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Scientists Create Artificial Meat
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that scientists have created the first artificial meat by extracting cells from the muscle of a live pig and putting them in a broth of other animal products where the cells then multiplied to create muscle tissue. Described as soggy pork, researchers believe that it can be turned into something like steak if they can find a way to 'exercise' the muscle and while no one has yet tasted the artificial meat, researchers believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat in as little as five years' time. '"What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue. We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there," says Mark Post, professor of physiology at Eindhoven University. "You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals." Animal rights group Peta has welcomed the laboratory-grown meat, announcing that "as far as we're concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there's no ethical objection while the Vegetarian Society remained skeptical. "The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust.""
The scientist raise a valid issue. This meat is from a artificial "muscle" that has never received any kind of exercise or strengthened itself. That is why it's not as steak, but I think it also affects taste of the meat too.
As a man who has run several pizzerias during my lenghty life, and as a man who respects a good steak, good bacon and good ham on a large pizza, I'm scared that this will replace the real meat at some point. This gives a stupid reason for Peta and other hippies to try to ban 'real' meat and put everybody to eat artificially produced meat.
Say goodbye to bacon pizzas, tasty and meaty hamburgers, hot dogs, a good grilled steak with french fries and most importantly, delicious food.
whip up an industry group to buy a bunch of TV ads promoting the Genuine RoboFood (TM) Alliance. bring Max Headroom back as the spokesbyte.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
-- welcome our new Sweet and Soggy Pork Overlords.
I, for one, welcome our new real-meat sex toy overlords.
Guess i'll order Tea, Earl Grey, hot to go with that meat then.
"The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust."
Simple: Add a gene that would make the artificial meat a recognizable color.
Instead of green eggs and ham we'll have green ham and eggs!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
For once, they make a rational and decent statement! This is a big improvement over their stupid tirade about Obama swatting a housefly.
The Vegetarian Society, OTOH, with their statement shows themselves to be still a bunch of extremists.
Is that what we are calling Solyent Green now?
"...researchers believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat..."
Obviously these scientists haven't sampled my ex-wife's cooking... I had always figured she had gotten the drop on these guys...
"Of course I'm wrong... That's how I get to 'right'." - Gil Grissom
I can't wait till we get some slig action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slig_(Dune)#Sligs
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered.
I'm sure that the "artificial" meat will cost a third of traditional meats.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
If done correctly, and without horrible hidden side effects of some sort, this could be huge. Removing the need to have an actual cow born, raised, fed, and kept in order to be able to make hamburger would remove a tremendous amount of damage to the environment, as well as opening up a lot of land to be available for use growing food for humans, rather than growing food for animals or being pasturage for animals.
I'd try and list all the different effects it could have, but I think I'd have to go on for pages...and besides, I'm sure someone else will have done it by the time I post ;-)
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Therefore I am against it. Nothing but real dead animals on my plate will suffice.
Is it green by any chance?
claimed by KFC.
(I'm joking)
Scientist must learn how to beat their artificial meat.
This kind of meet adds a whole new sub category for picky eaters to separate into. Those who eat meat from animals and those who eat meat from a factory lab.
For those of us who already eat anything, this only matters if the production technique produces a slab of meat that tastes as good and costs less than the old fashioned method: Feeding a real pig on everything from corn and table scraps to bits of other pigs, then chopping his head off when he gets fat enough.
BTW: They might have to get some nerve tissue into this lab meat before it can be exercised. Hmm... I wonder if I qualify for the job of "Experimental R&D Chef"
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
So this could be a way to have guilt-free veal, I guess. Or foie gras.
I would not be surprised if this is widely adopted in, say, 50 years' time. Epicureans will extol the values of "real" meat over vat meat, environmentalists will fight to make vat meat more affordable, and a generation of kids will wonder what the big deal is, meat is meat and they'd still rather play with the mashed potatoes.
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
who wants laboratory grown human muscle? You are what you eat right?
I'm guessing not...
Sounds like it's time to get in on the Long Pork market.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6936352.ece?print=yes
"The cells were then incubated in a solution containing nutrients to encourage them to multiply indefinitely. This nutritious “broth” is derived from the blood products of animal foetuses, although the intention is to come up with a synthetic solution."
Okay smartasses, how is the broth of other animal products made?
Epic fail on understanding vegetarians and vegans.
I have no qualms about people all over the world eating me.
In fact, I'd like to invite you all to eat me, right now.
Bon Apetit!
"Difficult to label and identify in a way that people could trust"? Simply putting a term like "made from artificially-grown flesh", or whatever they decide to call it, on the label would constitute an express warranty. If that warranty is breached (by including regular meat), the customers can sue (and win). What's their complaint, here? Do they just have a total ignorance of basic business law?
What, Eindhoven University doesn't have "student food service"? My alma mater would have served up the stuff in a New York minute along with the usual by-products, fillers, and cereals....
I call BS. My high school was serving artificial meat 10 years ago.
My Hope is that this technology can one day provide us with cheap easily produced bacon-wrapped steak and other meats. My true hope is that some sort of animal will be produced that will grow in some sort of bacon wrapped configuration because I want to gaze upon this delicious animal frolicking mouth-waterlingly in an open field before I eat it.
As a foodie, all I have to say is that a large part of the taste of a good steak comes from the FAT content of the meat, and that _pure_ 'cultivated' muscle tissue would make for a terrible steak, and an even worse hamburger.
Until they manage to grow a well-marbled piece of meat, they won't be any better than a tofu burger.
This Artifical Meat is going to backfire on PETA. If, in 5-10 years, this Artificial Meat market becomes big enough to surpass traditional meat harvesting techniques, what does PETA think will happen to all that cattle and other like animals? What are we just going to give them up and let them live free? No, we'll slaughter the livestock we have as we transition to the new method. Then, we expand over the previous land we used to graze and keep the animals; replacing (more or less) open land with whatever vats, structures, and buildings we need to develope SyntheSteak. Domesticated populations will plummet and wild populations will be no better off, the net result will be fewer animals in the world (but more meat!)
Don't read too much into this yammering post; I'm all for this idea.
I simply wonder why PETA still thinks being stuck in the farm is worse than what we've (historically) done to animals that don't serve as useful a purpose. If the cow or pig isn't being used, I would expect us to (intentionally or not) create conditions in their environment which pushes them out and dwindles their population, not unlike we've done to wolves or such.
Demented But Determined.
