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PETA Abandons $1 Million Prize For Artificial Chicken
sciencehabit writes "Don't expect an artificial chicken in every pot anytime soon. Since 2008, the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has offered $1 million to anyone able to create a commercially viable artificial meat from growing chicken cells. But although scientists are making progress toward artificial hamburgers, even a 2-year extension from the original deadline of 2012 wasn't enough to lure applicants for PETA's prize."
They've dangled a $1 million prize in front of everybody, with an impossible deadline, and when science actually does start coming close to earning it, they kill it.
That's chicken.
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Artificial meat isn't meat for vegetarians, you aren't the target market. It's meant for omnivores. And experience has shown that some will pay extra for perceived ethical improvements, e.g. cage-free eggs vs. battery eggs. People would also be willing to pay some amount more for artificial meat.
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Killing 90% of all the animals they take in while claiming to be an "ethical" organization. The sooner the sink into the dustbin of history along with various other wingnut organizations the better.
Om, nomnomnom...
What the hell? There are a hell of a lot of vegetarians that don't eat meat for ethical reasons! There are also a lot of meat-eaters, like me, who have a sense of unease about eating animals but can stop because they are so delicious.
The prize was bogus to begin with, as explained in this Slate article from 2008. In short, it wouldn't be paid out unless the contestant was selling a ton of the stuff in stores and restaurants across 10 states over three months... at the same price as real chicken.
Science prizes are supposed to encourage development of things not yet commercially viable; this was a phony small tip for someone already successful. "Phony", because even if someone had the breakthrough needed on the day after this was announced, there's no way in hell that it could be approved for use and on market shelves in time to meet even the extended deadline.
And then there were the contest requirements, including full disclosure of ingredients and methods (trade secrets), carte blanche use of any- and everything related for PeTA's promotional purposes, rules subject to change without notice, and so on.
This was never a serious offer, just serious marketing, something PeTA mastered long ago. This "prize" retraction just got them some more free air time and, no doubt, some new members & donations... saith an older and hopefully wiser former member & supporter.
What I'd like to know is, why does PETA hate chickens so much? You don't have to be a genius to foresee what will happen to the chicken species if we abandon them as a food source.
That said, being able to grow slabs of chicken breast in a nutrient bath at home would be pretty sweet, if it could be done.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Aren't chicken nuggets artificial enough already ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
it wouldn't be paid out unless the contestant was selling a ton of the stuff in stores and restaurants across 10 states over three months... at the same price as real chicken.
Wow, you're not kidding. If you've got that, you've got revenue much higher than $1million, and are probably readying for a billion dollar IPO.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I have trouble believing artificial meat would be remotely competitive in terms of nutrients use and various supporting chemical agents, energy inputs, costs of installation, maintenance and even the need for an artificial immunological system.
Chicken are incredibly efficient, and their eggs are even more efficient, this is reflected in the low price of the meat and eggs. Yeah I've had a philosophy that when fossil fuels aren't directly involved, cheaper is mostly synonymous with ecological.
It's possible that successful artificial meat on a massive scale would lead to more resource depletion and more global warming, in my mind. It would perhaps create incredibly resistant, "superbug" viruses or bacteria. I'm not terribly concerned with killing chicken in that scheme.
What certainly could be done is regulation to give way more space for the hen / chicken, small tariff on imports from countries that don't have a strong enough regulation yet. Yes, regulations, I hope that doesn't sound too evil and bureaucratic (weird how digiliently global regulations on IP are made up and applied yet libertarian corporate overlords don't bitch about them).
But who wants to eat some phony lab meat when they could be eating some tasty good healthy sea kittens!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
PETA has this crazed idea that animals are better off dead than owned even if they have absolutly no chance of surviving wild. So that would be perfectly in character for them actually.
I think that is a misrepresentation - they would rather them not being born than being owned, though they go through hoops to define pets as companions rather than being owned.
