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PETA Offers X-Prize for Artificial Meat
Bored MPA writes "The Times reports that PETA is to announce plans on Monday for a $1 million prize to the "first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012." PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk addressed the controversial decision by saying, "We don't mind taking uncomfortable positions if it means that fewer animals suffer." An unexpected and pragmatic move from an organization that has a strong base of support from pro-organic vegans." The question I always had about this- if they can take one sample from one animal and clone it in a vat and feed this world, will the vegans be ok with that?
I think I've got a winning idea, thanks to this film. Hopefully those PETA folks won't ask too many questions. Then things might get... unpleasant.
Tofu? I'll take my prize in small bills please.
Crazy. We were talking about PETA and their craziness today. This seems way more reasonable.
I'm a vegan, but it's just a health thing... I still cook steaks for others. ^_^
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
My work here is dung.
Why oppress animals to take DNA samples, why not just clone human flesh?
nope, vegans wouldnt even eat a cloned cell, as it is a living part of an animal
i always wondered though, why they think that plants dont mind getting eaten - its a sort of rassistic behaviour
I like PETA, but I couldn't eat a whole one.
Just like people who comment on slashdot, vegans have a wider variety of opinions & reasons to arrive at their dietary choice. Trying to ask them collectively what they think about something like this is useless.
It would be like asking the slashdot crowd "would you buy Microsoft products if they open sourced them"
For those who prefer car analogies, it would be like asking
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I suggest we just eat vegetarians. That should solve the problem.
Then McDonalds, KFC etc. would have it perfected already!!
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
If they're vegans for more than one narrow reason (which they seem to be) this will not make them happy.
I can't recall the comedian, but someone once noted "Why do vegetarians need to make their food (tofu pups, veggieburgers) look like meat they simply wont eat? You don't see monks keeping blow-up dolls just hanging around."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
While I applaud the intent here, I gotta say that if people have a problem with genetically modified vegetables, then meat grown in a laboratory will DEFINITELY not appeal to them. This would be a classic case of a concept that people will find instinctively suspicious and disgusting.
There is never any point finishing a car analogy on slashdot....
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Maybe it's just me, but I think that movements such as PETA are a sign of deep issues within our society. We have people who are so completely satiated and content with their lives, that they are willing to spend vast amounts of their time, effort, and money, in order to achieve something so truly inane.
We have hunger, diseases, war... and all these people want to do is to get everybody to stop eating animals. Considering that it was likely the consumption of large amounts of animal protein that allowed humanity to evolve rather rapidly in the last stage of our evolution, I find PETA's goals rather ironic.
It depends on why they're vegan. If it is to stop animal cruelty, then vat-o-meat should be fine. If it for health reasons, then vat-o-meat will have just as much fat and cholesterol as the real stuff.
I was a vegetarian for nine years, and only started eating meat again last year, for health reasons(only chicken, since I hate the taste of all other meat)
If meat can be grown that doesn't have a central nervous system and so can't feel pain, I would feel much better about eating what little meat I do eat.
Remember everyone, Tuesday is Soylent Green day!
Seastead this.
PETA loves meat. You do know it stands for People Eating Tasty Animals, right? :)
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
"The question I always had about this- if they can take one sample from one animal and clone it in a vat and feed this world, will the vegans be ok with that?"
... ever seen a farm pig or a farm cow in the wild?
... freeing them is not the answer. Treating them well and with respect is.
They're not very rational. They'll probably demand you release the sample from its captivity.
All kidding aside, I'm a veggie myself and have a hard time being sympathetic to the vegan cause -- it's just so unrealistic.
Free farm animals will only result in the demise of the particular species
Current biological thinking is that domesticated animals were drawn into human habitat because their own habitat was taken over by more fit animals. Humans simply domesticated these animals, but otherwise they wouldn't have stood a chance in the wild. Following this reasoning, releasing farm animals would just condemn them to starvation, a horrible death.
Don't get me wrong, I'm strongly opposed to using farm animals as an industrial product, as this is what is common in bioindustry at the moment, but we're in symbiosis with these species
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
If it were viable right NOW there would be no need for the X-prize.
This sort of contest provide direction and potentially takes some of the sting out of development.
The hope is that by 2012 a process will become available that McDonald's, KFC and the others can perfect.
It should be very exciting!
If scientists are swiping there ideas from Torchwood episodes nowadays, they'd better be prepared to start shagging each other and coming back from the dead on a regular basis as well.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Other than that, yeah, good show.. I'm a big fan of growing food in vats instead of animals on grain and parts of other animals.
For a start, it makes real permanent space stations all that more feasible.
How we know is more important than what we know.
PETA-style vegans will NEVER be happy. It is their raison d'etre to be in a constant state of discontent, grousing at humanity for every little slight against the animal kingdom. For mostly spiritual reasons I don't eat animals, but I do eat dairy and eggs, and boy does it really cheese them off (npi). For the real PETA-style nut cases, it's all or nothing, with-us-or-against-us. Commercially viable fake meat? Mmm, OK, if it feeds people and replaces meat, sounds great... but yah, veganazis will never be happy.
Just grow fields of brainless animals that are kept alive and fed artificially. And don't get all ethical on me.
The funny part about this is that apparently they don't know how cell culture is usually made. For animal cells it very often involves the use of purified serums. Guess how many liters you'll need to make a steak?
Don't forget that PETA already kills animals for fun and profit. Why not go one further and sell their meat too?
Takeshima? Dokdo? Who cares! Liancourt rocks!
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
That seems to be the optimal human diet, summed up nicely in seven words. That's the main reason I'm a vegetarian. As I went through my biology coursework in college, I realized that eating red meat wasn't great for me. From there, I eventually cut out other meat. Now as I look around my cubicle farm of IT staff, I'm one of the few thin and fit people around.
The other reason not to eat so much meat is economic and environmental. It's inefficient. When you convert sunlight to meat, it has to go through a plant phase, and you end up having to cultivate a lot of grain to make a little meat. It's simple physics, and difficult to argue against (the best I've heard is that you can graze animals on land not useful for much else).
Vat grown meat might help with the latter issue, but probably won't help much with the first one. Eating lots of meat likely isn't the most healthy option for humans. It's not inherently bad, but causes health issues in the quantities Americans seem to eat it.
Oh hells yeah! Take a sample from my arm! Oh the endless potential!
"Would you like to eat me? Your friend ate me last night!"
"So. That sausage. You like it? Want some more? I've got some RIGHT HERE."
They WRITE THEMSELVES.
Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily
at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which
he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the
whole thing.
"Jesus," Molly said, her own plate empty, "gimme that.
You know what this costs?" She took his plate. 'They gotta
raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't
vat stuff." She forked a mouthful up and chewed.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
In 1964 Playboy published his short story "The Food of the Gods" he explores a very intersting line of thought or reasoning with artificially created meats.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Oh yea, and they need to make sure they got money set aside to pay for animal contraceptives, spade or neutering before they get us all on spamalicious meals. Once we stop eating them the animal population will rise, and thus conditions for the animals will worsen, food will become scarce, disease will become rampant. If they don't work that out first, we will have to start killing them just to thin out their population, and that will be oh so much better for them.
is it just me, or does this seem to go against everything PETA is supposed to stand for? i'm a vegan, and i think that this is highly questionable stuff
See also the urban legend about KFC's artificial chicken, Animal 57:
http://www.geo-pie.cornell.edu/media/kfc.html
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Yeah its OK to over consume, as long as we don't kill those squishy squishy pigs.
There is no food shortage in the world. The 1st world is throwing away food by the kilo-ton while the 3rd world is starving to death. We are consuming much more than we need, simply to fuel an economy of greed.
And the vegans think its ok to keep doing that if we don't directly kill animals. Never mind that overconsumption causes the destruction of every natural resource on the planet, including animal life.
If we can continue feeding our fat bellies without the killing, everything will be OK.
All hail the Profit God. Amen
You mean... Bill Gates is involved?
What will Mike Rowe do on Dirty Jobs if someone figures this out???
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
... here is how:
1) Kidnap PETA person
2) Grind up PETA person
3) Sell to other PETA people as non-animal meat substitute
4) PROFIT
5) Repeat step 1 until PETA_people_left=0
If anyone wishes to assist in the above plan I'd suggest we start with Ingrid Newkirk !
the amount of energy(and CO2 and CH4 emissions) it takes to get a burger to your plate is astounding. Cows are very inefficient if you consider the energy put into them compared to the amount of energy that can be derived from eating them. Not to mention you have to truck the feed to them and then you have to truck the meat to where it is consumed, very few cows in the city. All this adds up to a lot of fuel and a lot of emissions, not to mention the cows themselves often emit methane which is considered to be worse per unit volume then CO2. If they could raise the meat in vitro, maybe the process could be much more efficient and thus emit much less CO2 gasses.
For anyone interested in the subject, the University of Chicago did a pretty good writeup. Seems chicken is probably the best meat for the environment.
Monstar L
When I first began a vegetarian several decades ago, I started using those substitute products made out of soybean and tofu, but they were unsatisfactory. I prefer Asian-style dishes that dont tried to imitate meat, but are tastey in their own right.
So I see a lot of folks here are wondering if cell could be sampled from living animals--that way, there's no murder, no death. Maybe people could probably feel comfortable with that. However, under Kashrut laws, meat that from a living animal is not kosher.*
Some other folks ask about cloning human meat; that wouldn't be kosher, either, simply because human flesh does not lie in that specific, defined list of Kosher animal species as defined by Jewish law.
