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In Vitro Grown Meat 'Nearly Possible'
Bruce66423 writes "An article at The Guardian discusses the prospects for food from radically different sources than the ones we're used to. 'Sweet fried crickets' anyone? Quoting: '... artificial steak is still a way off. Pizza toppings are closer. The star of the Dutch research into in-vitro meat, Dr Mark Post, promised that the first artificial hamburger, made from 10bn lab-grown cells, would be ready for "flame-grilling by Heston Blumenthal" by the end of 2012. At the time of writing it is still on the back burner. Post (who previously produced valves for heart surgery) and other Dutch scientists are currently working over the problem of how to turn the "meat" from pieces of jelly into something acceptably structured: an old-fashioned muscle. Electric shocks may be the answer. ... The technological problems of producing the new hi-tech foods are nothing compared to the trouble the industry is having with the consumers – the "yuck factor," as the food technology scientists across the world like to put it. Shoppers' squeamishness has turned the food corporations, from whom the real money for R&D will have to come, very wary, and super-secretive about their work on GM in America.'"
After encountering the notion in the Vorkosigan series and thinking about it a bit, the notion of lab-grown meat doesn't seem like a big deal. It's arguably more sanitary than an animal that's been standing in filth for its entire life, after all.
cownterfeit.
I don't understand the yuck-factor. Go buy a McChicken at the big yellow M. There's nothing recognizably chicken-ish about that product at all. The taste and texture is completely different from the chicken I tasted as a kid, when my grandfather would routinely kill and prepare his own chickens for dinner. I can tell you from personal experience that the yuck-factor in actually killing a chicken with a blade is much higher than that of an electricallly stimulated nuggy grown inside a petri dish.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
What is ironic is that looking at current varieties of crops and farm animals, they have been cultivated to the point where they bear little resemblance to the original species. Also methods of generating new varieties include induced mutation, which is seen as OK by the organic lobby. Go figure.
I don't get the yuck factor.
To me a slaughtered animals is about as yucky as it can be. Even more so when combined with the slaughter house And even more so if you consider some things like the floors and skinn processing.
There's also the hanging of the meat and for instance things like hams which have hanged around to develop flavour or whatever for three (?) years and such. I guess they keep the flies out but it looks very old and "half-rotten" with black spots and ugly surface.
Imho something fresh rather than an old body stored long after death seem fresher and less discusting. Scavaging isn't my idea of fresh and little yuckiness.
Something grown in a clean environment (though of course the bodies of the animals are likely good at keeping themself clean except for some parasites and such) imho seem less yucky and if you've got some compassion for others that's even better.
What I personally wonder is if it's still grown in bouillon made of animals because then the difference isn't all to big. You still need to kill animals and use them in the process. But then again they likely could use some scraps to make that one to get better effectiveness.
For me personally there may still be some mental issue due to what it is even if no animal had to die and the cells wasn't grown on an animal based diet/medium. That may not make much sense though, and having a protein based staple for your diet would be very convenient.
Because the resource consumption rates needed to make it the natural way cannot continue.
People have no idea the absolutely unbelievable amount of agricultural and hydrological resources the world pours down a veritable black hole to make meat. Put it this way: The amount of grain and water it takes to raise the meat eaten by Americans alone could feed everyone in the entire world.
"Dr Mark Post, promised that the first artificial hamburger, made from 10bn lab-grown cells, would be ready for "flame-grilling by Heston Blumenthal" by the end of 2012. At the time of writing it is still on the back burner."
It doesn't matter if it's on the back- or front-burner, the important thing is that it's on the BQ already.
The amount of grain and water it takes to raise the meat eaten by Americans alone could feed everyone in the entire world.
Most of the grains we feed to livestock aren't worth a shit to humans from a nutritional point of view. I wish every stupid hippie who propagates this bullshit would go out, pick up a couple bales of alfalfa, and try actually surviving on it. Doesn't work so fucking well, because you're a human and not a goddamn cow.
Look, out in your back yard all that grass? Goats can get fat eating that stuff. So do us all a favor and next time you feel like spreading this type of FUD, go cut your lawn and put the trimmings on your plate, and try living off that.