Who would want it? Die hard long time vegetarians (like me) abhor fake meats as much as real meats - they are disgusting the (almost) the same way.
I'm a vegetarian and I disagree. Some fake meats are bad, particularly the cheap rehydratable variety, but others taste OK. They are not my favourite option but if I eat with non-veg friends and the vegi option is a vegi-burger I will have it and enjoy it.
Try explaining to your cat what happened, or did not happen, to Schrödinger's Cat.
It might, or might not, work.
Anyway, the UK used to have some artificial food stuff called Turkey Twizzlers that were kinda sorta artificial. But celebrity twat chef Jamie Oliver made a fuss about them, so they got banned from school lunches. Kids seemed to like them with chips (fries), though.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Find some vegetarian, and ask them if they would eat meat if it came from artificial means. If they're the type that doesn't eat meat because they feel sorry for animals, they will get a really confused look on their face, say, "well, uh......" and say something very entertaining and random. That's not something they think about normally.
There are all sorts of motivations - environmental, concern for animals, religious, or ethical based on a relative valuation of animal lives that differs from the norm. All will have different reactions to this. Some may also have a yuck factor - just the same as many carnivores would have if offered a meal of cultured human tissue - and may say that though logically they can't object, they wouldn't want to try it.
Alternatively, they genuinely thought we had a meat replacement ready to go and were just refusing to use it out of pettiness or evil. Given the way PETA talk about their ideological opponents it seems alarmingly plausible to me.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
No, otherwise they wouldn't go on massive slaughter-fests. An animal PETA gets its hands on has an 84% chance of getting murdered within 24 hours.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
PETA appears to be against the mass exploitation of chickens. If 10bn chickens are killed annually for meat, and that reduces to 10m, they will have succeeded ... but the chicken would be far from extinct. Commercial chicken production could even stop completely, but people in rural areas would still keep chickens, as they have done for hundreds of years, for their eggs if nothing else (remember that dual-use nature of the chicken?) Chicken manure is also quite the asset if you're living rurally. And then you can sell the carcass to stupid town-dwellers who are prepared to pay high prices for the "real chicken" their parents used to talk about.
The chicken isn't going to go extinct just because we stop exploiting it for meat on a mass scale. Stop pretending that complex bio-economic systems work in binary. The choice is not "continue to exploit animals in their billions" vs "watch them go extinct", and only a fool would claim that it was. I mean, I fucking hate PETA, but I hate binary thinking more (and I use the term "thinking" reservedly). As for the idea that mass production of chickens has some kind of advantage in terms of bio-diversity - it's complete and utter propagandist nonsense, although I guess it kind of works if you close your eyes and ignore the species that already went extinct so we can have enough land to grow enough corn to feed 10 billion identical fucking chickens.
No, otherwise they wouldn't go on massive slaughter-fests. An animal PETA gets its hands on has an 84% chance of getting murdered within 24 hours.
To be fair to them they don't like it and only do it so that they can accept animals rejected by other shelters. I have mixed feelings on this, on one hand I think they should turn more away - but on the other hand if the alternative is the animals being dumped by the roadside or worse then maybe accepting and euthenising is best
I'm pretty sure one of the senior scientists in last year's artificial burger project was involved exactly because he was a vegetarian who wanted to eat artificial meat.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If you want a chicken like texture then eat quorn. It tastes remarkably close and has a similar texture. It's not so good as a substitute for other kinds of meat though. Not that I have any qualms about eating meat but some vegetarian alternatives are quite nice in their own right and just for a bit of variety.
There was research into whether carbs were "essential"; that is, if the human body could not synthesize anything it needed instead of getting it from carbs. The result - carbs are NOT essential. You can get everything you need from being a carnivore. I can't find the paper right now, but it was written a long time ago by a doc that put people on different diets for 30+ days to find out what was/wasn't essential.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Inuit diets were up to 90% fat. High protein, low-fat diets are associated with "rabbit starvation", a phrase derived from a phenomenon of hunter-gatherers only being able to obtain rabbit meat and eating until they were distended but still being hungry due to inadequate fat consumption.