No one seems to be addressing the fact that cells will probably still be sampled over and over again. While less animals suffer with cloning meat, slaughtering for the sake of 'cloned meat' sources would probably continue.
- Roey
------------
* It wouldnt'be like rennet since cloned meat is by definition the re-growth of the actual muscle tissue of the sampled host animal.
I've been thinking about this for some time now. And while it would be feasible to grow muscle tissue I doubt it would be possible to get the flavor right. The flesh would need to be grown on living bone and 'fed' something similar to what the donor animal eats in order to pick up the subtle flavors that make meat so tasty.
Back in January, Hallmark Meat Packing got caught slaughtering sick animals, resulting in the largest meat recall in US history. Some of the animals slaughtered couldn't stand on their own feet.
What will we test to determine "fit to consume" when meat is grown in a vat?
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
That's a commonly held misconception. They're in favor of ethical treatment of animals, which for them precludes farming. PETA actually offers free euthanasia for sick animals for people that can't afford to have it done by vets.
As for abortion, it's highly ironic that many of those who get riled up by killing of a pre-human lump of cells are just fine with their government getting into a non-defensive war and driving up food prices around the world through it's subsidy of corn based ethanol. There's this weird paradox in the pro-life movement that unborn life is elevated to sacredness but actual humans living on earth already who have memories and consciousness can be chucked aside without protest.
Who says we have to eat lamb or beef or pork if it's grown in a vat? We could finally ethically try Long Pig!
Oh the marketing possibilities of celebrity meat products...
-- "If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed."
Vegans are free to eat as they wish. The rest of us don't have to bow to their choices. We don't have to consider their choices at all.
Being a vegetarian and not bothered by people who want to consume meat I find this whole concept absolutely disgusting. If you want to eat flesh grown in a vat, more power to you. But I have to ask, would that actually be any healthier then the hormone and antibiotic infested meats most people already consume?
I much better policy would be well cared for, grass fed, organically bread animals. Healthier for you, healthier for the earth and a much happier animal.
Peta people are wack
If you think Quorn tastes like meat you have mostly tasted meat that have a distinct similarity to carboard. Quorn is far better than Tofu or other soy based products to me, but it's only hard to distinguish from meat if the meat is bad quality and poorly prepared and the Quorn is seasoned excessively with fat and/or spices.
As a vegan, I can at least speak for myself: the answer is definitely "yes."
Veganism is neither irrational nor difficult to understand; if you're making an animal suffer unnecessarily, vegans are against it. It's amazing to me how such a simple position seems to confuse people.
What if you can't tell the difference, and the meat is cheaper to make, with a smaller ecological footprint? What about when all the fast food joints start using it?
Vat-meat is certainly more appealing to me than the ingredients in a McDonald's chicken nugget.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
Well, this is a sci-fi tech that we could do. I eat beef, pork, chicken, and some times things like shrimp. Can you create artificial plants that tastes and cooks like meat oh and is cheaper than existing meat? If so, I'd buy it.
It's not like, I really know where the meat sold at Walmart comes from. It's in the meat section, is red, and doesn't kill my family when we cook it. If they can only make it cost effective for it to compete in the traditional meat market. Raising cows, pigs, chickens, and fish are billion dollar a year industries. O.k. They might change, but the only reason we'd switch away from them is if you could make your mystery meat cheaper. I'm reminded of this manga: http://www.onemanga.com/BioMeat_-_Nectar/
So..
can they alter the meat as well? less fat? more protein? extra vitamins? or can large corporations make them more addictive?
"buy your McBurger, now with the latest McD meat profiling taste and additives"
Yeah, it seems reasonable... Until somebody succeeds and they use it as the basis for their argument that we should stop raising livestock for the meat entirely.
Actually, yes. Feral pigs are all over the SE US. People hunt them. They do fairly well. Feral cattle do well too.
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People in denial about nature, thinking that the concept of morals - a concept created by man, for the governing of the behaviour of man towards man - can be applied to animals, are sorely mistaken. Not that we shouldn't treat our animals right in life - heck, I think what takes place on CAFOs and egg factories is downright unconscionable. BUT YOU DON'T FIX THINGS BY REDUCING AND ABSTRACTING THEM. This can work for simple problems, or for a short time, but it will not work in the long run (neither for industrial food, or pretend food like MEATA (TM) ).
Farming over the centuries has provided innumerable benefits to our animals. Chickens, Cows, etc. actually benefit from being under our protection. They no longer have the natural defenses their progenitors once posessed. The image of the wild cow freed from its shackles of slavery is a myth, a fantasy. If we synthesized all of our meat, and freed our livestock, they would in short order go extinct. Reducing its suffering? Yes, I suppose not living implies not suffering. But once again, you don't solve these problems by getting further away from them - you reduce suffering by farming differently, not genetically engineering away anxiety, or making brainless test-tube ribeye.
Finally, this is completely unsustainable. By that I mean that doing this requires substantial energy input. Where is that energy going to come from? This is just a guess, but based off of previous data, I think it would bear out: petroleum. Love it, hate it, it's an amazing source of energy. One that won't be around forever. How do you grow sustainable meat? Well, that also requires substantial energy input - from the sun. I'm of course ignoring pesticides and fertilizers for the feed crops - they're unsustainable as well. However, you don't fix the problem BY ABSTRACTING IT EVEN FURTHER.
Okay, done ranting. If you want more information about this and other topics, might I redirect you to The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan, and Polyface Farms? Not the whole answer, but it's a good start. We aren't going to solve these problems by thinking about it from an industrial perspective. It's about time we start to think differently.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
Instead of a movie they need to watch cable. Force them to watch the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet nature shows.
If they are at all awake they will either realize that the whole world is designed around the idea of one thing eating another. (Or they might decide that God screwed up as they watch the lion take down that gazelle...)
Remember if they weren't intended to be eaten they wouldn't have been made out of meat!
Right?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Let's say that we are able to create vat-grown meat sources. If this is so, livestock producers will have no reason to grow the millions of cattle, swine, and poultry that they do now. This will result in almost all of them being slaughtered anyway, since there will be no motivation to keep them, except a few as breeding stock and zoo exhibits.
I don't have any desire to see domesticated animals put in any more pain than needed during slaughter, but face it folks, these animals were bred in captivity to be killed and eaten. Many would not be able to survive in a "natural" environment, and certainly not in all the areas where they are currently raised.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Soylent Green is..... Cows!!!!
If SPAM = PETA, what does the Declaration of Independence REALLY say? And the constitution? Did the Freemasons start PETA?
My mind is reeling with the possibilities, but then, it usually is.
Invenio via vel creo
"You done good," the Colonel agreed.
"What'll really blow your mind is that it isn't fake, at least bio-chemically speaking," the Doc said with no small amount of pride. "The vat meat is grown directly from cultures of original animal cells. The meat draws nourishment from the nutrient bath in the vat. When the vat is full you scoop out the meat and leave a cutting behind to grow into the next batch. The trick is to activate the telomerase reverse transcriptase gene. Do that and you're in fat city."
The image of potted meat was not very appetizing but the result certainly tasted a lot better than Spam. People happily kept eating. Then Shel had to put a damper on things.
"Doc, question for you. The telomerase enzyme is a ribonucleic protein that synthesizes telomeric DNA on chromosome ends, right?"
"Right."
"And normally telomeres become shorter and shorter with each cycle of cell division. When they become short enough cell division ends, right?"
"Right again."
"And by having an endless supply of telomerase the cells keep dividing forever, right?"
"Right. That's what I said before."
"So in other words we're eating cancer tumors."
"Right."
That caused every fork at the table to stop. Every eye turned to face the Doc.
"What?" he demanded. "It's perfectly safe."
Nobody looked convinced.
"Oh fer fuck's sake, you've eaten far worse at McDonalds!"
Tavares reached for the customary bottle of Tabasco sauce, having gone unused the entire meal. Unscrewing the top, she deftly gave the bottle several firm shakes over the remaining curry on her plate. "Better than goop," she said, and continued eating.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
One thing is to clone an animal (like cow, as it was done in Argentina) or to clone cells. You don't need a live animal to clone its cells. So I think it should be OK for a vegan since there is no animal suffering involved in such a process (but the research that leads to it needs to use animals to extract the samples, but once you have a cloned cell line to generate tissue, you won't need the animals).
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Get the tastiest breed of cow, find the tastiest cow of the breed, kill the poor thing, and grow the cloned meat in a vat.
Once the system is working, I'd imagine it'd be a lot cheaper than the current system, think of the energy cows waste (breathing, blood pumping, etc). Admittedly cows allowed to roam get that energy from grass, but it's still trading a massive waste of land for a massive amount of unwanted methane
I'm sure meat grown in a vat would be a lot easier to tinker with than meat grown by a cow, allowing things like vitamin enriched beef, long life beef, burn resistant beef, bacon flavor beef (admit it, you know you want it), possibly even replacing the cow fat with something like omega-3 fat...
As for ethics, some people may comment about not giving a damn if an animal feels pain, but I'm sure if they bothered to research it, all but the most psychopathic would feel empathy, they'd just rather not think too deeply about it. Likewise, I suspect my footwear was made by some child slaves in some faraway country, so while I avoid that brand, I'm fairly sure if I researched the brands of footwear I do buy, I'd find some pretty bad things.
...when I played Civilization: Call to Power.
