Slashdot Mirror
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 obvious solution is some sort of horrid electrode array.
Weak-kneed members of the public will have to be kept away from the giant culture vats, where hideous amorphous flesh lumps, studded with electrodes, thrash and strain; but they should be able to get exactly as much exercise as they need, without becoming excessively tough.
You hope.
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.
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.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
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:
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The sustenance angle is all well and good; however, what I want to know is how long till the "real flesh" fleshlight?
Do you really think the farmers of America (or any other country with lobbyists, for that matter) are going to let this happen? They're going to demonize the shit out of lab meat and complain to congress that they derk er jerbs, Then they'll be made some protected industry or subsidized by the government or some equally retarded bullshit. As I understand it the meat industry in America has a LOT of political weight to throw around.
...but the NY cut or Filet mignon aged beef marinated over 24 hours cooked by a professional with the right blend of herbs spices...
As a classically trained chef I can tell you that marinating filet mignon for 24 hours is a terribly bad idea. With such a small amount of connective tissue and fat it would be mushy and over seasoned. Although I do agree with the rest of your post. :)
If people stop eating actual animals, we'll be overrun with chickens in a decade. Up to our friggin' ears I tells ya! We'll have to carve our way through with machetes while wearing goalie masks.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
There's a Mitchell & Webb for that. Favorite line:"There might be a few polar bears left if more people wanted one for breakfast."
Weak-kneed members of the public will have to be kept away from the giant culture vats, where hideous amorphous flesh lumps, studded with electrodes, thrash and strain
This is the best thinly-disguised metaquote about Slashdot I've seen in a long time.
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.
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
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.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
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.