Gary Taubes writes about an experiment run in the 1920s where two men ate an all-meat diet. About the only consequence they could find from this was that one man's gingivitis cleared up.
He also writes about an anthropological study that found no "stone age" diets that were vegetarian, most were very high in animal protein and fat.
It's believed that prior to organized agriculture (which is very recent in terms of human history) that humans diets were dominated by meat eating. Outside of the tropics, native plants and fruits are seasonal and have a limited natural availability.
That's an interesting question as it will separate vegetarians into different groups according to their reasons for eating vegetarian. A lot of people assume that vegetarians are a single group with a shared set of beliefs and aims, but that's not the case at all. I'm a pescetarian (vegetarian with fish) for a whole bunch of reasons: health, resource usage, mistrust of modern animal husbandry etc.
Animal welfare is not a major concern for me (although I like animals and abhor cruelty), but I think I would abstain from lab-grown meat as I'm not convinced that it would necessarily be a healthy addition to my diet. I'd wait until there were some positive reasons to eat lab-grown meat as I'm not convinced that it would be anything other than a rich-person's food and thus not sustainable world-wide.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
PETA appears to be against the mass exploitation of chickens. If 10bn chickens are killed annually for meat, and that reduces to 10m, they will have succeeded ... but the chicken would be far from extinct. Commercial chicken production could even stop completely, but people in rural areas would still keep chickens, as they have done for hundreds of years, for their eggs if nothing else (remember that dual-use nature of the chicken?) Chicken manure is also quite the asset if you're living rurally. And then you can sell the carcass to stupid town-dwellers who are prepared to pay high prices for the "real chicken" their parents used to talk about.
The chicken isn't going to go extinct just because we stop exploiting it for meat on a mass scale. Stop pretending that complex bio-economic systems work in binary. The choice is not "continue to exploit animals in their billions" vs "watch them go extinct", and only a fool would claim that it was. I mean, I fucking hate PETA, but I hate binary thinking more (and I use the term "thinking" reservedly). As for the idea that mass production of chickens has some kind of advantage in terms of bio-diversity - it's complete and utter propagandist nonsense, although I guess it kind of works if you close your eyes and ignore the species that already went extinct so we can have enough land to grow enough corn to feed 10 billion identical fucking chickens.
What PETA is really against is humans. Otherwise they'd make themselves better informed about what the animals really want. If you believe PETA, all animals want to do is flee humans, and that's observably false. Even skunks have been known to move in next to human beings. Alaskan wolves show off their puppies to tourists, and don't even think of trying to do anything interesting around emperor penguins.
Case in point: veganism, which I'm pretty sure is almost(?) essential for PETA membership. Veganism is based on the concept that you don't use any animal product that exploits the animal. Which gives you the wierd situation where you're allowed to eat human placenta meat, but not eggs.
The problem is that many farm animals of today are mutants bred to interact with humans. Chickens will lay sterile eggs, regardless, but vegans will leave the eggs to rot. Cows will produce milk, but lacking someone to milk them, will be in pain. Sheep, unsheared will overheat.
I prefer to minimize the amount of animal pain and suffering I cause. Besides, if I eat too many of them, they'll get their revenge by raising my cholesterol. I'll pay more for uncaged chicken eggs and am hoping to see the day that bacon, burgers and jerky are something that can be rolled off a production line instead of forcibly removed from the carcasses of dead animals.
But I think I get more pain and suffering from having to drive into an office and work all day than a chicken does producing that one sterile egg, so I'm not feeling too bad about a free-roving chicken.