So lets see... leaving aside for the moment blood borne illness issues, right now we'd have to grow the "artificial" meat using animal fetus blood... and where will we get all that animal fetus blood? Perhaps we can just raise animal fetuses? And how will the "synthetic" solution be made? From "synthetic" fetuses? Turtles all the way down, I think.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
“It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust.” You could label it as... wait for it... "Artificial Meat"! Apparently I missed the day in school where we were taught not to trust labels on food.
Well, ok. "Porky Little".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
How long would it take to grow some ribeye's in my backyard? Do you have to water them daily?
I'm sure that the "artificial" meat will cost a third of traditional meats.
Unless it tastes good, and then it'll cost 3x as much as traditional meat. ;-)
Not-too-distant future radio ad: "Neat tastes better than meat, it's completely sterile so it doesn't require refrigeration. There are no bones, so kids love it; it's more nutritious than meat so parents love it, and it's made without harming a single living creature so animal rights activists love it. Find Neat in your grocer's cereal aisle. Try it today. You'll love it! (kids cheering...) Neat! Neat! Neat!"
Honestly, I don't get PITA's position. It's no longer part of an animal because...? Maybe because it doesn't have nerve cells that fire given "painful" stimulation? What if it does? Who's going to care about the poor little piece of meat that has to exercise all day long and experience the burn of its own lactic acid until some fat 'Merican orders it super-sized? Or maybe it's not part of an animal because there's no "brain" for the signals to reach? If that's the case, we should genetically construct brainless cows and have them running off arduinos instead. Does someone have a script for chewing I can download? But, surely someone would protest that. If only those who prefer PIC over ATMEL.
Now we can kill off all the pigs, chickens and cows who serve no purpose in this world other than to provide meat. I wonder which method PETA will approve: shooting, poison gas, suffocation.....or maybe old age?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
"The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust." Just follow this one simple rule: if it tastes like crap, it's artificial meat. PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) has known this for years.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Reminds me of an episode of "Better Off Ted" called "Test Tube Meat" where they have to figure out a way to exercise there lump of grown meat because the unexercised attempt it tasted like "despair".
The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust.
I would imagine we will be able to grow meat at a substantially lower cost than raising cattle... the difference to the consumer will be pretty obvious. Other than that, I agree that it may be hard to tell the difference between "bad" slaughtered meat and grown meat.
Could it be contracted and expanded with electric shocks?
It's amazing that a vat full of electrified meat is more appetizing than current factory farms...
...can't be too far off. Let's hope he isn't right about the Invaders.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
"A long, tall, delicious glass of Meat"
No, thanks, I like my food to have at least a genus, and preferably a species, associated with it.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Better Off Ted Episode 2: "Heroes": Phil and Lem, of Veridian Dynamics, try to grow cow-less meat... Reportedly, the meat currently tastes like "despair".
Veridian Dynamics. We're the future of food, developing the next generation of food and food-like products. Tomatoes... the size of this baby, lemon-flavored fish, chicken that lay 16 eggs a day, which is a lot for a chicken, organic vegetables chock-full of antidepressants. At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy that people can't eat them, but we're not, because people can't eat them. Veridian Dynamics. Food. Yum.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Fake BBQ!!!!
Gibs
to make the stuff? I hope it's more efficient than making ethanol.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
and/or force a grad student to be the one that finally tastes the meat? That poor(literally and figuratively) person....
Monstar L
Thanks... now my yummy processed Big Mac that features several million different sources of "meat" is ruined.
This is disgusting.
One day it might happen, but keep you're liquid pig ass out of my bacon.
I find the phrasing pretty weak, about being hard to come up with a label "people" would trust. Sounds like hedging between saying "we don't want to trust the lable" but not wanting to call anyone a liar. People trust the label on organic foods; why would this be harder?
To me labeling isn't the interesting question (but then, I'm no vegitarian). To me the interesting question is economic, and only if the economics make this product something uninteresting to me do the labeling issues even come into play. I can see three possible outcomes:
1) This approach hits a dead end, and it turns out you just can't make high-quality meat that's fit for human consumption in a lab. The researchers seem convinced that won't happen, so moving on...
2) The approach works, but the cost to make this meat exceeds the cost of doing it the old-fashioned way. I'm optimistic enough to doubt this; consider all of the energy costs involved in raising livestock. But who knows what will be required to make "good" artificial meat; maybe this is how it goes down. In that case, it won't add noticably to the food supply in an economic sense, and it becomes uninteresting to me. It remains intersting to PETA (since they don't want to eat "real" meat). There's niche demand for it, but it's more expensive than "real" meat - conditions that would make it possible to have mis-labeling if the food manufacturers were very careful about it.
3) The approach works and produces meat more cheaply than you can raise "real" meat. This is the only case where I care about the idea, because in this case you actually increase the food supply; but in that case, nobody has a reason to mislabel a more expensive product and sell it to you as a less-expensive product. Even if they were just jerks who wanted to trick you into eating something you don't want to eat, they'd never be able to pull it off. (How do you hide a slaughtering operation from regulators?)
I'm not sure why this product is even necessary. Is a vegetarian diet really that awful that we need to market meat that doesn't come from animals to supplement it? If eating the flesh of previously living creatures is disgusting to you, why is fake meat any more appetizing? It's easy to say that it's takes less resources to produce than real meat, but how does it compare to the vegetable foods that we already have, and that are already quite delicious? Furthermore, from a culinary standpoint, it doesn't seem likely that it will ever match meat from a real animal.
Making artificial meat? Man, my local fast food place has been doing this for decades.
This is my sig.
1) I don't give a DAMN what PETA thinks, never did, never will. I'll slaughter a million kittens before I give even the first wit of anything those hypocritical bastards have to say.
2) Next stop on the food production evolution: Soylent Green, which I'm sure PETA is all for.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Once this working, how soon will we see one of the processors start growing human cells? Seriously, it seems like Germany and other countries (including America) have a fetish these days for cannibalism. There would be no legal means of obtaining the meat from a real source, so no competition, though hopefully a SMALL market.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The sustenance angle is all well and good; however, what I want to know is how long till the "real flesh" fleshlight?
I'm not skeptical of the story, but I am skeptical that PETA won't have something to say about it if and when this hits production. This has the possibility of being revolutionary to the way we eat. If we don't have to wait for actual animals to grow, and can grow only the good parts without wasting money on all the unnecessary parts, we can grow meat faster and cheaper that would also be better (just clone the best animal to begin with!)
I will be the first in line to eat cloned meat.
or else!
