let the meat grow.
They call them Chicki-knobs, which is still my favourite word to describe things like chicken McNuggets and Big Macs.
She also wrote about pigoons, which are fictional transgenic creatures that look much like domestic pigs, but their DNA has been spliced with human genetic information and they have been engineered to grow multiple organs for transplants.
It still leaves open the issue of expending the extra resources to eat 'higher up' on the food chain/energy pyramid. Americans currently eat in excess of 3 pounds of meat a week, way more than is nutritionally neccesary, each pound of meat represents about 10 pounds of corn or grain, growing the meat in a dish is not going to significantly change this ratio. Even a small cut back in weekly consumption represents a huge increase in food availabitity.
BTW, I say all this as a card carrying carnivore, it just seems worthwhile to be at least a little bit aware of the consequences.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
No argument here, tofu is superb. The real question is "what for" because edible, it is not.
And why is it that farmers use those expensive chemicals? Maybe they're idiots? Maybe they own so much stock in Monsanto that they think they can boost their dividends by buying more chemicals? No, it turns out that the chemicals give the farmers more beef per dollar spent (fewer dollars spent per unit of beef, if you prefer). That's why they buy the expensive chemicals. Organic beef does cost more to produce (maybe not double, maybe not more than 110%, but 'more').
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
I don't accept the idea that the cow would be happier never living. Never having been a cow, I can't really say. But to me, it seems ethically stronger to raise the cow as a creature (under reasonable conditions) rather than a meat culture.
(I don't think this is what the article is discussing anyway.)
-Dave
Actually Cloning already occurs in cows though it isn't "Old Cell" cloning. It is embryo splitting and has been done for 20 years or more.
In agriculture the holy grail is this genetically perfect item that does only what you want it to do 100% efficiently and every time. There are several serious problems with achieving this. The first is that the production of a genetically identical crop base becomes a 100% threat of pathogens exploiting a weakenss and wiping out 100% of the crop in one fell swat. This is already becoming a serious threat. Then you get into the economic issues.
If you can grow the famous bug free 100% efficient crop (It really doesn't matter what it is) and have it match the market 100% then you have the goal of the farmers. At this point the farmer earns exactly nothing because there is no skill involved, and there is no cost differential to his competitors and such. This has happened to a great extent in Cotton, Corn, Wheat and Soy. With the advent of the perfect Cotton, production rose 5 times per acre and the price dropped by 2/3rds. The result was almost collapse of any profits in farming cotton and all the profits went to the seed companies.
As the "perfect chicken" invaded the chicken houses similar situations happend to the profits in raising chickens. The industry has reached a point of nearly zero profits. If this happens in cattle then the industry will be reduced to having literally no profits for the farmers. They will have achieved the magical world where they don't have to work hard to make the perfect crop and well they will have created themselves out of a job.
Those who don't like this economic reality had best start figuring out a new way to live because this is logically the holy grail of all the economic development types. It really doesn't matter what you do, they are trying to produce this situation. It strikes me of a situation where you are cured of what you suffered from and suffering from the cure.
Don't take this as negative to the proposals, just as a report of conditions. Have fun with what you do with this reality. We are going to see a lot more of it.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
If you like something which feels like rubber and tastes like nothing yes.
Ah, one of those people whose eaten some new-agers "tofu cooked in seasame seed oil" dish? If that's the only way you've ever eaten tofu (or soy, call it what you will) than what you've done is the same thing as killing a cow and eating the first bit of meat you can get from it raw. Tofu plays a part in a lot of food stuff that you'd never know in the form of TVP. I (and millions of others) have eaten thigns made with TVP that if you weren't told otherwise, would never guess it was tofu (you'd probably not be able to tell that it wasn't meat, infact). This isn't your grandmothers tofu anymore.
first of all most of us would be way less healthy
Care to back that up with a bit of fact?
given the diet and the number of people we would run into a huge problem cropwise, this would call for another environmental desaster.
If you don't happen to know much about biology let me let you in on a little fact: Meat comes from animals that eats.... CROPS! Yes indeed, billions of acres of grown foodstuff (ie: plant matter) is fed to aminals to produce meat! Wow! This is a big discovery to some, I know, but the bottom line is that by eating the grown plant matter directly you don't have the issues of waste associated with feeding and raising cattle and the like. Why is this a fact that eludes so many "intelligent" people?