I am sorry, I need a source other than PETA to believe that they don't like it. They provide no evidence that their claim is true. This is an organization which has been shown in the past to be willing to distort the facts in order to promote its agenda. It is also an organization that opposes the very concept of pets. So, to put it bluntly, I do NOT believe them. Since PETA believes that dogs and cats SHOULD be allowed to run feral (and only as many survive as manage to do so without human intervention), I believe they take these animals in with the intention of killing them since these animals apparently cannot survive in the wild without human intervention (the reason they are brought to the shelter in the first place).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Well now I'm clearly going to have to spend all afternoon looking up how the Inuit diet works, physiologically.
I've had a look too and some sites seem to say that to thrive on a carnivorous diet the chewing of raw blubber was essential as some vitamins degrade when cooked.
I don't think the OP meant 'meat analogues' like soy or what have you. Most vegetarians have learned to deal with those, and some of them are pretty well done.
I think he meant 'fake meat' -- as in vat grown cells of animals which are somehow supposed to be a good thing and which some vegetarians suggest would be OK because there's no animal cruelty involved.
For me, the idea of vat grown animal cells in some industrial version of pink slime meets soylent green elicits an big "ewww", and would not be something I'd ever eat.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Some fake meats are bad, particularly the cheap rehydratable variety, but others taste OK. They are not my favourite option but if I eat with non-veg friends and the vegi option is a vegi-burger I will have it and enjoy it.
Why is it that vegetarians go to such lengths to procure food that tastes like meat but doesn't actually contain meat? If a vegetarian diet is so great, they wouldn't try to make their food taste like meat.
You don't see the rest of the population whining because their steak doesn't taste like tofu.
Vegetarians searching for products that taste like meat is more a western thing for ex-meat eaters, and many dont too; after 2 decades without eating meat, I too dont like even the smell of it. There have been vegetarians in India for thousand years, the first cow in Japan soil was killed in WWII by americans, and tofu has been made for 3 thousands years, without nobody caring if their food tastes like meat. Actually there also proofs Samurais were strictly vegetarians, the roman gladiators where mostly vegetarian (due to cost of meat and logistics of scale feeding large populations), and roman soldiers carried vegetarian alternatives as combat rations - spelt cakes for instance (because meat and fish would rot).
Actually meat won't raise your cholesterol. Or at least, it's unlikely to. In the last few years, we've found that most of what we thought we know about cholesterol to be wrong. Dietary cholesterol (that is, the cholesterol figure you see on food labels, as well as the cholesterol found in meat and eggs) doesn't actually raise your LDL (bad) cholesterol levels. What actually does is saturated fats, which are less likely to be found in meats than many vegetables.
In fact, the infamous 1986 to 2008 "Harvard Study" that is often cited by vegans as being the reason you shouldn't eat red meat, doesn't actually suggest what they claim it does. Some group interpreted the raw data to place a link between various forms of cancer and heart disease with those who eat red meat, but they made a critical mistake. The group that ate red meat also happened to include a lot of smokers, drinkers, obese people, and people who otherwise just didn't bother watching their diet, whereas among the vegetarian group you saw less of this occurring (really any form of diet at all tends to cause one to be more conscious of what they consume.)
However one critical trend that these people didn't spot was that the vegetarian group almost universally had bad cholesterol levels. Did that make the headline news? Nope. But the "red meat is bad" news did, and so lately there's been a fad to eliminate it from our diets, which I don't think is well advised.
Anyways, don't believe anybody who thinks eating meat causes bad cholesterol, because there's no evidence to support it.
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I knew a girl who was very skinny... she became vegetarian and almost died. She resorted to eating only fish and vegetables because vegetarian diet would kill her. That happened over years of research, support groups, health spa meetings, general fraternization with vegetarians and vegans everywhere.
Me, I didn't bother. My immune system fails and I start getting open wounds and sores out of nowhere if I stop eating meat--after two weeks! So fuck that.
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The problem is that most vegetarians also avoid processed foods, if you get my gist. Manufactured foods are not kosher for many vegetarians, like for instance india with an astonishing 90% of population being vegetarian.