Human flesh is found to grow quickly and cheaply under certain laboratory conditions. In other news, Oscar Meyer has just announced a new "Long Pork" flavor hot dog.
now we can fill in the rest of the Soylent rainbow
save me some Soylent Purple
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
I'll have me another slice of Shoggoth
or is it smeat?
she'll never tell...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The future predicted: "Do you think I'd be working in a place like this if I could afford a real snake?" -- Zhora
The actual future: "Do you think I'd be eating here if I could afford real pork?" - Deckard
Close enough, I say. I give the prediction a 8 on the 1-10 scale.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"[the] Vegetarian Society remained skeptical. "The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust."""
Oh please. What you do, then, is get off your lazy skeptic butt and go to the place they are making the meat and look around. Get official people you trust as a vegetarian (whatever that means) to go investigate and report. From that report, which you trust, you should be able to know if it is coming from killed animals or from tissue generation.
This skepticism is undue and irrational. They assume that because it is possible for an animal-slaughtering meat company to 'trick' customers by pretending it was grown in tissue culture, that it may necessarily be true.... That's garbage. In reality, a company carrying out deception of this magnitude would not go unnoticed and would probably be sued.
You have to think: thousands of people work in meat processing plants. Every single one of them would have to be the best secret keeper on the planet for the suggested 'truth' to not be found out. And if there is anything we can know about secrets is that the more people that know it, the less likely it stays secret.
As a matter of fact, even when only one person (the secret creator) knows a secret, it isn't safe. People are eager to share secrets. And once the number becomes 2 or more, the odds of it remaining secret reduce dramatically.
And now I return fire with an equally ridiculous claim: The Vegetarian Society is only trying to question this so they can get me to quit eating meat, thus eat more veggies, and end up dying from rhubarb poison on accident (but on purpose because they meant to do it)!
Damn vegetarian society could probably be trying to kill us all!
Bet this stuff takes just like the "mystery meat" in the cafeteria back at my dear ol' alma mater. Yum.
Discussion System prefs link: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
meh, tastes like chicken.
Food.Yum.
..until they plug human cells into that! Yummy!
(or maybe there is some ethical objection to eating that meat after all)
OK, how do you produce the equivalent of 1 million animals with one animal without violating the laws of thermodynamics?
In order to get the same calories out you need to get the same, or more, calories in. For meat it is in the range of 10 times the calories from veggies (e.g. corn) to get one calorie of meat.
They talk about a "meat broth". This is where the calories come from. No big change. In fact it may be worse since it is higher on the food chain, you have to first produce the meat for the broth then grow the "meat" stuff. And if they switch to veg. protein we would be better off eating soy or tempeh.
I shudder to think of the meat rendering waste they will use for the broth. And if meat is still required to make meat, PETA just screwed up.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Not "Soylent Green" . . . The Space Merchants.
Pohl & Kornbluth's novel features a conflict between the integrated advertising/production complex that is stripping the world of resources and manipulating the populace and the benighted Consies (conservationists). The lead is kidnapped, stripped of his identity, and forced into a contract labor job. He works in an urban algea farm. Most of the goop isn't consumed by humans. It is processed into blood substitute that feeds Chicken Little, a giant pulsing wad of chicken heart cells. One of the workers slices off pieces which are packaged and shipped off for consumption.
This, in a 1952 novel by WWII veterans who worked in the advertising industry.
They can extract some muscle cells from my Computer atrophied body and I can "Eat Myself". It is like a double dose of cannibalism dipped in incest like sin.....
Dante is going to have to invent another region of hell for me.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
If females start disappearing from our society we're in trouble.
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Soylent Green is people!!!
...has just been redefined
1.33 billion Chinese that will eat ANY kind of meat plus a huge emerging market in India - now that they can finally eat meat.
And who was that the US owed a shitload of money?
Ah yes! Them there hungry Chinese.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Leather is a byproduct of our meat consumption. The more cow we eat, the more leather is available to the market. Take the cow out of the equation, and leather will become a real luxury good.
Baby seal eyes are the real delicacies.
Although, Long Pork does have the best toys.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
doesn't mickey D's already have this meat? Hasn't it been around since the opening of mickey D's? lol
Visit my Forums?
no one has yet tasted the artificial meat
You try it
I don't want to try it.
Hey, I know. Lets get Mickey to try it. He hates everything.
Sorry, but he died from eating pop rocks while drinking a coke.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Cattle are one of the most successful species on the planet. Why? Because, they threw their lot in with humans. Humans do don't care about preserving something with which they have no relationship. It takes resources to keep cows, and few to none will do it unless they is an economic benefit. Therefore, one must wonder is PETA's real motive to drive cows extinct in their drive to save cows from humans?
I grew up in farm country, and cows are pretty easy....you like, turn them out in a field and eat grass for a long time, and then you kill them and eat them. Or, you put them in stalls and feed them until they get fat and then you kill them and eat them. Sure, vat-grown meat is pure meat and not bones, skin, and eyeballs, but you might be surprised at how little of that extra material is wasted...much of it is seperated at the slaughterhouse and sold. Is tending and maintaining a factory of muscle-growing vats going to easier, cheaper, and more environmental than a herd of animals? Really? It sounds to me like we already have these meat vats that like maintain themselves, reproduce themselves, and
It looks like the fast food chains are already using the aquaria for Animal 57...
"The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust."
This is an increasing problem with vegetarians even before this development. Used to be, (speaking as a vegetarian) you could always tell you were eating meat substitutes, 'cause they look and taste like crap. But as time went on, and texture and flavor improved, it became more difficult to tell. (Depending on the product -- fake sausage is getting a lot better, but fake bacon still looks and tastes like christmas tree decorations, and don't get me started on Tofurky (shudder).) I guess I could see a time when meat substitutes tasted merely like poor cuts of meat, and not petroleum products.
Similarly, "artificial flesh" will initially not have the texture and flavor of real meat. But with proper exercise (which is a little... icky, don't you think?) and flavoring, I can see a time when a vat-grown pig tastes merely like a poor cut of pork, and not something out of the lab. I hope they figure out how to get that disinfectant taste out of the meat.
This topic has, of course, been covered extensively in SF.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Disgusting. I want real food, made with real ingredients, out of real animals, that tastes like the real thing. I don't want hydroponic tomatoes with my artificial trained meat. And by the way, remove that damn corn syrupt and soy crap from my food.