The seed companies of the world (three of em) now own all the seeds. The farmers, who were subsidized into buying them, are forbidden to use the seeds from cloned plants thereby forcing them to buy seed from the company again. Now there are no more real seeds. Only the ones you can buy from them. This will just cause the meat industry to become just like the seed industry.
Eviscerate the Proletariat!
I, for one, can't wait to check if I taste like chicken...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I thought I already heard about this before where supermarkets may be selling this kind of meat in the near future?
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Deer is EXTREMELY cheap, you go out your back door shoot it, gut it, then cut it up and put it in your freezer for FREE. Amazing isn't it? And as far as the ecological footprint, well you keep the population down so they don't starve to death. The circle of life at it's best!
Wasn't this concept mentioned in one or more of the Stainless Steel Rat sci-fi novels?
Chicken meat raised in vats and referred to as "Chicken Little"?
It's been a long time since I read those books - can anyone confirm?
What?
The problem here is that you can't just build meat. You need a support system for the meat, the heart, kidneys, and so on, to transfer the blood through the meat. The question is, what's the most ideal form to build it in? It's not just 'a vat of meat', you're going to need to build the rest of the animal somewhere.
Of course, you could go for artificial organs and try to grow real meat on it, whereupon the question is, how big can you build it... and remember, it does need exercise somehow.
Is it just me or is the most disturbing thing about this story the fact that PETA have a million dollars to offer for anything?
It's about the non-vegans and non-vegetarians who consume large amounts of meat. If there was a healthier, cheaper, and more eco-friendly way to consume meat without giving up the current taste and texture, then they wouldn't need to become vegan or vegetarian.
The followup X-Prize will go to the first person who can make the fake meat seem macho.
"Here is that pound of flesh you ordered..."
Oh bugger off PETA, nobody cares.
If you want to be vegetarian, then thats just GREAT (More meat for me). What I really fail to understand, is why, having become a veggie, you INSIST in eating foods that imitate meat.
Veggie sausages, veggie steaks, veggie chicken nuggets, why pretend to eat what you berate others for eating?
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Answer me this: Why do vegans, who are against the killing of animals, protect animals which then turn around and promptly kill and eat other animals? They don't only protect herbivores AFAIK. From this point of view, saving a carnivorous animal is like saving a human so they can continue to eat meat.
And let's not get into the way they want mankind's millennia of evolution to turn on a dime, and they want alternatives to animal testing, which I can only guess means human testing, if they don't classify humans as animals...or perhaps no testing at all?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
'Nuff said.
So this is how the Axolotl tanks began.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
While the idea is interesting my thought is "why, while we still have the real thing." (geek out) This could be more interesting for "farming" in harsh environments or deep space missions. (/geek out)
I'm all for giving the farm animals better conditions like room to move around, etc where appropriate, but when it's time to slit throat/smack in head with pneumatic hammer or whatever the ideal way to slaughter them is well, then it's dinner time. I don't see a need to stop eating animals so they can live out long lives in the wild (which as another author said domesticated animals won't be able to survive). Animals eat animals, we eat those animals, it is called a food chain.
-Xen
How about like the HHGTG: Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
:)
Instead of artificial meat, you breed a cow that _wants_ to be eaten, and will indicate so.
My girlfriend of 3 years is vegan. I don't eat pork or beef... I never really did - but I eat occassional chicken, fish, dairy and egg products (I can't stay away from real chocolate chip cookies!) From what I've gathered from our discussions she chooses vegan diet for a variety of reasons. Some more belief based and others are more evidence based. And that is an important point to this conversation - as with everything in life - the reasons are many - not just singular. I think it mostly relates to animal kindness, environmental effects of raising animals for mass consumption (I can't really explain this one because I don't really know details) and health reasons. Ironically, we will tend to eat scientifically engineered products (boca burgers, THOUSANDS of soy products and various other products) So, I sometimes wonder about the health reasons. But recently we've tended towards more veggies, pastas and grains. As for replacement meat, I've found that Seitan http://vegetarian.about.com/od/glossary/g/Seitan.htm is one of the closest to the texture of meat (compared to Tofu) My concerns with this soy based diet are related to the concern of soy being a plant estrogen and it's concern specifically - to men's health... http://www.rheumatic.org/soy.htm To answer (for her and other vegan's I know) the topic's question - I say: They would probably NOT eat it.
It looks like.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
"The question I always had about this- if they can take one sample from one animal and clone it in a vat and feed this world, will the vegans be ok with that?"
It depends on the type of vegan. Many will not be okay because they are abolitionists and believe that animals should have the right to be let alone, rather than made slaves for humankind.
Performing this kind of animal testing (which would no doubt have terrible effects on the animals) and keeping animals in labs for cloning is, to me, a terrible step in the wrong direction and is why nobody in the animal rights movement takes PETA seriously.
And finally, there is no way this could "feed the world." We have more than enough food to feed the world right now, we just waste it using inefficient farming (factory farming of animals being hugely inefficient) and the price would be too high for those in the third world, unfortunately.
that my dream invention of the Beef Vat will finally be realised? Mmmmm....Beef fresh from the Vat....
If god didnt intend me to eat meat - he wouldnt have designed me with carnivores teeth!
I've been vegan for ten years and, although I am not a particularly preachy, missionary-style vegan, it now and then strikes me as completely bizarre when something reminds me that people actually eat at McDonald's and other places like that where they claim to serve "food". It's appalling, ridiculous, and sort of funny at the same time.
So, although I would much prefer it if non-veggie folks ate lab fabricated meat, in much the same words I would use if I saw you walking into McDonalds: Ugh, would you actually *eat* that? Why would you ever put that in your body? Enjoy your dinner!
Will mess up your browsing - on purpose of course. Very cleverly hidden within what looks like a Yahoo URL but redirects to "slashblog.notlong.com" which then redirects to on.nimp.org. Strongly suggest you don't click on the link unless you're running a sandbox and want to examine it from there.
Yummmm...
You are what you eat. I don't want to be a vegetable.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Must stop visiting Slashdot.
Whatever you may think about PETA's tactics, at least in this case they are putting their money where our mouths are.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Coming from an organization that promotes the eating of meat.
By Pohl and Kornbluth if memory serves (can't be asked to look it up). Corporations control everything, including the government. Invasive advertising everywhere. That's 2/3. If Peta succeeds it'll be a full house!
All vegan's are vegetarians therefore a joke about a vegetarian would apply to all vegans.
most vegetarians are not vegans so a joke about vegans may not apply.
Because it's the suffering that gives em that delicious flavour.
Hunt this xprize meat or do we get to hunt PETA members
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
I have to give them credit for in this case, really putting their money where their mouth is (or wants to be). I like the Nature Conservancy for this reason too - basically having the attitude that if you care about something enough, pony up some money for it instead of the usual thing of throwing a tantrum and looking for attention.
How is 'vat meat' an acceptable alternative to farm raised meat? PETA is actually ok with substituting franken-meat for real animals?
Honestly that's very gross to me. How lazy are we that we would rather pull ourselves farther out of nature and eat out of a test-tube, than actually do the hard work needed to actually implement sustainable and humane farming practices. If the cost of farm-meat actually reflected how costly it is to raise free-range animals that aren't full of hormones, steroids and antibiotics then the price would cause people to eat less and economics would create more of a natural balance.
I'm a bit of an environmentalist and an animal lover myself, but I do eat meat. I enjoy it, but I also have respect for the animals and wish that I had more options for more 'holistically' raised animals, and a more sustainable balance to the food chain.
Forcing everyone to be vegetarians or to eat some kind of never-alive-test-tube meat clone is not the answer. Damn, humans are lazy. That, and we are becoming depraved and don't even realize it.
the "FRANKENFOOD IS EEEEEVIL" crowd will not accept this. so you have the "don't kill animals" idealists now in a knife fight with the "no genetically modified food" idealists
so lets just sit back and watch the firewords and pass me the, um, are you sure that's popcorn?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They'll fry up really nicely. And then we can start on the Chinese and the Indians. There's lots of them, so that's a herd that'll take a long time to cull out. In fact, we may never even need to eat the bony butts of east africa.
Just a modest proposal is all I'm suggesting...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
What I always thought PETA should do is start up a rating system for companies that sell animal products. They could still do all their sneaky undercover data gathering, but they really need to start rewarding companies that practice due diligence.
A bunch of vegans boycotting meat really doesn't work as any sort of incentive to these companies. If I saw that one chicken company treated their chickens better (free range, well fed, etc) I would be happy to pay more for that product. Companies that get high PETA ratings would be able to label their products as such, and I believe that it would actually create some real market pressure to treat animals better.
Small disclaimer, I detest PETA. They use shock imagery to manipulate and confuse people who just want to be good citizens, and from everything I have seen, it is all to feed their bottom line. I have lost a few friends, otherwise good people, who now refuse to speak to anyone who would consider that eating animal products could be acceptable.
PZ Myers recently made a post on Pharyngula about this topic. He came to the conclusion that growing meat on domesticated animals is the best way to grow meat.
they may just decide to self-clone/cannibalize...
use their OWN flesh as the source of their cloned steak..
they can't object to the 'suffering' of themselves if they want some nice ribs....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I can't recall the comedian, but someone once noted "Why do vegetarians need to make their food (tofu pups, veggieburgers) look like meat they simply wont eat? You don't see monks keeping blow-up dolls just hanging around."
