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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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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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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