In-Vitro Muscle Cells, It's What's For Dinner

wanzeo writes "Within the last decade, many of us have experienced the encroachment of ethics into our mealtime. Phrases such as vegetarian, vegan, organic, bST, GMO, etc. have become part of common grocery store advertising. The most recent addition to the list of ethically charged food is in-vitro meat, or meat that was cultured in a petri dish, and was never part of a live animal. The project has been brought to fruition by Mark Post, a biologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. Grown using animal stem-cells on a nutrient medium, the nearly see-through strips of muscle would need to be stacked nearly 3,000 times to approach the thickness of a burger. The practice promises to be more humane, sustainable, and efficient than conventional meats, with one analysis suggesting it would, 'use 35 to 60 percent less energy, emit 80 to 95 percent less greenhouse gas and use around 98 percent less land.' In a world where nearly half of all crop production is used to feed livestock, a move towards artificial meat may be inevitable."

Comments

Monsanto

[scifiber_phil]

Monsanto will patent it, claim real meat infringes, then make us all eat it. No labelling of fake meat will be allowed, so we won't know what we are eating. At that time maybe I'll try the frankensalmon.

Re:Monsanto

[broken_chaos]

I'm actually fine with this idea of 'fake meat', as long as it's done well. If it tastes and behaves similarly to 'real meat', and is made from actual real animal cells... I'm just fine with the idea. I'd be more worried about genetically modified meat -- but this stuff is not modified in that way. It's just cells grown in a non-standard incubation system (i.e., a lab dish, as opposed to a sack of other meat cells).

Re:Monsanto

[scifiber_phil]

I realize that if all meat was synthetic, there would be no need to label it as such. I was just referencing the fact that in Pennsylvania and other states, there was a market for milk from cows not being given growth hormone. In Pennsylvania, the secretary of agriculture was set to disallow the labelling of milk as being free of growth hormone. There was enough pushback from those wanting to buy growth hormone-free milk and those just wanting to know what they were drinking to force the secretary to backtrack on the order. I was angry and still am angry that a state official was comfortable hiding what was in our food for the sake of lobbying interests. I was just trying to make the point that we are being force-fed GM foods, and in most cases, there have been no long term studies as to safety. I was trying to make humorously the point that GM foods are being rammed down our throats whether we like it our not, and regardless of safety concerns. Call me crazy, but I still want to make my own life choices, and not have the government and corporations make them for me. Just for the record, in food, "you won't notice the difference" does not equate to safe to eat. Safe to eat is actually the most important part of "mission accomplished".

Embrace the Future

[Sponge Bath]

Synthetic meat is still too expensive. This process will be optimized to a fabricated protein paste fed through a tube to power your assigned functions until you wear out and are flushed. Witness the progress of humanity.

Re:Food myths

[phulegart]

Grazing animal use the massive tracts of un-airable land and don't require labor and oil and pesticide intensive production techniques.

Unfortunately, these same Grazing animals don't graze any more, and we have to bring the food to them. Oh, sure, there are "Free Range" animals, but the meat produced from them is more expensive. The majority of the meat produced from these Grazing Animals does require labor and oil and pesticide... because we must grow the food for these animals, harvest the food for these animals, and transport the food for these animals. That requires pesticide, labor, and oil.

Thus meat production *IS* more inefficient than growing vegetables, because it involves the process *OF* growing vegetables, plus a whole lot more.

Ok, ok... so Hay isn't any kind of vegetable you or I would eat. But it is still sown, grown, harvested and transported.