Like many vegans, I'm in it for ethical reasons, not because meat doesn't taste good. I've very happy that there are fake meats that are getting ever closer to tasting like (and more importantly, having the texture of) the real thing. Some of them are awful, but some of them are spookily good. Either way, I find that compassion is the best sauce.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Has anyone considered eating the Irish?
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
because they taste good and we evolved to eat them
the only reason eating animals is a problem is suddenly because we evolved higher mental faculties like empathy, morality
luckily, we also developed science, which will soon give us meat vats, and we can go on with our carnivorous delights and not a single animal need be killed anymore
but if you try to ask people to give up meat just because the animals suffer, you have just as much success asking people to stop having sex because of disease and overpopulation
it is a compulsion, hard wired into us. do not underestimate it. it is deeper and stronger this compulsion than our higher faculties
so much as birth control and penicillin sidesteps the issue of disease and too many babies as byproduct of our love of sex, so will meat vats sidestep the issue of cruelty and our love of meat
but you are really insane if you think a nice morality lecture will stop people from eating meat just because its cruel. as if a "just say no to sex" because of disease and overpopulation approach would work
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've often had the same sort of idea - if a cow can take grass, water and energy and make steaks, why shouldn't we be able to do the same thing? Recently, however, I've decided that even if they figured out how to do it tomorrow, it would not be to our benefit. It would end up being like baby formula - a product that's been around for decades, keeps getting tweaked to add this or that nutrient or remove or reduce undesirable components, yet still can't compare to breast milk. Or it will end up being like margarine, touted for decades as healthier than butter until they discovered that trans fats in the margarine were much worse for you than the saturated fats in the butter.
If they could grow meat, they would be unable to resist the temptation to fiddle with it. Rather that simply duplicate the meat from a grass fed, non-corn finished animal, they would reduce the cholesterol, boost the omega-3's (or whatever omega is good for you right now), add beta-carotene, and fortify it with vitamin C and calcium ("a full day's supply in every burger"). Then, ten years later, there will be a report that eating too much factory meat causes liver failure. The food scientists will tweak the recipe, declare it safe and healthy and we're off to the races again.
I do think they'll figure out how to do it (the cow can do it, after all). I just think the food industry has a very consistent record that demonstrates their inability to improve on or even match what mother nature can do, despite all their claims that they can.
DD
"Can I finish? Can I finish?
Torturing animals doesn't serve a purpose. Killing them for the purpose of nourishment and consumption does.
Yes, perhaps it's in some ways distasteful, but - being omnivores - it's also part of our natural biological process. I'm sure this will cue the rant about vegetable and pill-based alternatives, but it's still not the way we're built to function.
You can't compare murdering somebody to the consumption of a food animal. It's not the same thing. And before you get into the "would killing be OK if we eat each other," that's also a no, as - except in cases of starvation - most mammals don't eat their own species either, and in many cases they don't kill each other except under a certain set of rules (territory, etc).
Come on.. "it's made of PEOPLE!!"
"We don't mind taking uncomfortable positions if it means that fewer animals suffer."
There's a quote that could be taken out of context!
We are here at the 2008 PETA worldwide conference, where we've secretly replaced the faux meat they usually serve with Folgers Real Meat From Suffering Dead Animals. Let's see if anyone can tell the difference!
I can also think of some great names for their new product, like "I Can't Believe It's Not Dead Animal".
Tasty, tasty murder.
As someone who grew up farming as well as an avid fan of cooked meats of all kinds....the stunts PETA pulls pisses me off to no end. I'd love to go toe-to-toe with each of every one of those hippie nutjobs...
Does the winner get the prize for hamburger, or a steak? Now the first one can be done both cheap, easy, and in vast quantities. The second requirers a bit more work, but would make the meat nearly indistinguishable. And speaking of indistinguishable, what level of tenderness is required? If the steak has to pass for 'normal' it needs to be worked. More work.
Can it be done? Sure. Hell, if they gave a bunch of biology graduate students a grant of half-up-front, and the rules in place, one of us would be happy to preform the research and development. So long as they are willing to spend the time and money getting the product approved for consumption (I know a general approval has been made, but I am willing to wager there are inspections, tests, and other things I do not know of.. All of which will take time and money.) And the benefit of doing it that way instead of a "prize"? You get exactly what you ask for on a time-line you approve, and you also get the focused attention of a few biologists and engineers at their cheapest and most obsessive state...
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
FuCk I Hate these people. They're anti-meat, great for them. If they're vegans, then go vegan. Stop lusting after the meat. "Hi, I'm from PETA! I love animals I would never eat an animal or use an animal byproduct. Fuck I wish someone would make some fake meat so this shit I'm eating would taste better.".
My other sig is a knife wound.
As much as I dislike PETA and their methods, this is finally a proactive step. Identify the problem (in their minds, at least), and offer payment for a constructive solution.
When I began my evidence, I used the archaic word "carnivore". Now I must introduce you another: I'll spell it out the first time: C-A-N-N-I-B-A-L...
MMMMMM Burgers!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
This reminds me of possibly my favorite Bob the Angry Flower cartoon. Enjoy!
Not to mention the reduced Co2 emissions from all the animals that are born only to be killed later on.
Meat grown in a vat? Bring it on!
... and although I still follow that lifestyle, I always had questions about the soy-based "imitation meat"/"plastic meat" ("the worst part of the dog", my brother would say) my mother made us eat: if you don't want to eat the real thing, why eat something that attempts to look and taste the same as the real thing? I suppose for me it is a matter more of taste than of some or other assumed ethical principle.
We would however eat egg and dairy, and can you imagine my mother's reaction when we started referring to eggs as "aborted chickens"? :->
PETA is an ANIMAL RIGHTS organization.
Some vegans don't eat meat because they think it's wrong to exploit animals.
Others don't eat meat because they feel that a vegan diet is healthier.
It's this second group that will be pissed off, but that's not what PETA's mission is.
Personally, I feel that if we weren't meant to eat animals, they wouldn't be made out of meat.
I think they should check some of the recipes for the meals served to me while in the U.S. military...
I'm sure it's still classified, though.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
The real problem is that test tubes come in racks of ten, and hot dog buns will still come in packs of eight.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."--Feynman
Its commonly called a "hot dog".
I don't know why some people are thinking Vegetarians/Vegans want this so they can have steak. Obviously Peta wants this so the meat-eaters will quit killing cows, pigs, chickens etc. Most Vegans are perfectly happy with their diet--just like any other diet choice, you can't stick to something you hate.
I'm not a vegetarian, but we do have some dietary restrictions in our house. Personally I like to use the Morningstar Beef crumble substitute. It is also kosher dairy.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I imagine most farm animals will become extinct within 10 years of the introduction of a true artificial meat. There really isn't much reason to keep cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys around otherwise.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I oppose to the killing of plants. They are another form of life that breaths, eats, bleeds, reproduce, have feelings, etc. Just like animals - they just do everything a little different.
Its one of the few forms of life that we eat while its still living. Now that cruelty!!!
Peta is one of those groups that actually supports the cruelty of animals. They have actually helped the fur coat industry by throwing ink/paint on fur coats of the rich. The rich will collect their insurance and go out and purchase brand new fur coats thus more fur bearing animals are sacrificed.
It's called SOYLENT GREEN!
... on the vegan you ask. I'd be ok, if none of the ingredients are vegan (except for a seed, of course, which in every generation but the first must come from a previous generation). I still wouldn't (normally) eat it, I don't see the point any longer.
In vitro meat's biggest opponent... Starbucks!
You sure are awfully strict in your rules and definition for OTHER people's beliefs. You know, it might be possible those rules and definitions don't apply universally...
Your whole "you are either a vegan or you are not" claim is already invalidated when you later say "Pragmatic concerns apply as always - if you can't find the medication you need in a gelatine-free version, and you have tried your best, there's nothing wrong with going with the gelatine version." If someone offered you a strip of bacon and you hadn't eaten in a day, is it ok to eat as long as you feel some guilt? Is it okay if I keep eating meat, as long as I feel guilty about it? Does that make me a vegan? Because, pragmatically, it would be very inconvenient for me not to eat meat.
It seems you just redefined a vegan as "Someone who doesn't eat or use animal products unless if they feel they have no choice, then they must feel bad about it but go ahead and do it anyway."
In much the same way, the whole tiny amount of gelatin argument is also pragmatic. You can't spend your life feeling guilty about something like this that is unavoidable. If everyone didn't eat meat, they wouldn't use that tiny amount of gelatin because then it would be cost prohibitive.
I think we're all overlooking the more important benefits of this here... if we grow all our meat in test tubes nad giant vats that means each and every time we can have a perfectly formed boneless cut of whatever the hell we want.
Let the vegans elevate the animals we take the samples from as glorious god creatures for all I care. Their suffering saved millions, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
Now I can consume my steak without excess gristle, fat, and bones.
*glances at office cube mate* if it doesn't suffer the vegans should be ok with it.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It's not so mad to compare it to those dystopian futures like Soylent Green: PETA seem to be under the strange impression that if artificially grown meat was invented then all the farmers in the world would set their cows and chickens free to live wild with a cheer and a wave. In economic reality, however, if cheap artificial meat was invented, more and more farmers would very quickly send all their cattle to be slaughtered as no longer economic to maintain. It would be the animal apocalypse.
Vegans object to the use of animals, as it cannot be done except as exploitation (the animals, incapable of negotiation or resistance, cannot extract a fair and reasonable price for being eaten, yet get to suffer extensive pain the process).