Believe me, I've dealt with all these sorry excuses for meat eating. If you don't like being vegetarian that's fine but don't make shit up so that you can feel better about it.
In all honesty, I really don't beat on people for being meat eaters, my earlier comment was meant to be funny more than anything else, but when they make shit up to support their lifestyle it pisses me off.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Do you realize exactly how much money and effort has gone into PETA marketing? Exactly how much time, love, caring, adn devotion those who work for the Meat is Murder cause have put in over the years?
;)
Just to have you throw it all away...
With your cursed science...
But think of the contrast, this could have religious extremists and PETA on the SAME SIDE in an arguement
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Cultured cells can grow virus just as easily as in vivo cells. Even easier, since they don't have the benefit of a thymus or bone marrow. That's why we learned how to culture cells in the first place.
Only if you venture out into the wild armed with nothing but a spear and a loincloth, hunt down the animal, and stuff yourself with its still-warm raw flesh at the site of the kill.
So, the spear is natural? And the loincloth? Sounds to me like if you want to cordon off human use of technology (the stinking buildings, the trade with strangers, etc.) then you'd have to take us all the way back to being fruit-eating "gatherers" rather than "hunter-gatherers" that used teamwork, communication, and technology. This means taking us back to before the homonids branched off from the other primates.
I think that's rather silly. What makes the "homo-" family so successful it its natural mental ability to work together and produce technology that allows more efficient expansion. Whether that's a spear, atlatl, wheat (Did you know that for the last 8000 years wheat has been domestic only? That is, it will not grow or spread on its own, and is entirely dependant on humans?), farming, or corporate slaughterhouses, it all seems natural to me.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
We have to eat every m*****f****ing steak on this m*****f****ing plane!
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
"The 'dangers' of fat are vastly overrated, the body needs fats to function properly"
Yes, we need very little fat though. Most people eat FAR more than needed, and we don't need any saturated fat, which is much worse for us, and is what you get from meat.
"You'll find that excessive carbohydrates will do you more harm than anything."
No, excessive calories from any source will make you fat. Excessive carbs that break down to glucose very quickly will spike your blood sugar, and its theorized that that may increase the risk of diabetes. The vast majority of the people in the world live almost entirely on carbs, and the human race has lived that way for thousands of years. Meat has been an added boost to our diet, only available in small quantities. Grains like rice have sustained people.
"You can eat 200g of protein a day without ill effect, but eat less and you end up losing significant strength."
No, you will need to increase your calcium intake if you do something stupid like this. Protein is broken down into amino acids for use. They are not stored however, and since even marathon runners and body builders do not need more than 70-80g of protein per day, the rest is broken down further from amino acids into, *gasp*, sugars. The process of breaking down proteins releases acids however, which your body neutralizes with calcium. So increased protein can lead to weak bones. This is why all the "eat more calcium" studies are done with calcium suppliments, not milk which has little to no benefit due to the protein.
"but eat less and you end up losing significant strength."
Protein does not magically make you strong. Your body only makes muscle if it wants to. It only wants to if you use what you have, or have a rare disease that makes your body go nuts and always build your muscle. Even still, nobody needs more than 70-80g a day. You only need to eat as much as your body needs to repair your existing tissues, and create any new tissue it wants to create.
"You only have to look at the sagging arms of most Americans to see they're not eating too much protein!"
Again, protein does not make you strong. Its simple one of the basic building blocks required to create tissues. Excercise makes you strong. And most americans already eat far more protein than they need, as the RDA is 50-55g for women, and 60-65g for men. That means 98% of americans would get enough protein eating that amount. At many restaurants, a single burger contains more protein than that.
"The general health of Americans would be better if they cut out the donuts, cokes cakes, breads etc. and replaced them with more natural foods like steak, chicken and lamb"
They already eat fucktons of meat. They need to cut out the shit you mentioned, cut back on their meat, quit deep frying all their meat (and potatoes), and start eating vegetables and fruits. Replacing high calorie foods like donuts with high calorie foods like steak is not going to make people lose weight.
"Meat is not expensive or inefficient. There is enough land for everyone to have enough meat, no-one in America is starving."
Yes, it is very expensive and inefficent. We would get 10 times more calories from the land we use for raising beef cattle if we used it for crops like corn, rice, wheat, legumes, etc. We are filthy rich compared to other countries, so we have the luxury of being greedy and wasteful while they starve.
Go read any basic intro to biochem and you will see how incredibly stupid your comment was.