Tastes like chicken. Everything strange is supposed to taste like chicken.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"extracting cells from the muscle of a live pig and putting them in a broth of other animal products"
A broth of other animal products? How can they claim this meat doesn't come from animals then?
If meat is outlawed, only outlaws will have meat!
Meat doesn't kill people, people kill animals to get meat.
They can have my meat when they pry it from my cold, dead (greasy) sausage-like fingers.
Artificial meat is artificial murder!
I theorize we can make an artificial wormhole by making pork rinds out of artificial meat. Either that or dark matter.
Are you fucking insane? Go to the local butcher and get meat for a fraction of that and it will probably be a lot better quality too(these type of restaurants are rip-offs 9 out of 10) , making steak is like the easiest thing you can do in the kitchen and it only takes you like 10 min. Eating proper food is not something for the rich, just get yourself educated on food.
Dyslexics are teople poo
I call shenanigans on the Vegetarian Society. Given that DNA sequencing is getting cheaper and cheaper, by the time this gets to market, it will be very simple to test this. Just sequence DNA from the 'meat'. Before growing the muscle cells in a dish you could just take out a lot of genes that aren't required to grow muscle, but *are* required to grow a pig - like genes specific to neurons, other organs, etc. That will not affect the meat, and then you can be guaranteed that it's not from a whole pig. The same of course applies to the Soylent Green argument - if you get (almost entirely) human DNA then you're eating grandma and not fake pig.
If we get overrun with chickens we can send muscle powered robots out to kill them. The meat needs to be exercised, so let's put them in robots programmed to hunt down chickens. Then we can blame all the chicken deaths on the meat-bots and then, in turn, hunt down the meat-bots and eat them.
But seriously, if the meat needs to be exercised, it seems obvious to have them do some sort of useful work. Of course, the best cuts of meat (the tenderloins and rib roasts that sit up high - which is where the phrase "eating high on the hog" comes from) do some, but not much work. So if the value of work that the muscle does offsets the price of the meat, we'd still have more expensive, tenderer cuts and tougher, harder working, but cheaper cuts.
electrolytes???
Meet the meat
Brasseye
Maybe some day artificial meat will of such quality that it will be indistinguishable from genuine meat.
That way farm animals as we know them will lose their usefulness to humans and become extinct.
Score one PETA.
Better keep the democrats away from the vats of meat. Push too much voltage through them and next thing you know some left wing nut will be trying to register it as a new party member.
Today, we have artificial meat; meat that you eat that isn't even meat.
Tomorrow will we have artificial eating? You won't even get to eat your artificial meat in the old fashioned way.
How long until all you can get is a hot beef injection? I don't know about you guys, but that sounds pretty gay to me.
long pork is long
I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar...
-Lucy-
Does it cost $10,000/lb?
I expected somebody to mention slig or ask if Professor Post is a Bene Tleilax.
I hate to tell you this, but "add a gene" isn't the simple solution. The simple solution, which also covers BSE-infected meat, salmonella outbreaks, and any other food safety issue, involves implementing a tracking system from farm to table. It's not difficult, and should have been done years ago. In fact, Canadian produce farmers already have nearly 100% tracking of their goods, while the US is at 5%. It's good for consumers, and it's good for producers.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
EXPERTS ARE VERY MUCH MISTAKEN. Experts in all fields of knowledge are guardians of the status-quo. Anything that differs with their beliefs is immediately dismissed by them as untrue. Their reasoning goes as follows: "I do not even have to waste my time looking into anything that differs with my knowledge and beliefs, because I know absolutely everything there is to be known about my field of knowledge, therefore anything that conflicts with my beliefs must be false." That sort of reasoning of course is dumb circular reasoning and it automatically precludes any new insights because NEW means different, if it would not be different it would not be new. The few "experts" who have dared to think outside the box and have tried the MEATROM just once for 4 minutes have become instant converts and believers in a 4 minute workout for cardio, muscle strength and flexibility.
All it takes is a LEAP OF FAITH and $14,615
Animal suffering is what makes the meat so flavourfull. Thats why my favorite dish is bashed baby seal cutlets. Mhmmmmmm
...and I can open a Doublemeat Palace.
This explains the return of the McRib.
PETA and pretty much ANY organization that is all about helping animals isn't in favor of helping them because they want *as many cows alive at any given time*, or any such nonsense. They are in favor of *less animal suffering*. This means that if you have X cows alive and you butcher Y every year, and Z new cows are born, and Y+Z=X, that when you reduce the demand for cows, you are reducing Z, the new cows born each year, because you are reducing Y, the cows butchered every year. Sure, X will go down, but maximizing cows alive at any moment isn't how they measure their progress towards their goal- in fact, they will probably let you know, in detail, how many of those X cows are born to suffer.
Basically, to see how they view it, just replace cows with people, and pretend that we had some group of people that we raised and ate. Obviously it would be a moral good to eliminate that, but if you couldn't eliminate it because the laws and the customs dictated that the to-be-eaten caste was born to that and not really human, you'd settle for limiting it as much as possible.
Their goal is to limit animal suffering. Stop modding up everyone who thinks that reducing the number of suffering animals is somehow contrary to that.
If it tastes good, I'll eat it. If it tastes different than slaughtered meat I reserve the decision to eat that as well. Furthermore I hereby confiscate the word 'humane' to now characterize what it is to be human. The human body has the flexibility to run on plant and animal matter. Should it prove to be capable of running on synthetic products as well so be it but that does not invalidate my humane choice to eat slaughtered animals. Personally I'm fine with paying more for meat or even eating less if it involves better treatment of the animals, less chemicals, better resource management etc. Heck I'm even willing to grant that some animals are capable of feeling emotion but that doesn't mean I anthropomorphize them and relate to them as fellow human beings. Part of being human is the choice to eat real meat. I submit as inhumane anyone who fights to remove that choice.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
...is it kosher? I'm serious. No cloven hoof in evidence.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
To me, this seems like germ heaven. There's a reason we have evolved such sophisticated immune systems. The germs have co-evolved with us and their attacks are, by now, orders of magnitude more sophisticated than they were when multi-cellular organisms first appeared. One of the challenges of organizing many types of cells is making sure that the good ones are fed and the bad ones are killed or kept out. One strategy we naturally employ is mutation and randomization. Sexual reproduction implies that the fittest individuals are the ones which procreate and gives us many more chances to randomize bits of our genetic code which makes it harder for attackers to identify and successfully exploit its host/prey (an multi-cellular animal). Meat from a lab implies a monoculture of genetic material since this minimizes overhead in building and processing each batch. Then the meat must also be protected from germs and parasites which would have a field day munching on the same proteins and sugars that we (ostensibly) want to eat. However, the disembodied monoculture meat has no animal immune system to defend it and it requires a sterile environment in which to grow. We have to shoulder these burdens instead of the animals doing it themselves.
