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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 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.
Begun, this clone BBQ has.
What about cloned sex workers?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Steaks made from clones.
Can't you just see the horror movie?
Dr. Jackson stared in horror at the meat growing vats as he slowly realized what had happened. He felt growing nausea, his stomach threatening to turn his delicious former meal into a mouth-fired projectile.
His assistant saw the look on his. "Dr. Jackson -- what is it? What's the matter?"
He slowly turned to her. He couldn't help but imagine the juicy, tender beef passing her lips -- or what he thought was beef.
"My God, Janice. It all makes sense. When I added the beef cells to the cloning solution -- the cut on my finger -- the blood, the blood THE BLOOD --" he couldn't continue.
"No!" Janice screamed, her hands holding her mouth. "But -- that was months ago --"
Dr. Jackson slowly nodded. "The entire East Coast has been eating -- ME!"
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
Bravo! I'd definitely go see that movie! Make sure Samuel L. Jackson stars.
OTOH, if and when human muscle can be grown in a vat, will the taboo against eating human flesh fade away? After all, it's not hurting anyone... I can imagine it starting as an outre stunt, and then becoming an underground thing, before eventually moving on to become a minor fashion, and eventually becoming a fact of life. Imagine the marketing they could do at the grocery store: "Genuine Paris Hilton breasts and thighs, $3.99/lb"
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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.
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.