This alterna-meat process would involve no animals and no pain. It would be a gross violation of their stated ethical beliefs to oppose it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I ain't eating any meat that didn't scream before it was on my plate.
Fat, gristle, tendons and bones are required components in just about every kind of meat-based cooking.
Try to make soup by boiling a boneless, over-trimmed, lean chicken breast.
If we could get human meat, that would be great for my vegan restaurant Soybabies - specializing in mock human.
Everything will be vegan except for the fake vegetables, which will be made out of meat. Anyone up for a side of Cowliflower or Mock Choy?
Why not try powdered milk)? Just add water, cheap to get, lasts for months. Normally use it for coffee/tea/desserts, but I hear more and more people moving to this as it is better in scale.
But then you're either left with a PETA person, or worse, a ground up PETA person with no one left to eat it...
I'm a vegan and if someone offered me a delicious cloned steak, I'd eat it in a heartbeat. And yes, even if the cloned meat needed original animal tissue to start off with, I'd be OK with it. In fact as early as 2003, the Australian research group SymbioticA, made cloned frog steaks from a still living frog. So animals, theoretically, could be donors to cloned meat projects without even having to die. Here is the link to SymbioticA and a link to an article about those delicious frog steaks... mmm... http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/welcome http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2004/02/62385?currentPage=all
I went herbivore eight years ago mostly for health and ecological reasons; These days it's a ethical one.
If vat meat (veat? can we coin that now?) would be available it wouldn't be objectionable to my vegan sensitivities; There's already vat grown schrooms fungus - Quorn - which is a popular (non-vegan) meat substitute, so as long as it's labeled 'veat' instead of 'slab of mutated beef' it might go over.
Skimming the Quorn page, it seems that it took ten years of trials before it was deemed fit for human consumption, so PETA better be patient.
Atwoods book Oryx and Crake briefly handles the topic.
Some vegans do it for health reasons (so an artificial product that's effectively the same chemically won't sway them), while others do it for "ethical" reasons, to avoid eating fuzzy critters... these people might find the artificial perfectly acceptable, as it sidesteps their core concern.
...[I]f they can take one sample from one animal and clone it in a vat and feed this world, will the vegans be ok with that?
Maybe, maybe not, but... why? Why go through all that unnecessary trouble just to create meat when there are plenty of easier, non-meat ways (killed or otherwise) to feed the world? Meat is a wasteful food source either way. The same resources needed to raise meat can make five times as many plant-based food sources. I've no idea what resources are needed to grow meat cells in a lab, but I'm guessing it's even worse than traditional meat-raising.
Just get over meat already. Humans maybe needed meat during the early period before we learned to farm, or when we first settle into new parts of the earth, or had crops wiped out due to weather or disaster. We're way beyond that now. The meat industry doesn't exist today because it provides some crucial nutrient, it exists because people are obsessed with consuming its products.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
A tasty yellow beef. Nuff said.
Q: How will we know if this new invention is safe for human consumption?
A: We'll test it on animals first!
Never let a mediocre career stand in the way of a good time
I agree I am sure it will be only a matter of time till the farmers have developed artificial meat. what with all the cloning, cross breeding and genetically modified feed an all. But hasn't Macdonald's already accomplished artificial meat? http://youtube.com/watch?v=mYyDXH1amic
mmm good!
Interestingly enough, the best tasting animals are the cute n cuddly ones that have been running wild n free frolicking around all happy an**BOOM! thar we go, mmm meat
Does it feel ok to offer in-vitro grown human meat in grocery stores for satisfying cannibal tastes without having to kill humans?
If this feels wrong, then it would appear that the idea is not really that sound for animal meat morals either.
Anyway: the actual moral problem with meat production is that you can feed 10 times as many vegetarians with the same amount of agricultural area than you can do when reprocessing plants into meat through animals. A solid part of food shortage in third world is caused by their agriculture producing food for our lifestock rather than their people.
I should be very much surprised if artificially grown meat would improve the output ratio.
Whether or not you are bothered about suffering animals: meat eaters are exporting starvation of humans. And in-vitro meat production will likely be quite less efficient than in-farm, causing quite more food shortage elsewhere.
Nothing would extinct the cow faster than in-vitro meat. It is not in cow's best interests for this to happen. The only draught horses you see anymore is the clydesdale's because ----tractors---- replaced them. All they will succeed in doing with this is accelerating the conversion of farmland to subdivisions as the cows are killed off in favor of meat factories. DUH!!!!! Cows + Humans = symbiotic relationship. Nature cares not for our pesonal discomfort, only for the suvival of our genetics.
Would in vitro meat be grown in the cities .... no!
.. probably not!
...?
Would in vitro meat be energy efficient and not produce greenhouse gases
So this is a bit of a non-argument
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Guys, you're missing the point. It isn't for the Vegans, it is for those who are not Vegan have Meat so that it cuts back on the amount of Animals are killed for meat every year. Not to mention the amount of other resources that it would save; clean water being the biggest one that comes to mind.
[J]
Cloned meat will taste like corn, because that is
what will be used to produce it.
There was a Sci-Fi story by Floyd L Wallace, written in the 1950s (anthology "The World that Couldn't Be") that seems to be tailor made for this discussion.
Some colonists return to the teaming overpopulated earth to correct a clerical error in the name of their planet that was causing people not to want to move there ('Misery Row' instead of 'Mezzerow' for its discoverer). Earth was a revelation, including the food, which they were informed was healthy and nutritious vat-grown meat, since there was no room to grow the real thing.
By the end they find out that the meat most suited to being vat grown was, unsurprisingly, the most common type of meat protein left on earth... and it didn't come from lower animals...
If PETA was still around in that particular future they'd be laughing their asses off...
So I'm thinking, how the hell would I grow meat? Yeah, I know the idea here is to find a way to culture it in something like a cross between a petrie dish and a hydroponic pot farm, but bear with me. Once you have muscle tissue, how do you develop it and accelerate its growth? You exercise it. How the hell do you do that?
... )
Hmm, okay, bioengineer a tendon at each end, attach one to a stationary part of the vat, attach the other to a mechanism that offers resistance (kind of a biomass bowflex, if you will), insert electrodes into muscle mass, and repeatedly stimulate the muscle, thus exercising the vat-o-meat.
Now we have twitching, pulsing vats of meat. Great. What happens if we take the next logical step and attach the buff biomass to a generator? Imagine a bioengine with a series of the vat-o-meat equivalent of cylinders that would pull instead of push, driving an electrical generator. All you'd have to do is feed it a constant supply of glucose & O2, and remove the waste. (Here comes the idea for the vat-o-kidney
Combination food factory and power plant.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
SymbioticA, a cross-disciplinary life sciences and art research lab at the University of Western Australia has been taking "baby steps" in this process. You can read about their "disembodied cuisine" project where they grew frog skeletal muscle over biopolymer and ate it.
It turns out the biggest problem with doing these kinds of experiments are regulations. Research labs may lose their licenses if they produce food for eating, actual food production has tremendous amount of regulation, and the transport of "biological samples" are highly regulated (although transport of a flank steak is much less regulated).
Also real "meat" is not just muscle cells, but a rich microstructure of muscle, connective tissue, and fat. So it will push the limits of tissue engineering to come up with something that actually tastes good.
deal with it.
damaged by dogma
Are we allowed to use FBS in the culture medium? Mmm... embryo juice.
On a serious note, one of the more compelling arguments for vegetarianism is the environmental impact of animal agriculture. Where will the carbon inputs for "vat-o-meat" come from, and how will they compare to plant protein sources?
Gaia is dying because I put a steak through her heart.
as a vegan and an animal rights activist sometimes i fucking hate peta.
yes, the animals wouldn't have existed if it weren't for our desire to eat them, but that doesn't absolve us of the suffering we create. it is better that they never existed in the first place to suffer at all
however, we need to eat meat, so livestock are ok, for now. when meat vats are perfected, there is no valid reason to keep livestock around
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The wild horses in the Western US are rough on the environment.
Best Slashdot Co
Awesome PETA, do you now recognize the fact you've taken your hypocrisy to a whole new level now by sponsoring animal testing?
Maybe now they'll stop sponsoring ALF and blowing up labs...yeah, right.
Let's toss the argument on if eating meat is good or bad, and just look at what would happen if we did. None of the animal rights activist would be behind slaughtering millions of viable animals, but having millions of now unemployed beef on the hoof, who is going to feed them, why if we can't eat them, would we feed them? (so we aren't cruel, of course). So now we have done away with the in-humane process of raising our steak, and have begun to grow it instead, we can gently encourage that 1500 lb bull move our of our driveway so we can go to work!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m4pe6UAS2M
Considering the fact that people said the same thing about slaves and women, maybe it is just you.
So are plants less dead than a cow on my dinner plate?
What I want to know is what makes these PETA (and similar) groups so damn sure that plants are not sentient in some way we don't understand
As a vegetarian, i wouldn't touch it. I am a vegetarian not only because of the killing of animals, but also because meat is high in fat and cholesterol and is far more unhealthy than other protein-rich sources. I'll stick to my tofu and soy protein, thanks. However, i do believe this would be good for the whole of society that eats meat. It removes the killing of animals from the equation without requiring people to give up eating meat. So from a "is it a good thing to do?" standpoint, i'd say yes, but don't expect a bunch of vegetarians/vegans to jump on board. This is more for the general public than veg*ans.
