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Scientists Work To Grow Meat In a Lab
codeman07 writes "In a small laboratory on an upper floor of the basic science building at the Medical University of South Carolina, Vladimir Mironov, M.D., Ph.D., has been working for a decade to grow meat. A developmental biologist and tissue engineer, Dr. Mironov, 56, is one of only a few scientists worldwide involved in bioengineering 'cultured' meat. It's a product he believes could help solve future global food crises resulting from shrinking amounts of land available for growing meat the old-fashioned way... on the hoof. Growth of 'in-vitro' or cultured meat is also underway in the Netherlands, Mironov told Reuters in an interview, but in the United States, it is science in search of funding and demand."
Nice to see that Mironov is still getting some attention, but this story is at least five years old. I wrote a feature story about lab-grown meat almost six years ago for the Village Voice, which goes into much more detail than the Reuters piece: http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-07-26/art/brave-new-hamburger/
If it contains all the minerals, proteins, aminoacids and generally all the qualities of regular meat, I don't give a damn what's on the label.
Though, I'd think they give it some catchy name or catch phrase.
"I can't believe it's not meat!"
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
...then we can call it "Bo-vine"
What are Vegetarians going to do when this comes out? It'll throw the WHOLE damn system out of whack! "Sorry, is that a Vegetarian Friendly Steak? Great! Medium-Rare."
Please, then, stick with your steroid-injected, BSE-ridden, hormone-packed, coloured, flavoured, seasoned, salted, vitamin-fortified, water-engorged joints of meat that are currently on the shelf.
The problem with people who *won't* buy "genetically modified", non-organic etc. foods is that they have no idea what they are *currently* eating anyway.
Growing "clean" meat in a lab sounds a good way to produce cheap meat for actually *feeding* people, e.g. developing countries, without needing to have acres of perfectly-good farmland dedicated to producing enough feed to sustain a whole herd of animals for years in order to slaughter one at a later date.
It would also work well for "essentials" meat, such as superstore value ranges for people who can only just afford it. I think I'd rather eat a generic, clean meat than the cheap offcuts of the cheapest animal, packaged in the cheapest possible way - especially if there are no possible BSE, etc. problems with it.
And meat production currently causes 18% of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions, and for various meats we push somewhere between 4 and 54 times the amount of energy into producing meat than we get in useful protein from the meat.
I don't give a shit what it says on the packet - and a bit of honesty would go a long way with me, in fact, rather than misleading and inaccurate statements like "organic" or "diet" or "reduced sugar" etc. - as long as it's edible. That doesn't mean I'd eat it for every meal but as a cheap way to get the energy I need to survive when I don't have much money? Bring it on.
Interesting, however it still smells of a solution looking for a problem. Though the reflex might be to believe that there is no land to grow beef ( or any other meat ), due to factors such as urban sprawl, we have yet to conquer major portions of this earth with city as yet. There is still plenty of land from which to graze. It should not be a surprise, in this day and age of "everything is a potential catastrophe and you should really watch this documentary" has anyone yet mentioned that we might run out of grazing land? Have you seen the desolation which is Idaho which is mostly grazing land?
To get back to the point; We have decommissioned much of the land due to economic factors and increases in efficiency ( really the same ). I believe this kind of solution may be profitable at some point, we are at least 50 years from it, and related technology will have morphed a bit by then - so its really just speculative.
The business side of me suspects they may find it easier to say something like "zero emission pork". Funding will start to flow their way. If they can get to the point where they can claim this, the market will be ready made to the point of charging 3 - 4 times as much as organic meat. People are silly that way. At least those that are middle-middle class to upper-middle class will pay for it. The rest wont care and will buy the 'classic' type.
Wait, I am just brainstorming here... Do you think they can knock off Kobe beef? There might be an angle to this.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Arthur C Clarke, The Food of the Gods
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
That's the thing, people go crazy about genetically modified food, think it's wrong and evil, and refuse to eat it. And yet, the same people will gladly eat fast food that has far worse stuff in it. Clearly, McDonalds is far more trustworthy than science. Sigh.
I'll be 100 in 2060. May I ask that this "invention" waits until then to hit the shops. Seriously, people pretend to do this for the sake of ecology. But I see this as the opposite of ecology. Plus it reminds me of the ersatz people made during the second world war (sugar from tissue, etc ...)
People in the world are starving not because of a lack of world food production, but political situations most of the time.
"Economics" is closer to astrology than it is to physics.
If you think you can count on "economics" to do anything you are a silly rabbit.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you look at anti-GM arguments more closely, you'll find that many (most?) people are opposed to them because there are environmental risks, because one of the most common uses of GM is to allow vastly stronger herbicides / pesticides, because it enables patenting of the food supply, because terminator crops reduce farmer's negotiating power with the companies that make them, because it is unlikely that the modifications can be prevented from entering the general biosphere meaning companies are taking it upon themselves to alter plantlife for everyone without consent and because there are few if any compelling arguments in their favour. At best, they tend to be a patch on a symptom, rather than an actual solution. For example the superbly marketed "golden rice" which contains additonal vitamin A, touted as a great benefit to people in India where deficiency is not uncommon. The thing is, it didn't used to be uncommon when farmers grew a variety of crops. But now due to the pressures of the international market, famers tend to focus on a few money crops (i.e. rice) and thus people don't get the balanced diet that they used to. Slapping some vitamin A into the rice (in exchange for selling your new pesticides and crop licences) is not redress for the damage done to world farming.
You'll notice that none of this has anything to do with whether or not people eat at McDonalds (which I don't).
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I'm going to slice it differently. And I'm even a mostly-vegetarian.
The reason that humans have been domesticating animals for food for millenia has a lot to do with animals being able to take advantage of food sources that humans couldn't or wouldn't eat. For instance, pigs were raised in large part on table scraps. Cattle, sheep, and goats were raised on grasses, typically in places where growing plants wasn't viable. Chickens and ducks were expected to forage quite a bit. All this made perfect sense, and can increase overall food supply.
What doesn't make sense (in terms of increasing the food supply) is using perfectly good arable land to grow feed corn that humans really don't want to eat, then turn around and feed that corn to animals who aren't built to eat corn, and then pump those animals full of drugs to ensure that they don't get sick eating the corn that they aren't really supposed to be eating. From a purely engineering standpoint, feedlot beef is probably the least efficient food on the planet, and the only reason that it's economically viable at all is because of artificially low prices for feed corn created by a combination of US government policy and massive overproduction.
I am officially gone from