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.""

Comments

Artificial vs. Real Meat

[thewiz]

"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!

Cheers for PETA

[Grishnakh]

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.

Re:Cheers for PETA

[Grishnakh]

It's quite possible that we could end up with an industry that is capable of producing flawless cuts of synthetic meat that cost much more than slaughtering the real thing.

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 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.

Re:Cheers for PETA

[Onymous Coward]

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.

Do you like to torture dogs? If you really think they are non-sentient (i.e., they cannot experience suffering), then the answer is "Mu. Your question does not make sense; dogs cannot be tortured." But, no, your response is quick denial. That presumes that animals can feel. Which means that ethics apply.

Probably your real argument lies along the lines of "my pleasure in eating factory-raised animal meat is of greater value than the freedom from suffering the animals would have experienced". Which, really, is shitty. I did my thinking a while ago, and rather than rationalize up a bunch of specious arguments so that I could deludedly continue to enjoy eating meat, I opted to reduce my consumption.

But this is why I'm pulling for vat meat. Because I like eating meat. I want to get back to eating pork, goddamnit, and I don't want to be a rationalizing fool or an asshole in doing it.

"Anthropomorphizing". Really. As if our branch of apes were the only animals to ever feel anything.

Re:I am scared. I am intrigued.

[vertinox]

Say goodbye to bacon pizzas, tasty and meaty hamburgers, hot dogs, a good grilled steak with french fries and most importantly, delicious food.

No. It means 'real beef' made from free range cows will be bought at specialty stores for top dollar rather than this mass produced anti-biotic, hormoned, rotten grain fed crap they try to pass off as 'beef' now.

Seriously... Have you ever bought and ate a real steak. No... Not the kind you buy at Western Corral, but the NY cut or Filet mignon aged beef marinated over 24 hours cooked by a professional with the right blend of herbs spices that melts in your mouth usually costing you over 30-40 or even $100 per plate (depending on where you go) combined with a matched set of alcohol. Mmmm... I'm getting hungry....

Anyways... I really doubt you're going to be able to tell the difference between the current stock meat that goes into hotdogs and McDonald's burgers and the vat grown they are talking about.

Now... I need that filet mignon.

Re:I am scared. I am intrigued.

[lysdexia]

Monoculturing any living tissue will require antibiotics of some sort. I really doubt that one can have a 100% clean factory environment for these, unless you have robots and robots to fix the robots ad-infinitum.

Re:I am scared. I am intrigued.

[Hope Thelps]

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.

I'm firmly in the dead-animals-only camp, not just for reasons of taste but of personal ethics. If people stop eating delicious animals then these animals will soon be endangered or even extinct. Protect biodiversity, insist on corpse-flesh.

Re:I am scared. I am intrigued.

[Hatta]

This meat is from a artificial "muscle" that has never received any kind of exercise or strengthened itself.

Isn't that a good thing? From Wikipedia:

The fillet is the most tender cut of beef, and is the most expensive. The average steer or heifer provides no more than 4-6 pounds of fillet. Because the muscle is non-weight bearing, it receives very little exercise, which makes it tender.

Re:I am scared. I am intrigued.

[Miamicanes]

> If people didn't eat meat, so much more land would be available, that we could feed everyone
> and still have a lot more land to return to the wild, thereby increasing biodiversity.

As a practical matter, real, honest-to-god oldschool "starving kids in ${poor country}" don't really exist anymore. At least, not for reasons that have anything whatsoever to do with arable land, drought, famine, or vermin. That's not to say that nobody is hungry, but most of THOSE hungry people will STILL go to bed hungry, even if every last acre of land and bushel of corn currently used to feed livestock ceases to be used for that purpose.

In America, at least, farmland no longer needed for factory farming is more likely to end up with strip malls and McMansions on it than wildlife or anything normally associated with "biodiversity".

In poor countries, animals will be grown as always. It might be cheaper to factory-produce ten million pounds of "cultured bacon" or "cultured beef" per week than to raise and slaughter the equivalent number of animals, but a poor family living in a hut somewhere isn't going to have the capital to go out and buy the necessary hardware. They're going to do what they always have... buy a few dozen newly-hatched chicks, a pig or two, and a cow. Less efficient, but equally less capital-intensive.

Re:Tasteless

[Toze]

I put to you that a fast-food chain, given the option to guarantee a steady supply of meat of identical quality, unaffected by drought and not "fed" (and therefore not really susceptible to BSE/etc), that takes less than two years to produce, whose cost is unaffected by fluctuations in the international grain or corn market, is likely to make the investment the second the twenty-year costs come even. I also put to you that fast food chain's burgers are flavoured less by meat and more by seasoning. As someone whose family already sold their beef ranch, and who consumes a lot of beef, I think this is a fantastic idea.