...I thought about that myself with our cattle. If such a thing happened as the cheap cloned steaks, and made this business just silly, I would get them all neutered and let them live out their lives in the pasture (where they are right now standing belly deep in lush spring grass), unless the government kept bumping up the land taxes too much, right now that's all they do, help pay taxes and I keep a side when I need one.
Humans are the Earth's natural Master Race. We're effectively gods; a Pantheon six billion strong.
Animals exist for our pleasure. Their suffering is not our concern, as animals are not human.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
You also 'evolved' an appendix for a reason. Is your health impaired because you don't use it? Evolutionary reasons change over time. You might as well say something like "If man were intended to fly, he'd have wings" or maybe even "God will provide."
http://www.quorn.us/cmpage.aspx?pageid=371
It's already out there.
Taste about as good as Soylent Green tho -
All of which can be exacerbated by the immense natural resources required to grow edible livestock. Water, veggies for the animals to eat, and land (usually created by burning down forrests ) results in inefficient food production to create not only meat, but inedible material such as bones and hair.
There are already excellent alternatives, such as soy burgers and chik'n patties, and they are actually delicious. Most foods' taste derives from sauces that garnish them.
I think Burger King offers a soy burger in its menus. Some great soy burger/sausage brands are Gardenburger, Kraft Foods' Boca Burgers , and Kellog's Morningstar Farms.
is PEOPLE!!!!
They only care about money and sensationalism. Just look at how many PETA employees have been caught taking animals from perfectly good animal shelters just to leave them die in unventilated, furnace like bins.
leaving aside the fact that meat is a substance that tolls the digestive system when it is consumed, the current state of the 'meat industry' is too medieval compared to the state our civilization is in.
Read radical news here
Fortunately, by the time it's been metabolized by, say, a cow (or, apparently, fermented, since soy sauce doesn't cause me any problems), it's not an issue.
NO! this is worse than GMO
Manipulating of life being the problem, domestication being worse than slavery and torture
I predict that PETA membership will drop and Farm Sanctuary will rise in membership.
There is a type of non-gilled mushroom called the Chicken Mushroom which tastes exactly like beef, yet i suppose has no nutrition to it at all. Perhaps they can find out what is inside it and market something similar. I know this for certain because in Pa I occasionally would find one and cook it up.
It's highly ironic* that people behave inconsistently, especially when you can point to massive groups of them and then pick whatever subgroups you like to demonstrate just how inconsistent they are.
Well, actually it isn't. It's just people being people.
Many of the vegans I have met adopted their lifestyle purely for health reasons (perceived or otherwise). The morality issue doesn't even come into play for them. I find a simple moral rule applies much more to vegetarians than vegans. If you're concerned solely about animal suffering, then you should be fine with eggs and dairy so long as they are farmed in a humane fashion.
Jules: And sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie but I'd never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker...
Due respect, you mostly highlight your own ignorance with this shallow post. I am not certain by what mechanism easting large quantities of meat would allow "rapid evolution." But industrial-scale meat production is a huge factor for global warming and other environmental destruction, not to mention large-scale systemically-enforced economic inequality. There are health problems too, (hormones and antibiotics and other icky stuff) although they aren't as big as some people like to think. But seriously -- read something: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?scp=1&sq=meat-guzzler&st=nyt And this ignores the apparently irrelevant notion of animal suffering, which if mentioned gets you immediately written of as a hopeless crank. The funny thing is that slashdotters are such a smart group, and yet people immediately swim to the shallow end of the intellectual pool when this issue comes up. 98 percent of the time I am content to make the "mmm... meat is tasty" jokes right along with everyone else, despite being vegan. Mostly so I don't get stuck with that "humorless vegan weirdo" label. Such is the power of social pressure. But it is an intellectually bankrupt position. I figured with all of the philosophy-major/hobbyist types lurking around here someone would have figured that out by now. Being concerned with animal welfare is just like being an atheist (I am) surrounded by christians (I have been). You get all of these stupid, stupid, scripted responses and you just smile blankly and nod in response at how obviously you hadn't realized Stalinism was attributable to atheism, and of course! where did the universe come from -- you know -- before the big bang? Because the alternative is to slowly and painfully start from first principles and explain physics and evolution and of course when you're done you won't have changed anyone's mind anyway, except to convince them that you're hopelessly alien and misguided... Well, animal rights is the same thing. You immediately get the: you people care more about animals than people; we're supposed to eat meat -- it's like, natural, man; blah blah blah. God, just looking at all of the stupid, stupid posts here is exhausting -- it is like reading a right-wing politics board -- you don't even know where to begin. This ridiculous (on it's face, after, like .5 seconds of thinking about it you supposed mensa geeks, you) notion that vegetarian and vegan identity begins and ends with being into animal welfare. Usually expressed as: "we care more about animals than we do about people." Like we wake up in the morning and just sit around being vegan. Maybe stroking a cat and cutting up pictures of our families to use as kitty litter.
Most vegan and vegetarians I know are intensely ethical people, whose avoidance of meat-products stems from a deep concern with issues of justice, sustainability and empathy. Most vegans and vegetarians I know are vastly more committed to working for positive (left-leaning obviously) social change than most of the meat-eaters I know. Not everyone, of course -- being an activist isn't a requirement for being a vegan. But what I find ironic are all of the people running around, wringing their hands because of global warming and dutifully re-using their shopping bags. Like many if not most slashdotters, I imagine. Because I am doing more to fight global warming by just sitting on my ass being vegan (and riding a lot of public transportation) than you are going to do in a year with all of your angry tirades about the Bush Administration and "buying local" and deciding to spend a little more for the "Rainforest Crunch" Ben & Jerry's.
Half the people in bus with me on the way to the anti-torture protest where we so outnumbered the police they couldn't even arrest us were vegetarians. Most of you meat eaters weren't even there, even though you care soooo much more about human than animal rights.
Really,
I like Bison. Mmmmmmmmm.... bison burgers with bacon and cheese... if it tastes like that I'll eat it!
Why does PETA assume that cells grown in a lab = food? Isn't food another form of energy, i.e. plants convert sun's energy, small animals eat plants, bigger animals eat smaller animals. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, haven't we been deceived enough by the nutrition "experts" that they have any clue about what is "good?" At the risk of sounding like a nut, I'm going with Pollan on this one: if your grandmother didn't eat it, you probably shouldn't, either. I'll stick to the pastured beef and chicken I get from local farmers.
Giving up meat isn't easy for a caveman.
My old high-school has prior art on anything you'll ever come up with.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
What vegans taste like?
Simple question to all carnivores: what makes exploiting animals (eating, animal testing, whatever) ok ethically or morally? Is it that they are:
a) less intelligent although presumably just as capable of feeling pain
b) just generally species loyalty -- no precise logic to it, just, "if it's not human I'll eat it."
c) some vague notion of the natural order, perhaps inspired by some vague notion of christian, "dominion over the animals" stuff. d) Sheer might-makes-right -- we're bigger animals, they're smaller animals -- we win. Or is there something else that I'm missing? I'm just curious. Many of these are perfectly internally consistent, although pretty awful when looked as in context with mainstream human-rights-based ethics. At least three work exactly as well as justifications for nazism, slavery or rape. Option C is pretty weak from any viewpoint, I think, except a religious or spiritual one which I consider, basically, dumb.
I really think a) is probably the most common, but least thought-thru since there's clearly a sliding scale of morality here. I mean, even most vegans don't worry too much about killing bugs. And many meat eaters don't like the idea of killing dogs or dolphins or whatever.
But that's kind of a creepy argument too, since there's no end to how fine-grained that scale can be. It means that it's more ok to kill stupid humans than smart ones. In a crisis we should start by killing those with mental retardation, then move on to those who score poorly on IQ tests, etc. Which is basically just eugenics again. And if someone is as stupid as an animal presumably we should feel no compunction about killing them.
What am I missing here?
There are many reasons not to eat meat besides the suffering of animals. In vitro meat generation seems ethically questionable, does not address the large difference in environmental impact required to produce meat versus a calorically equal amount of vegetable-based food, does not take into account the health-related reasons for abstaining from meat, and I don't think it would address the religious reasons that many have for not eating meat either. Artificial meat would not have me going back to being a meat eater, even if it means that no animals are harmed in its production.
I remember a story about 'printing' cells and making organs out of them.
Same idea as a good ole steak.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You don't have my genes. You are a descendant of people who lived different lives than my ancestors did. Your diet is fine for you I'm sure, but I don't like it and when I tried it I became fat, sluggish and prone to bowel and digestive ailments.
I am probably the fittest person in my office, and I'm also one of the oldest. I eat like a hunter - high protein, with some dairy, raw fruit & dark green vegetables. The majority of what I eat is red meat and fish, and I don't eat more than one serving of fruit or veggies in a day. I don't eat processed veg like bread or chips and I don't eat or drink anything sweet (don't like the taste). I get my exercise from violent combat sports and splitting wood with an axe.
I don't know why everybody seems to think there is an "optimal human diet". Humans vary, and so do gut flora.
I don't get the efficiency argument, either - for me, animals are a time-tested and efficient way to convert the inedible plants (like corn) into food. I have no need for agriculture and your farms are interfering with my supply of tasty healthy food by displacing game. And y'know, I don't want to live in a world populated only by humans - I want to live in a world with the maximum possible animal diversity - and the efficiency argument leads to the destruction of all large non-humans in order to maximize the amount of land devoted to farms feeding ever-growing mountains of pale, flaccid human flesh.