We already expose ourselves to too much danger by throwing literally tons of antibiotics at our poultry, pork and beef to keep them minimally alive while they are overfed on corn in disgusting, overcrowded industrial feed lots and bird houses. We know that almost all bacteria interested in attacking us will become immune to these standard antibiotics before the end of our lifetimes because waste the advantage we have with our current antibiotics by overexposing the bacteria to our countermeasures and thereby give the germs the long-term advantage by allowing many, many times more opportunity to develop mutations which defend against the antibiotics.
I disagree with PETA that killing animals for meat is immoral. We aren’t vegetarians, we’re omnivores. If you want to be morally trans-human, then don’t waste all your time emphasizing “food with a face” and making emotional appeals. I do agree that industrial meat production, as it stands, is immoral and completely unsafe. There are people dying right now because we have cranked the industrial efficiency of our food-production complex way past the red line. They are being killed by diabetes, MRSA, staph, E. Coli and diseases like mad cow. All of which are introduced by maximizing short-term efficiency and externalizing the costs of production.
One of the interesting things about life in a balanced system is that the millions of species that compete with each other for resources (energy in its various bio-chemical forms and the rarer kinds of elements that are sometimes required to process it) usually find a meta-stability that guarantees that each individual is cutting-edge efficient at using the resources it can get and that the environment as a whole is conducive to allowing more forms of life to fill in the gaps where inefficiency is exposed. Humans have put the system almost completely out of whack. We are using up all of the stored energy on the planet, using up all of the rare elements and we’re horrible at making use of renewable energy sources and recycling the rare and costly elements that we haven’t yet wasted. Not only that, but we’re steadily making less and less area available for our own and other species use with toxic sludge and waste products destroying more usable land and sea every day.
There is no point to growing meat for consumption in a lab. Meat for healing is another story, but honestly, we’ve got bigger issues.
Wait it gets better...
At some point, someone will realize that there will be a high end vat meat market, and decide to clone panda butt for panda burgers... we will see squirrel steak (because animal size will become irrelevant), tiger paw on a stick, and dolphin mc nuggets. If it's odd, rare, and on an endangered species list you will be able get cloned versions of the meat. The problem will be that the few remaining animals out there will need to be caught and sampled in order to make it happen.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Worms! They'll Jazzercise the muscle tissue! Why, by the time they're finished it'll be as strong and flexible as Hercules and Gumby combined!
An interesting philosophical and ethical question here. If I were to do this with human cells and grill and eat the meat, would I be committing cannibalism?
Seriously, vatflesh has been talked about in science fiction for decades. It's interesting to see it's finally becoming real.
This will be to real meat as a blow up doll is to a real woman.
I'd prefer Soylent Green to soggy pseudo-pork any day!
I'm not quite sure how to feel about this.
Even if it didn't harm any living animals, eating meat would still feel plain weird.
Quite a lot of comments against veggies here and how we have nothing to complain about but it's still an odd situation I think.
The closest way I can think of describing it, is say that every time you ate an apple, someone kicked your best friend in the face. Scientists invent an apple that doesn't kick your best friend in the face. There's still that negative association there that makes you feel bad about ever wanting pleasure from an apple, even the non-face-kicking variety.
what the f&*X!!
scientists doing stuff like this is akin to arranging the deck chairs on the titanic (AND reads like the intro to a zombie video game)
"science" rolls apace it seems, yes very clever i cant wait till they invent a bee that can live with us. these "scientists" should do us all a favour and jump off something nice and high! pure science is beautiful but this weird crap should be consigned to mental institutions, i mean why? just why?
sure it "furthers our undersatnding" but of what? of becoming hideous soulless beings with nothing but our own convenience as motivators for great thought.
if you are reading this biology man why not put your efforts in to developing something useful like- as ive suggested a cure for CCD perhaps? if thats not fixable then your fake meat will not have any takers i can assure you.
biology has been hijacked by frankensteins bastard children and medical,live forever loonies (FFS doc stop it- all these people are destroying our world) -i have a dog who can open doors and turn lights on and off- amazing i thought- but he just does it -he was never trained to, i certainly didnt waste time or money or valuable mind power and lab time to achieve this.
when the oceans are getting so acidic cos of CO2 that they just die, when our ecosystem is in such flux that we have jellyfish plagues and massive flooding, when there are no trees left we can all be happy cos we have fake meat?!??!?!!?!
humanity deserves armageddon.
truth is a bitch.
From what I read in the article, quantities of animal by-product are needed to grow the meat. Obviously that's going to have to change before it's considered vegetarian.
Vik :v)
c'mon mods, at least throw this guy a +1 funny bone.
Actually, I find the pain and suffering adds a unique flavor that would be lacking in artificial meat.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
Hmmmmmm....not just food. Grow me some guns. "Yeah, baby, I been workin' out."
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
One guess as to why the most desirable cut of beef is called "tenderloin," and why it is what it is.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered
I suspect more folks would think the labeling issue would be the opposite one - that they wouldn't want to be eating so-called "FrankenMeat." I suspect whoever has the ox to gore will be on the higher priced side of the equation. I imagine those desiring cow flesh over Soylent Red will find the former costs far less for some time to come, but when those two cost graphs cross...
They were even willing to put their money where their mouth is. I recall they had some internal conflict over this and finally decided on a pro-artificial meat position; unfortunately I can't find the reference just now.
This sounds like promising research for those that have list muscle tissue to fires, accidents and disease. I could care less about eating "Soylent" meat (there may be some interesting new flavors) I just hope this can help some of those that have been horribly hurt and maimed.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle." - Philo of Alexandria -
Hey Kids!
Sick of that boring old vat hamburger? Dive into Kraft's Ultracheese Burgernator! We genetically modified sentient meat into producing it's own cheese, which layers itself thick and rich with genuine Kraft-like flavor! We promise that it won't cause the zombie apocalypse!*
*Guarantees against the zombie apocalypse not guaranteed.
"how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered", rather then "how could you know you are eating "organic" and not genetically modified Frankenstein lab grown artificial vat food".
I don't like meat. I don't like the flavor or the consistency. And thinking of where it comes from and what it really is also really grosses me out. Ick!