As a vegetarian for the last 40-odd years this would certainly pose an ethical question for me - could I eat it?
Probably yes, as it's not a part of the corpse of an animal and presumably no animal has suffered or been exploited in its manufacture. But in practice no, because What's the Point!? I ate meat until my late teens and don't miss it at all. I enjoy a very tasty, healthy and nutritious diet and that's what really matters.
Smivs on the intertubes!
The reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skins is because they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for two thousand years... If we eat McDonald's hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years we will become taller, our skin become white, and our hair blonde
Due to the heavy impact of the press and TV on the Japanese, this helped a lot. Price as a reason? For your information, for the price of a cheeseburger you get here in Japan a very decent and cooked traditional Japanese meal (Ootoya TBT, Yoshinoya ...).
Back to the story, Japanese will not eat "anything", unless TV endorses it. If TV comes to that and you want to compare this "new meat" to something: compare it to the western hamburgers - and certainly not to the traditional Japanese food that has been eaten in Japan for a very long time.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I'm still dreaming of a steak tree - doesn't have to move, grows on sunlight, doesn't need the highly interdependent energy intensive support infrastructure of industrial society, tastes delicious.
The downside would be that trees normally take a while until they can procreate, delaying breeding attempts. The other thing might be that the global greenhouse pickle we got ourselves into would rather favour movable trees, much like the ones seen in Lord of the Rings, due to the rapidity of the climate changes and weather extremes persisting for longer durations. Maybe cows with chlorophyll would be a better idea. Oh no, wait - cows move around to harvest stored energy from the grass, their own surface would never be enough at the puny photosynthesis efficiencies! They might get maybe a 1-2W assuming 100W average insolation.
Well maybe I could settle for beans with beef taste and some additional proteins.
Je me souviens.
Not true and you could also grow other crops.
True for areas which isn't suitable for farming grains though.
This technology isn't really needed. Chinese Buddhists have been making faux meats for centuries. They are quite good.
There are also newer, Western faux meats that are quite good. Check out brands like Gardein and Beyond Meat.
Throughout most of human history, meat in the quantity Westerners are used to has been quite rare. The result are ethic cuisines thousands of years old that use little, if any meat, for tasty, complete ( and healthier ) nutrition.
If the area currently devoted to making feed for ruminants weren't needed for that, we wouldn't be farming grass and alfalfa on it now would we?
Regardless, you can't deny that the biological growth process is staggeringly inefficient from an energy in / energy in biomass standpoint. There's a reason why prey:predator biomass relationships tend to fan in something like 100:1 per level. It's possible given a large effort to farm a whole bunch of meat, but we're doing severe damage to water tables, river systems and everything within 100 miles of the Mississippi river delta due to farm runoff, a significant part of which is making feedstock for animals.
And no, I'm not confused about why I have sharp front teeth and I enjoy a good steak'n'taters as much as anyone. I simply see a situation whose energy/resource consumption is a Bad Idea (tm) in an era of imminent resource constraints. We should eat meat, but a whole lot less would be much healthier.
Because Americans eat a lot of goat meat, right?
Most of the meat eaten in the US is beef and chicken. What do we feed most of the beef and chicken? There's some forage, sure. But the majority of it is corn and soy, grown on commercial farms. This is particularly true in large-scale commercial lots where the overwhelming majority of our meat is produced.
And I hate to burst your bubble, but alfalfa doesn't come falling out of the sky into fully formed hay bails. You have to plant it, fertilized it, and harvest it like all the other crops. That requires arable land, water, gasoline, and labor costs that could easily be used in a much more efficient way than producing meat, which was the GP poster's point.
But I guess having a understanding of basic economics makes us stupid goddamn hippies.
I'm really curious what someone who doesn't eat meat for "moral" reasons thinks about this? Would you eat it? Would you not? Why either way?
We've already got a machine which produces meat. It's almost fully-automatic; it gathers a large proportion of its nutrients on its own, eliminates the waste products, and in the process exercises the muscle tissue to produce the desired texture (though some external work is typically required before harvesting to "finish" the meat). It requires no electricity or other energy input aside from the nutrients it gathers. In short, the cow sets a pretty high standard for meat machines.