P.S. ...and cooking doesn't kill it.
This concept was used in an episode of Sci-Fi channel's original series Eureka, where pieces of chicken grown in this manner (similar to the human pod farm in The Matrix) ended up doing some horribly outlandish thing to the citizens after being eaten. Although the scenario presented would be unlikely to ever actually happen in the manner depicted in the show, it did definitely make you wonder just how "safe" such meats produced in this manner would be for human consumption.
In the meanwhile, this "X-Prize" may end up yielding results far less desirable to PETA than they're thinking. If they think testing cosmetics and drugs on animals seemed cruel, just wait until we start creating half-animal/plant abominations whose entire existence is entirely pain and suffering from the co-mingling of incompatible body configurations until we get things "tuned in" using generation upon generation of eugenic reproduction to get everything right. And even once we do manage one successful sample, we're still going to need to repeat the process several more times over to generate enough breeding stock to ensure that enough genetic diversity exists to prevent entire crops of these meat-bearing vines from becoming susceptible to a single, and possibly deadly, disease.
In the end, this will likely end up bringing all the little Frankensteins out of the shadows long enough to leave pile after pile of maimed corpses from failed test subjects at PETA's doorstep before PETA finally cancels the contest for posterity's sake.
8==8 Bones 8==8
What do you mean, no vegetarian sources for B12? You've got plenty of B12 producing bacteria in your gut. Unfortunately, they are too far down for absorption to take place. Fortunately, there is an age old solution! Simply fertilize your veggie garden with your own feces and don't wash your veggies. That has worked for dozens of vegetarian cultures the world over for thousands of years.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Well, it's extremely difficult to perform dietary experiments on humans. People tend not to like being told what to eat. Still, a few weeks ago the results of the DASH diet came in, with yet more evidence that eating a mostly plant-based diet is best for you.
True, everyone's going to die. What seems to happen, though, is that people's diet can influence the quality of life and length of life. I don't think it's a straw man argument to hold up statistics that compare health issues and diet.
Can he get the prize posthumously?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
No, it's not about food -- it's about compassion. I won't eat gummi bears or wear leather because of the unspeakable cruelty that happens to the animals used to make them. If you think that makes me a "wack-job", I truly hope that says more about you than it does about me.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
As portrayed in this informational video -- provided in handy cartoon form!
Quorn is only available in a limited variety in the US (check out the UK site www.quorn.co.uk for the variety available there).
Nor is it vegan - they use egg white as a binding agent in their products. The vegetarian society does approve of it, as they use free range eggs for the egg white.
It's not mushroom either, technically. It's not the fruiting bodies (the mushrooms), instead it is made out of the mycelium (of Fusarium gramineurum).
-a.e.mossberg
You will not convince me to stop eating meat through the following:
- appeal to environmental issues (I simply do not care.)
- appeals to efficiency (eg it takes X units of plant matter or land area to make Y kg of meat)
- appealing to multicultural sentiments (eg other cultures have gone meat-free for centuries, other cultures have food that tastes better than meat, etc.)
- moral/ethical issues
- health issues
- your good example
- subtle insults
I see this as a matter of efficiency.
Meat is extraordinarily inefficient, as a food source. I'm not sure the biosphere will be able to handle 10+ billion people eating cattle. Vat-grown meat, assuming it is grown in a manner which is energy efficient, may be one of the best methods for assuring the sustainability of the species, longterm, if our meat dependence can not be addressed in other ways.
I have to give props to PETA for this, though I think their positioning is poor and I take issue with their sensationalism around the worst-case examples in the meat industry. I have surveyed some of the various butchering practices that exist, and I think you would be hard pressed to call Hallal butchering excessively inhumane. Like all slaughtering, the animal does feel pain and is killed, but the process is extremely efficient and if done properly, it is done very quickly with a minimum of struggling on the animal's part.
I'm not a supporter of PETA. Whenever there is a thread about PETA on any kind of tech blog the same OLD jokes and the same DUMB comments are made. Over and over again. The people who post these recycled comments seem very pleased with themselves, completely unaware of how unoriginal they are.
Even on slashdot browsing at level 5.
Guys, I'm not saying agree with anybody, but how about opening the mind and letting an interrupt from the cerebral cortex get through before the fingers hit the key board?
Is HeLa edible?
I've always thought that cell cultures to produce products such as milk would be a more realistic and attainable starting point. Easier to implement since you don't need to worry about building up all of the complicated tissue structures and cell types in a typical piece of meat. However, there seem to be some great advances in attempts to grow organs so maybe similar technology could be used here.
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
Haven't you ever heard of Soylent Green? Supposed to be delicious.
Also, rumor has it that simply roasted in a pit people taste remarkably like pork. Ever heard of "long pig"?
If you accept that animals are designed, then you need to also accept that animals made out of meat were designed to be eaten...except possibly male cats and mustelids (skunks, weasels, etc.).
What you probably mean is that animals attempt to prevent attempts to eat them. That's unequivocally correct. Even oysters attempt to stop others from eating them, though passively. And some animals aren't practical for people to eat, like small barnacles.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Believe it or not, the production of this fake meat still requires a nutritious solution containing the carbohydrates, fats, amino acids, minerals and (some) vitamins required for muscle growth in vivo as well. Where would those come from? Basically from grain and soy, just like they are fed to most of the cattle right now. If you wanted to make a lot of fake meat, you would still require a lot of grain and soy, and a lot of land to grow them on.
What's worse is that there's no cheating the Second law of thermodynamics so from the perspective of usable food energy, the fake meat is still a losing deal. Sure, it will be more efficient to produce than conventional meat (read: less egregiously inefficient), but still wasteful given that man can eat the grains and soy himself.
There is another and very ironic point: Some literate meat eaters like to claim that man needs to eat meat to get his daily dose of vitamin B12. But the B12 that ends up in beef is produced by bacteria populating cattle's intestines. Assuming a hygienic production process, in-vitro meat would contain none of it at all.
Of course they could cultivate those bacteria in fermentation vats and use the B12 to enrich the fake meat with this substance. This is actually possible in a highly efficient way. But the same method is already used to enrich fruit juices, snack bars, breakfast cereals, soy milk and many other types of food with genuine vitamin B12. Once more you gain nothing maybe apart from the culinary pleasure that fake meat 2.0 or 3.0 might deliver. Rumor has it that the current types of fake meat are not so savory...
In most cases, the answer is that there is no ethical issue, but many still wouldn't eat it due to not liking meat. At least in the vegan forum I moderate. Incidently, pretty much the only thing I would eat would be Salami.
Then the cafeteria food might get even worse
"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security." Dwight Eisenhower
All you carnivorous trolls are soooo lucky I don't have mod points today.
I don't know, but the instant I saw the "soylent" tag I thought this:
Soylent Green is PETA!!
I think that might solve a lot of our problems.
--
Toro
...and then had to go back to eating meat for health reasons, namely the health of the people around me who were in severe danger of being flattened at the merest mention of a juicy, succulent, cast-iron-seared and oven-finished rib-eye.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I think one of the problems with having fake meat would eventually be animal overpopulation. I mean, look at India. "India now has so many cattle, according to Professor Ram Kumar of the India Veterinary Council, that there is only sufficient food for 60 percent of the cattle population. This means that of an estimated 300 million calves, bulls, and bullocks, some 120 million of these animals, especially in arid regions (and elsewhere during the dry season and droughts when fodder is scarce), are either starving or chronically malnourished. Because the majority of Indians are Hindus, and thereby hold the cow sacred, many consider the killing of cattle even for humane reasons unthinkable." (http://www.satyamag.com/oct98/sacred_cow.html)
I don't think there is truly a need for artificial meat (any hunger problems in the world are due to the distribution of quantities of food, not due to a lack of it on a worldwide scale). Though, having more choices of meat available can't be anything but a good thing. To me, genetically modified food is harmless. I guess some people will not prefer genetically modified food because they perceive it to be fake and inferior to the real thing (may or may not be true). The people who are against this type of scientific advancement for reasons other than health are simply resisting change (specifically, change to an unknown). I can't see vegans rationally rejecting artificial meat for moral reasons since these methods result in less animal suffering.
Look at our teeth, digestive tract and biochemistry - all designed to be a meat eating omnivore. Since we don't synthesize vit B12 and little of B6, we need them from animal sources (not found in plants).
As far as the health thing goes, vegetarians tend to have MORE health problems than non vegetarians - anemia, zinc toxicity, nervous system damage, etc.
If you make a decision, then you should be aware of the salient points
..........FULL STOP.
...lived in cans in space, the moon, and Mars will certainly appreciate this research!
Also from the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, I learn that selective infanticide, despotism, tribal genocide, and assorted other horrors are perfectly normal expressions of genetic self interest exhibited by numerous social animals in the natural world. From this I can either conclude
1. That as a person who derives their ethics from the natural behavior of animals, I find such things to be perfectly acceptable ethically, or
2. That as a person who doesn't look to a bunch of apes and tigers to guide my sense of ethics, I'll have to figure out right and wrong for my own d__mn self.
Personally, I eat meat, but I advocate as a citizen and prefer as a consumer the humane slaughter of living animals. In the future, the consumption of slaughtered animals will likely be regarded as an artifact of necessity from a less economically developed time, much as human slavery, tribalism, despotism, etc. are regarded today.
