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First Ever Public Tasting of Lab-Grown Cultured Beef Burger
vikingpower writes "Today, at 14:00 Western European Time (9:00 am Eastern), Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University (the Netherlands) will present a world first: he will cook and serve a burger made from Cultured Beef in front of an invited audience in London. The event will include a brief explanation of the science behind the burger. You can watch the event live, online. The project's fact sheet is to be found here (pdf)." The BBC is reporting that Sergey Brin is the mystery backer behind the project.
This way they can produce human meat for canibals... and curious people asking if we taste like chicken to them.
.... putting his money where his mouth is
You know, as an American, I resent that remark. We do not sue for going against God's will.
We burn you at the steak.
Yes. I went there.
Reports are, it tasted lousy, due to nearly zero fat content. Additionally, "real" beef has flavor overtones resultant from the feed the animal was raised on. Thus, corn-fed beef tastes different from grass-fed beef, even if both cows came from the same cows.
I don't expect vat-raised hamburger, much less steak, being commercially available anytime soon. . . . . simply because if it doesn't TASTE good and have the "mouth feel" of genuine beef, you're not going to get enough buyers to make it a commercial success. . .
I'm not the guy you're responding to, but I think your hostility is unwarranted. Frankly, you come off much worse than the guy you're responding to. For one thing, disagreeing with someone is no reason to call someone an idiot.
That aside, anti-GM groups and vegetarians have a wide variety of reasons for their beliefs and actions. I know anti-GM people who have good, well thought out reasons, but I also know some who are just anti-science. I know vegetarians who don't eat meat because they're concerned about animal welfare, economic inequality, environmental issues, health issues, or some combination of those. I also know some who just don't like the taste. I also know some for whom it's a fashion statement.
Don't try to paint over everything with the same brush. There will be some people who are afraid of this meat simply because it was "grown in a lab" which makes it comparable to Frankenstein's monster somehow. Frankly, I'm a bit concerned about the meat because I haven't read enough about what they're actually doing to know that they're not doing something strange, dangerous, or unethical. At this point, it's just my own ignorance, but I'm not going to promote the whole thing and tell people it's fine when I don't actually know what they're doing.
The amount of waste generated by livestock is astounding, not to mention the inputs needed. If inventions such as this can reduce either of those (ideally both), even by just a few percent, there is most certainly a 'point'. There are many non-vegetarians interested in more sustainable production methods.
China's populations is levelling off but its standard of living is going up. Not every one lives in a house with electricity and plumbing but most people would like to. When larger fractions of their population start living the western life you can bet they wont want to farm their own foods. We are no where near feeding the world adequately, if this can be done cheap and efficiently than its a big step in the right direction.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
That's only because of how we raise livestock. There are other ways which do not have these problems.
Other benefits Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing include:
1. Reduction of parasites, pests, and disease vectors.
2. Less need for pharmaceuticals.
3. No need for fertilizer.
4. Less petroleum used in transporting feed and manure to/from the CAFO.
5. Increases soil fertility.
6. Increases topsoil coverage and depth.
7. Can reverse desertification.
8. Sequesters vast amounts of CO2.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
They can keep it.
Hell, I'm just trying to eat beef/animal products that are more natural than the normal stuff you see in the grocery stores.
I'd rather cut down my meat intake (quality over quantity), and have say beef, that is grass fed, allowed to eat what it normally eats, and not needing all the hormones and anti-biotics....
I'm certainly not wanting to swing the complete other day and have synthetic "dead animal".
Why are we trying to go so far away from foodstuffs that mother natures put on earth for us...?
It isn't like most of us (in the west) are starving or anything.
I would argue that if it's possible to grow meat that's just as wholesome as grass-fed beef (arguably more so because it won't have any environmental contaminants at all) and at the same price, the practice of raising and killing of animals is no longer justified in the slightest. It's a morally tough call today as it is.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Sorry, I fail to see where morality enters into this argument at all...?
Humans are just another variety of animal on this planet, like the rest of them, we eat, sleep, shit, fuck and make new little copies of ourselves.
We just happen to be on the top of the food chain, and have a lot of choices on what to eat, picking from those lower than us on the food chain.
There's nothing morally wrong with eating something lower than yourself on the food chain, that's they way nature made all of us animals.
Somewhere along the line....people have gotten so abstracted from their food, they seem to forget this.
Please don't misunderstand, I like meat and I eat it.
But I'm not so abstracted from my food that I forget that it used to be a living thing, and that it's life was taken so that I could have nutrition (and useful byproducts like bone meal, glycerin, leather, etc). If we ever reach a level of technology where there are no health or taste reasons why a synthetic meat would be undesirable, I simply wouldn't ever buy meat that used to be alive.
We're a unique animal that need not be limited to the "natural." It's natural to piss and shit wherever, but modern sanitation sets up some rules about how piss and shit are handled so we don't contaminate our living area or food and water supplies. It's natural to breed and have women spending their childbearing years perpetually pregnant from potentially many different men, but we as a society calm things down a bit because runaway breeding is unsustainable. We've gone far beyond our evolved instincts.
More Twoson than Cupertino