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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?
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.
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.
Seastead this.
"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!
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.
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.
Agreed with the sibling post. I've known vegetarians who were vegetarians for health reasons, but never vegans who were vegan for health reasons...Lot of the vegans I know won't eat anything that was remotely an animal byproduct, to the point of only eating certain M&M's because one of the dyes isn't completely animal-free.
Most people just don't rank their health that highly. I am glad to see PETA finally doing something productive however...If your real goal is to prevent animal suffering, then this is actually a good method.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
What's so Odd about it? I don't eat red meat sans maybe Ostrich every blue moon. My diet is very Fish, Grain, and Veggie based and THAT gets me strange looks.
Even so, people feel the need to be apologetic when they order a stake if we go to dinner. My response is: "It's your body. Put into it what you what. Follow my example if you want, or don't. It's not MY place to force you to eat healthy"
If you try to force someone to see the world your way that will only get them to look away from it.
I'm ashamed that health and eco conscious people where more forceful in their views in the past making it harder for the people of today to be taken seriously.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
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.
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.
You know, we evolved canine teeth for a reason. Do you really think it's healthy not to use them?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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!
Umm.. M&Ms are make of MILK chocolate. Last time I checked, milk isn't made in petri dishes.
crowbar??
I can't wait for the cloned meat. Tasty steak, but never having been exposed to parasites, virus, pesticides, herbicides, etc. Also no fat, gristle, tendons, blood vessels or bones to worry about. Although I suppose if they can engineer cloned muscle cell, they can clone fat cells in that meat as well if they wanted, for flavor.
And if they can do this for seafood? Cloned lobster and crab meat? (Swordfish steaks.. nomnomnom.) Once in full production, the prices would likely be much cheaper than ocean caught meat. And no worries about pollution or mercury poisoning.
It would be great for wild animal populations, although bad for farmers and fisherman.
compare your canine teeth to that of a dog and tell me they are the same thing. Also how often do you use it to chew meat. I pretty sure you are like everyone else and chew your meat in the back of your mouth where your molars are.
Can I bum a sig?
That's not the point. Most monkeys also have canine teeth. Most monkeys are also strict vegetarians or even vegans (gorillas).
Saying: "you have canine teeth so you must eat meat" is the same as saying "you have a gun so you must kill people." I still think it's healthier not killing people, even if you do have a gun.
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 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).
Your logic is flawed. If methadone is a safer alternative to heroin, the fact that I do not use heroin does not automatically imply that I use methadone.
From an ethical viewpoint, not eating meat (or cloned meat) is at least as good as eating cloned meat. Thus a vegan would have the choice of eating cloned meat or continuing their current diet. The existence of cloned meat does not provide them any obligation to actually consume it.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
If humans have canine teeth for the (sole) purpose of eating flesh, why do gorillas, closely-related herbivores, also have them?
http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/zencmed/targets/illus/ilt/T012801A.gif
I doubt your argument's merit.
You don't chew with canines - you tear stuff apart. I use my canines every time I eat chicken off the bone, or ribs, or even some fruit and veggies.
*RIP-SNARL-GNASH-TEAR-GRRR*
Another dead carrot...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
In other words, you act like a smug shitcock when somebody takes the time out to try to make you a little more comfortable.
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.
deal with it.
damaged by dogma
There's probably peer-reviewed science saying the opposite though (I've read it in a journal, but I don't know when or where).
As with all these things, a balanced diet seems the best idea -- and a large amount of soy isn't balanced, just as the stereotypical American diet isn't balanced. Unfortunately, there are people who go crazy and decide to feed very young children soy milk, soy baby food, etc instead of a decent diet, just like there are mums that give their kids cola in a bottle.