I will admit to *also* having an ethical problem with eating meat. No needless killing or harming of things that can suffer.
I am fine with all of this and I am fine with other people eating meat. I have never tried to talk others into going vegetarian. I have no incentive to do so.
However.....it SUCKS always having to ask if the vegetable soup has chicken broth any time I go to a new restaurant. If I eat meat juice by accident, I go home and get diarrhea. So I have to ask. And every time I ask it draws attention to what a freak I am. It makes me look like I am trying to play some passive-aggressive holier-than-thou game with whoever is eating with me by always drawing attention to how important it is that I don't eat any animal products.
It also drives the women away. Apparently, being vegetarian makes a guy appear weak and effeminate even if he doesn't otherwise have any weak or effeminate traits.
So if this stuff becomes mainstream....well.....the ethical issue would be resolved. But I would still find it disgusting. So I still wouldn't want to eat it. But at least maybe then people won't just assume that my asking about the contents of everything I want to order is an attempt at seeming morally superior. Maybe people will just assume it is a health or taste thing, and accept me as normal once again.
Maybe.
The real question is - how long will it be until you can mail a hair sample into Omaha Steaks and get yourself a box of custom-made meat cloned from your own body? I think that's a product and a half, right there! Celebrities could sell their own line of meats - Ron Jeremy salami, Pamela Anderson breast meat, mmm-mmm good.
It's a pain in the ass applying bronze age ethics to modern life, isn't it?
Yet an other version of Spam. When does the copyright for "organic" spam expire?
Is it so hard to give enough information to find the actual publication that has the important details? I'm taking it as a given that the Telegraph can't be bothered to explain -how- this is different from earlier muscle cell cultures, but at least they could give me enough info to find articles that will tell me that. I mean, did these researchers actually publish a real paper in a peer-reviewed journal or did they just bypass that and go straight to the telegraph?
What's new about this?
Muscle cells have apperantly been cultured since 1968, although there isn't much about whether or not these cells proliferate in culture. A paper from 1988 claims to have gotten progenitor cells to turn into muscle cells in culture.
This article, still not a paper, from scientific american suggests that at least one Dutch researcher is interested in turning embryonic stem cells into meat. Those cultures don't last very long either according to the article: "Unfortunately, Roelen's cultures only survive a few months before they sputter, failing to reproduce because of genetic problems—their chromosomes become deformed or cells end up with too many copies. His group also works with adult stem cells extracted from skeletal muscle—a direct approach for in vitro meat."
I guess this might be the article in question, Roelen reports isolating a progenitor cell type that can be directed to either increase their numbers or turn into muscle cells. That’s almost a year old though. This article is more likely the one that sparked the telegraph article, the lab discusses factors that affect that culture system.
Post, quoted in the telegraph article, doesn't appear to be too directly involved, his research interests seem more about blood vessels and I couldn’t find any papers from his lab that looked relevant, but I didn’t do an exhaustive search on pubmed.
"The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust."
The opposite is equally concerning. I want my meat to come out of an animal, not a test tube. It's bad enough they're pushing GE crops on us, but at least that shit actually... you know... grows normally.
The "Vegetarian Society" remains skeptical... If there can be artificially grown meat, then there are no ethical issues with the consumption of that meat. Their skepticism is about their desire to dictate how other people should live.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This reminds me of the Torchwood Episode "Meat".
The hormel product, Spam, has been around for some time and I've always thought of that as the 1st artificial meat. Perhaps it's just being picky about semantics, but wouldn't this be some sort of 1st genetically created artificial meat?
Remember, PETA has offered a $1 million prize for commercially viable artificial meat.
>, with their statement shows themselves to be still a bunch of extremists.
Whats wrong with being an extremist when it comes to food?
Jews, muslims, hindus and others wont eat certain food because of their religious fanaticism.
Somehow, I dont think you are brave enough to call these groups extremists so lets go with the granola gang instead.....
bravo sir, you are the kind who would pick on the slow kid in class.
Vegetarians have a moral compass which is different than ours but their stance is not remotely as stupid and illogical as the ones who wont touch shelfish or pork because some bogeyman told them not to eat it.
Next time some idiot asks for kosher and halal meat please feel free to insult them all you like.
Anyone see the episode of Eureka when everyone started to become stupid from eating artificial chicken...
That means we will soon see the Animal Rights activists facing off against the Natural Food activists. Wonder who's going to win that one. The Organic Produce people know a bit about nutrition so they'll probably have more stamina when it comes to blows.
FIGHT! :P
[quote]'"What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue. We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there,"[/quote]
Whatever they come up with is of great interest to myself, and the greater slashdot community... someone get these people some funding for God's sake!
I thought Louise Brown <url:http://history1900s.about.com/od/medicaladvancesissues/a/testtubebaby.htm> was the first laboratory meat
Tech Support: "No, sir...clicking on 'Remember Password' will NOT help you remember your password."
I can point to PETA's web site, which has tons of figures about how much land is used to grow meat. You can question the veracity of the figures, but at least they're there. Do you have anything to support your claims?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
> The big question
Is it safe to eat? How does it taste? Will this end hunger? These are much bigger questions.
> is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh
> rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very
> difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust.
No, this is backwards. The reality is the same as fur versus artificial fur. When you buy a fur coat, the danger is not that you will pay for fake fur and get real fur, it's that you will pay for real fur and get fake fur. The fake is cheaper, more plentiful, or else it would not exist. You will have to go out of your way to get the real stuff. Especially if they can turn out a million times more fake meat than real meat.
And we already have vegetarian restaurants that serve artificial meat made with soy but shaped and spiced to taste as much like the real thing as possible, and there is no widespread problem where people go into a place and order a meal with soy chicken and they serve them chicken instead.
So it isn't vegetarians who have to worry about this. This will just be one more option on the cruelty-free menu, which you can choose to eat or not. It's your diehard meat-eater who doesn't want to ingest any artificial meat who will have a problem. They will have to be like vegetarians today, always making sure they are not getting any meat products thrown into what they're eating. The tables are turned.
When you look at factory farms, with all the cruelty and disease, the only solution is artificial meat.
I don't see why people complain about this,...
you know EXACTLY where it came from.
you know it's never lived in a pile of mud and faeces.
