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What If You Could Eat Chicken Without Killing a Chicken? (theoutline.com)

From a report on The Outline: San Francisco-based startup Memphis Meats announced this week that it had grown chicken in a lab -- chicken strips, to be precise. The strips, which were grown using self-reproducing cells, are technically "meat," but because the cells were not from an animal, the process by which this "meat" was "raised" is much cleaner, resulting in animal food that has the potential to sate both environmental groups as well as animal rights activists and vegetarians. Memphis Meats says it's hoping the product is ready for commercial sale by 2021. The company is part of an ever-increasing horde of Silicon Valley startups trying to solve the complicated problems of the meat industry, which range from cultural ideas about food to industrial and environmental issues to, increasingly, discussions about animal cruelty. [...] About 99 percent of animals raised for slaughter in the U.S. come from factory farms, and about a third of the land mass of the Earth is used in raising livestock. More so than chicken, livestock is incredibly inefficient to raise: It takes about 2,500 gallons of water to produce just a pound of beef.

3 of 331 comments (clear)

  1. Re:if it were cheaper, yes. by DogDude · · Score: 4, Informative

    If this stuff is so much less taxing on the environment it should be much cheaper to produce.

    Econ 101. Look up the word "externalities".

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    I don't respond to AC's.
  2. Re:I'd eat a fake chicken sandwich by sexconker · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is a device called a fence. You may have heard of it.

    There is this thing called a bird. It flies. Wild chickens fly quite well. Even a stray domestic chicken would be able to get over any fence you're allowed to build on your property if it cared to.

  3. Re:So what? by farble1670 · · Score: 4, Informative

    So what? Water is an effectively infinite global resource and it isn't ever actually consumed (i.e. lost).

    Non-contaminated fresh water is not an infinite resource in any sense of the term. Water is only an infinite resource if you also assume energy (to decontaminate and desalinate) is also an infinite resource (it isn't).