Try Quorn.
Irrelevant to the GPs point.
Then why did your last post discuss guilt?
I see an assertion with no evidence, which is not a surprise from you.
Not really.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetarianism#Criticism
"A widely adopted vegetarian diet, in and of itself, may not have profound effects on the health of the environment. The support of alternative farming practices (e.g. well husbanded organic farming, permaculture, and rotational grazing) and certain plant commodity avoidance such as rice, have a similarly beneficial impact on environmental health and sustainable agriculture. "
Your post belies your claim.
And I find the vacuous repetition of easily and roundly defeated assumptions annoying and ignorant. More than that though, I find the idea that you think you have a right to restrict my food choices based on questionable ethical arguments and debunked environmental claims to be insulting.
No. Most normal people eat things because they taste good. In fact, if you were to be honest (HA!) you'd notice the only people discussing their eating choices at all are people with alternative choices, such a vegans vegetarians.
It's fairly clear the "status" claim is much more accurately applied to vegans/veggies than to everyone else, your farcical claim to the contrary notwithstanding.
"as it's quite true that many of the mass-produced food-animals live fairly miserable lives."
That only applies if you believe that animals are capable of experiencing "misery" in the first place.
Using words like "torture" and "miserable" is just another attempt by people with an agenda to color the argument because the facts are insufficient and unconvincing.
This has nothing to do with guilt, the post, the subject or anything. You did not answer the question, you dodged it because you know you can't answer it without making yourself a liar.
NO IT DOESN'T. It makes the point that the benefits of vegetarianism ARE JUST AS EFFECTIVELY ACHIEVED WITHOUT ANYVEGETARIANISM AT ALL. Your reading comprehension sucks.
Which has what exactly to do with your posts? Internal consistency is easy, yet you failed.
No boy. That was ONE piece of evidence, why on earth do you think I'd list ALL of the evidence, YOU DIDN'T. Whee did I say that was ALL of the evidence? Why are you so reliant on obvious logical fallacies?
I would say that people should put a little more thought into their food choices than "it tastes good."
Right there. Now that you've been proven a liar (what telling us what we "should" do isn't trying to make our choices for us? Is that going to be your next lie?) we're finished.
If you are incapable of even discussing this subject without overtly lying about what you've said, I can't see any reason to continue.
While this is a pretty old concept in sci-fi it's definitely one that I've been wanting to actually live with for a while now. Even more as I've increasingly dealt with the issue of not wanting to kill animals, but not being entirely willing to stop eating meat (plus, c'mon, not to drag this further into a firestorm, but there are compelling arguments that animals killing other animals to eat is the natural way of things... nature is cruel as hell). Like others have said though, one of my biggest concerns is quality. With the way the agriculture is today flavor and quality have long, long given way to making a product that ships easily, grows quickly, reduces spoilage, and is made to conform to crazy marketing ideas (e.g. pork should be leaner to compete with chicken). All of this makes me worried that cultured meat will be dry, tasteless, and thoroughly unpleasant. A utility food for the very poor and vegetarians that's basically little more than a dry, tough tofu.
The biggest problem is that if we can culture meat with no need to kill the animals involved we really need to have human meat available. Not just for us to enjoy, but perhaps as a show of good faith to prove that it's not made from animals that have been raised for slaughter. Rudy Rucker's excellent integration of Wendy meat into his Ware series also got around one of the bigger problems to its adoption by using the oldest trick in the book: sex sells. An attractive nude woman lying on a bun with the caption "Eat Me"? Who could resist.
Just eat PETA the volunteers instead.
solve two problems at once
Well, I'm not a PETA member, and I'm a happy meat-eater, but as far as "happiness" or "misery" I'd say that humans definitely aren't the only species with a monopoly on these emotions. Several pets I've had have definitely expressed happiness (they're glad to see me when I've been away awhile), or loneliness+depression (my former pet rat was very upset when her cage-mate died, and I had a pet rabbit with similar issues).
What evidence do you have that humans are more capable of misery than animals?
No no no, YOU made the assertion that they are "miserable", it's on YOU to support it.
I never claimed humans were. I simply questioned whether "animals" (which are not a single bloc, by the way) are capable of "misery". Is misery the entire spectrum of human emotion? Stick to the topic please.
No they haven't, and you can't prove otherwise. I have perfectly reasonable, behavioral explanations for what you've listed as "happiness" and "loneliness+depression". Your perception of what is occurring is irrelevant. Your assertion is no more scientifically valuable than mine, and I can easily make the case that you're anthropomorphizing your animals. I'm not SAYING you are, as I think animals do experience emotion, but you're assuming something that has ZERO evidence to support it.
This has been hashed out by much more accomplished professionals than either of us, and there is still nothing approaching a consensus. What makes you think you know better, because your dog "told" you?
I nominate Sanitarium foods as having won the prize decades ago...
http://www.sanitarium.com.au/products/vegetarian-foods/
I've had many a slice of canned "Nutmeat" as a burger at many an aussie BBQ and you don't get more artificial meat than that.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
Best evidence so far - first paper. Looked at 1200 Seventh Day Adventists who reached age 100 and their diet. only 4 were vegetarians.
O. Segerberg. Living to Be 100: 1200 Who Did and How They Did It. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982.
J.L. Lyon, M.R. Klauber, J.W. Gardner, and C.R. Smart, "Cancer Incidence in Mormons and Non-Mormons in Utah, 1966-70," N Engl J Med 1976; 294:129-133 (p.132). No correlation of cancer in regular diet vs vegetarian diet
J.E. Enstrom. "Cancer Mortality among Low-Risk Populations," CA â" A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 1979; 29:352-61.
C.M. Friedenreich, R.F. Brant, and E. Riboli. "Influence of Methodological Factors in a Pooled Analysis of 13 Case-Control Studies of Colorectal Cancer and Dietary Fiber," Epidemiology 1994; 5:66-79.
D.J. Hunter et al. "Cohort Studies of Fat Intake and the Risk of Breast CancerÃ'A Pooled Analysis," New Engl J Med 1996; 334:356-61.
15. E. Becker. The Denial of Death. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1973.
..........FULL STOP.
First reasonable proposal I've seen from PETA . . . ever. Kudos to them. And I like the prize idea. Even if the amount is small, it gets people thinking about it.
Incidentally, my understanding is that some people can pretty much do without meat, but others have a biological need for meat. It turns out that there is some genetic diversity at work and all that.
In any case, if we can "manufacture" meat, this also means that we can eventually find a way to make the process more efficient, meaning less natural resources devoted to food - so this idea is also "green".
How long before someone sneaks in long pig as a modest proposal? A smart ass comment of "eat me" takes on new rather disturbing implications. How about custom receipe creations via grow your own kits, of course hawked by one Billy Mayes for only three easy payments of 19.95+shipping? How about DNA mixing kits and chimeras? Be a butt head and pass out on your buddies couch and wake up with a mosquito bite or two, a few weeks later someone has a new grilled geeky goat recipe.
Go ahead mod me down because these are ridiculous and extreme examples of how this could go all wrong. But I notice a lot of just as insanely stupid stuff happening everyday that is ignored by the same people that would have decried as silly any prediction of such.
As far as I am concerned you can all go eat yourselves anyway, after all who should have the right to tell you that you can't?
wabi-sabi
matthew
Argh, spineboy, generally I heart your contributions enormously (thus the AC in this case) but you have strayed into the weeds on this one.
Ignoring "designed" (argh!) the fact is that there is little substantial difference among primates' digestive tracts, and any primate is fully omnivorous, and furthermore capable of long periods of exclusively carnivorous and exclusively vegetarian diet. You can appreciate here that "long period" is age dependent and is not permanent.
There is much greater specialization for diet of the alimentary canal of many mammals, most notably the obligate carnivores (especially felids) and the obligate herbivores (notably artiodactyla/ungulates) than of humans. This is obvious even considering only gross anatomy, let alone getting into fine structures and specialized cells that manage (or directly digest!) gut flora.
However the obligates are not exclusives as the carnivores will consume small amounts of vegetable matter directly or in prey animals' lumen (deriving nutrients and calories therefrom), and the herbivores will directly or on infested vegetables consume small amounts of animal protein usually of insect or nematodal origin (again deriving nutrients and calories therefrom). Some of this behaviour also strongly influences the relative mix of important gut flora. Finally, all mammals eat animal protein and fatty acids in the form of milk, occasionally even as adults.
One can hardly argue that donkey teeth precludes the deliberate consumption of animal source food, or that tiger teeth preclude the deliberate consumption of vegetable matter, since proof by existence is readily observed. Therefore, arguing that human teeth implies much about the dietary biases of humans at any age seems very weak. I mean, what do the incisors of lab rats say about what's a good diet for rat models?
Humans have both an alimentary system that deals well with food of all varieties by breaking it down for direct digestion and internal fermentation. (We also have an awesome vomit reflex). We have large brains which have allowed evidence based approaches to diet to emerge, most especially the modern understanding of food hygiene. This is primate social emesis taken to the next level! Human teeth are IN THE WAY of hygienic eating even controlling for frequent acid challenges thanks to sugary drinks (ew, look at SEM micrographs of even healthy teeth, ew, let alone periodontial disease vs internal disease), so arguing that we should match our intake to our teeth seems totally backwards.
They were against the ones that cloned a cow and got eatable meat but they will give a price to anyone that can make artificial meat... Who can understand them?
ghostbar page.