It is likely to be much cleaner (from germs).
no animals harmed in the making.
it can be mass produced and modified using various blends of nutritional ingredients to taste great.
no bomes.
what's not to like
I wonder about the economics of offering one's own muscle cell culture out on the market for this. MMmm... fresh long pig. I'd go for the long term licensing option at the very least. I suspect mine might taste a bit like cabernet, although if the sample were taken in my youth there would have been a strong barley overtone.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
If this ever became economically viable (and mass socially acceptable) it would cause the virtual extinction of farmed animals as we know them. (Chickens, cows and pigs enjoy vast population numbers, even if poor lifestyle, due to human consumption). If we no longer needed them, what does PETA think we should do, release them to the wild they are no longer capable of living in after millennia of domestication?
A cautionary tale: http://pixelscapes.com/anachronauts/anachronauts03.html
like soda does..
high fructose corn meat anyone?
I think this is a pretty great breakthrough. IF it passes a taste test, and other quality testing before being released to the public.
I'd be willing to try it as an alternative to killing animals if it is of the same quality.
It may also provide people who wouldn't normally have the option of quality beef/etc.. a good meal, so I'm all for it
What I find completely hilarious is peta. If it wasn't for animal research this wouldn't have been found.
Notice they said "live cells from a pig" - where you think they found this pig?
They are such damn hypocrites - when animal research favors them they will publically endorse it
and yet claim they want all animal research stopped immediately.
Before reading the article, I had no idea that McDonalds et al. were not already growing their "meat" in a vat... Are you telling me that a Hot Dog actually contains a part of a real animal? Amazing!
Hasnt NASA already done this?
In Google we trust.
isn't this what spam is?
-- QED
While I don't want to screw around with charcoal (charcoal lighter fluid, on the other hand...), at least grill it - Propane FTW! :)
I like heating the grill for several mines on maximum heat, and turning it down to the lowest setting for the few minutes it takes to grill it.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I've been to England...trust me they wouldn't know a good steak if it hit them in the mouth.
PETA applauding a new technology derived from animal experiments.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"Soggy green is people! SOGGY GREEN IS PEOPLE!"
Thank you, thank you, I'm here every Thursday night.
What parent's proposing is not impossible at all, and not in violation of the laws of thermodynamics. But it is very inefficient. The Matrix wouldn't work because we are inefficient, and it would take WAY more energy to keep us alive than we would be giving back. Most machines that we can conceive to turn some input into usable energy use the same principle: Some input is burned and the outputted energy captured using a variety of methods. Some energy is transformed into heat and some residues can't be burned. There are far more efficient machines than mammals from that point of view. Probably just burning the nutritious material to power some sort of steam engine would be more efficient than feeding an organism and trying to recover energy from that process.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Toss some viagra into the nutrient broth.
Until they live a year or so in a lake, pellet-heads are much easier to catch than natives. It's because they are use to being fed at least once daily from a pellet dispenser. They don't know that food swims, or crawls, or struggles on the surface to right itself. To them "food" is a bland fish-matter pellet or two dispensed at 8:00 am, and 5 pm. I think it is due to the fact that we learn from the food we eat. Food is like the first medium of communication. What will our bodies learn from our consuming this stuff? Maybe, because it was never "alive", we won't "learn" anything from eating it. Eventually it would most likely retard our mental capabilities/development. For some reason, Idiocracy comes to mind....
-Oz
So now soylent green can be produced out of that. Profit!
Animal rights group Peta has welcomed the laboratory grown meat announcing that "as far as we're concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there's no ethical objection while the Vegetarian Society remained skeptical.
Uh, well, whatever this stuff is, it is a piece of some animal out there. And at some point that particular animal will die of old age or some natural cause. And then, 100% of that laboratory-grown steak-clone is suddenly part of a dead animal. So... We gotta keep that cell donor animal alive on some crazy life support for eternity!
Tastes like chicken!
1. It's pork
2. According to Kosherate dietary law, in order to remain Kosher, one can not eat the flesh procured from a living animal. (even if it was beef, lamb, goat, or "other")
So looks like farms are here to stay. Sorry PETA.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
I am not really looking forward to a time where our meat is artificially produced in factories... Am I the only one who is thinking of the horribly smelling yeast vats and algae farms on Trantor?
And anyone else who believes in things like karma, reincarnation etc. tend not to eat any meat at all - because it comes from what could potentially be his/her relative or friend.
Not just cows or pigs.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
you wouldn't have to grow a lot of food to feed animals)
Normal farm animal here around don't need much energy : they are left around to pasture which would ANYWAY not be used (or are not even usable) as grain or legumes field. So the energy at most expanded is negligible, at least until the point where they are transported to the slaughter house or the meat slabs from the slaughterhouse to the factory or the shop. It is only the big factory farm which use either animal meal (dead animals put into meals to feed more protein) or grains. Small farmer do not.
> Arguably, PETA's position is that animals can experience suffering, and that ethical treatment means not raising them in horrific factory farms. I don't think that's warped.
These ARE the people who got upset when Obama killed a fly, you know...
If they stuck to the position you outline, I don't think they would be quite so controversial.
And there'd be an unlimited supply of Soylent Green! I can see the advertising now "Soylent Green ISN'T people, it just tastes like it is!"
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
... welcome our muscle powered machete wielding robots.
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
I agree.
I have been vegetarian most of my life yet I used to hunt and eat animals. I differ from other vegetarians in that I see no ethical issue with eating what you personally take responsibility for killing.
Paying other people to kill animals for you however is cowardly, it's an industry built on cowardice, and is about as far away from the Great Hunter every meat eater loves to cite, in an effort to argue that eating meat is a vital part of human culture. Well, it's not. Worse, it's environmentally detrimental, causes gross hormone imbalances in humans and is horrifically cruel.
You don't need to eat meat to live a very healthy and active long life. You eat meat because you like the taste. Then go out and take another's life to defend your hedonism. Look at it in the eyes while you cuts its throat. Gut it, bleed it and eat it.
For fans of the Galaxys greatest comic (2000AD) this brings the famous hottie tree one step closer to reality :)
Zarjaz news indeed !
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
The Artificial Meat Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. The Artificial Meat begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
The Artificial Meat fights back!
by extracting cells from the muscle of a live pig and putting them in a broth of other animal products where the cells then multiplied to create muscle tissue.
I've seen earlier attempts at this discussed in our graduate seminar in the animal sciences department at my University. I raised this point then and the general concensus was that I am correct.
The value of animal agriculture and animal products is that they enable us to convert moderate and low quality protein and energy sources into high quality protein and energy sources for human consumption. This describes taking high quality nutrient sources (muscle cells), incubating them in even higher quality nutrient sources (Purified animal growth products and nutrients), to yield a lower quality nutrient source (soggy pork). Even if they are able to apply tension to the growing cells and get acceptable meat quality is it still is net loss of efficiency.
You can feed a pig some pretty unappetizing stuff (wheat middlings, millrun, DDGS from the ethanol industry) and they will grow just fine, but cell culture work requires incredibly high quality inputs (blood, plasma, purified growth factors) to get marginal gains in outputs.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Well, it all started in 1962... Utilizing advances in modern food synthesis, scientists at NASA began work on a germ hostile space meat to be used into long expeditions in deep space! Only recently has their hard work paid off. As even more advances in the field of space meat have been made and applied to what is now known as operation meat. Seeing this as a way to end their streak of being sued by angry costumers poisoned by their burgers, the Mac Meaties corporation decided to try this miraculous space meat. Not having access to that technology, we make ours out of napkins.
--AlexC
Just because I dont agree with climate change doesnt make me a troll
in the south pacific when cannibalism was still going on, not too long ago (and is perhaps still going on in the hinterlands of papua new guinea)
because we taste like pig
if you want to know what human flesh tastes like, have some bacon: its no historical secret that pig meat is pretty much the same flavor as human meat
perhaps most interesting is that we like the taste of bacon so much... i wonder why that is so, hmm? we're all covertly cannibalistic in our tastes, i think. i would wager that every human being alive today comes from some ancestor who ate human flesh at one time or another, whether for bare survival, or for ritualistic cultural reasons
what would be interesting is to make bacon out of these vat grown human cells. might just be the best bacon taste EVER
lol
you may now barf from painful self-realization of your own vile nature
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For Soylent Green
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
So if PETA condones eating artificially grown animal tissue, would they condone eating artificially grown human meat?
Until there is a non-animal feedstock, it is likely to remain too expensive to compete with existing meat products.
Seastead this.
OK, so lets say we clone human meat... would that still constitute cannibalism, even though no actual humans are involved or harmed?
What about specific flavors, like that jerk Steve in accounting?
Ya ya, I know, disturbing I am.
They didn't create meat. Just changed the process in which it grows. No Creation here, move along...
I'm personally going to disagree with it on the basis that PETA can go fuck themselves.
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
The brain makes the difference.
With the cow, there's a brain which might feel pain, sadness, etc.
With the "pulsating meat in a vat", you only have a controlling computer.
If you want to eat a steak, you don't need to kill the computer. Just unplug one lump of meat, and plug another new-smaller-lump-soon-to-be-grown-into-full-sized-lump of meat.
If you want and if it helps you fully warm and fuzzy inside, you can even code inside the controlling computer an AI specially designed to find the whole procedure pleasurable.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It would be much easier to breed some very stupid, ugly and disgusting pigs, which nobody would ever think of protecting and defending ... {...} Some vermiform and really dumb cows would be nice, too.
Sorry, but breeding obese couch potatoes is not acceptable on the grounds of "cannibalism".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The way I see it, the reason factory farms exist is because it is not possible to supply the demand for natural meat without cramming animals together in horrible, torturous, ultimately unhealthy (for the consumer) conditions. There's nothing more disgusting than an industrial pig farm. Except maybe a hole in the ground full of shit and death. It doesn't take much to keep a chicken happy. They just don't need to be put 7 to a cage, 5 cages high, kept in a dark warehouse. I don't think it's because people hate chickens, either.
This doesn't need to eliminate the supply of natural meat. This argument has nothing to do with ethics or animal rights, so I hope it is something most people can agree on.
I believe eating meat is healthy, but I also believe it is a giant cultural reg-flag if Western society treats weaker sentient life with apathy. From what I understand, people haven't stopped multiplying and we'll be in trouble 10 years down the line if we don't find some way to give people affordable meat. Nobody will care. People still eat McDonalds and those burgers have the texture of a sponge.
Artificial? It's REAL muscle tissue. It's not IMITATION meat... it's meat.
By the way, how come can't interact with the tag interface anymore? Tried Firefox 3.5 and Opera 10 in Linux, Firefox 3.5 and IE 8 in WinXP, logged in in each session, nothing...
I know people want what they want, but this seems so wasteful.
Asian cuisine has had very impressive faux meats for centuries. They aren't replicas, but they taste great and are nutritious. Plenty of tasty western versions as well. Then there are traditional Asian soy foods, whole grains, seeds, vegetables, fruits and legumes. Thousands of years of recipes that you could make a part time job exploring. All natural, no high tech research needed. Your health will improve and your diet will pollute the Earth less.
Will it blend?
No brain, no pain.
So... would it be unethical to eat human meat if it has been cultivated?
Just throw some GFP in there. Anyone who wants to see if it's artificial can just turn the lights out.
"You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals."
Has nobody else seen the other possibilities of such an application? I could quite literally be "hung like a horse".
Don't you mean "much less"? It seems to me that producing meat in a factory, once the production processes are fine-tuned and volume increased, will cost far LESS than growing real animals. Less energy would be needed (you wouldn't have to grow a lot of food to feed animals), and the meat would be produced far more quickly, and most importantly, far less labor would be needed: no cowboys, farm hands, etc.
Just like using mechanized agricultural equipment is far cheaper and more efficient than using slaves in farming, producing meat in factories promises to be cheaper and more efficient, and as a by-product, eliminating animal suffering as well.
Also probably no need for vaccinating (because it will never leave the vat on its own), probably no waste disposal, no stench of the large scale farms, etc.
Also importantly, it'd be possible to create many types of meat cheaply that currently are very expensive due to small supply: filet minion cuts of beef, copper river salmon, veal, Kobe beef, etc. Think about how little filet minion there is per cow versus all the other cuts (and the waste products); never again would people have to eat "stew beef", as everyone could have filet minion, since it probably wouldn't cost any more to make than a synthetic version of a cheaper cut.
Even better: we could artificially grow game, bush meat, or even the illegal meat of the endangered species! Wouldn't you like to taste a Panda Burger? Or a Lion Steak? Or a crunchy wing of a White Eagle? I'm sure that China government would sacrifice only 1 Panda foetus to earn millions of dollars on Panda Burgers without risking the extinction of the species :)
-- as this "meat" will have to be exercised in some fashion to make it more "meat-like".
So, how are we going to accomplish this?
Have specially designed undergarments? You strap this synthetic meat to it, go to work, then at lunch, go to the bathroom and pull your meat out -- wait a minute....