SCI/TECH: Paper Says Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab on Industrial Scale

Experiments for the NASA space missions have shown the ability to grow small amounts of edible meat in the lab. A paper in an issue of 'Tissue Engineering" reports a team of scientists and a doctoral student Jason Matheny from the University of Maryland has proposed two new techniques of tissue engineering that may lead to an affordable production of in-vitro lab grown meat.



I think this is a wonderful invention it could really alleviate world hunger.
However, it does put me in mind of Soylent Green


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[edit on 11/7/2005 by Sauron]

I am not a big fan of the murdering of animals, I could do it if i was hungry, but it would be so much easier to lick a petri dish clean.

tbh meat is pretty poor tasting (just try smelling chicken), its normally the sauce that accompanies it that is nice, so fake cheap meat is good for me.

.
It does remove the moral quandry of raising a living animal simply to kill and eat it. [I have a nightmare vision of cattle protesting no longer being used as food production reducing the need for their species, carrying signs "Slaughter Me!, Not my Species!"]
In reality this is something that will be fought be traditional ranchers, feedlot operators, feedgrain growers, etc.

In any event this will be driven almost exclusively by economics with a minimal consideration for any species or the environment.

By creating factory food it frees up huge tracts of range land and the environmental degredation from it, but likely that will become an excuse to turn it all into suburbs instead of preserving a large portion of it in some kind of natural state. It also removes the feedlot which is a nexus of disease where animals are packed in, dancing in one another's feces and force fed as well as injected with numerous anti-biotics, hormones & drugs.

As bad as beef production may be the pork and chicken factory farms are worse. Animals packed in as tight as possible who can barely turn around with beaks removed. All they get to do is eat, drink get innoculated, drugged and deficate. I find it hard to imagine a worse hell than that.

The processes involved must be reasonably inexpensive for people to take advantage of them. That could be a while in comming It also means there will be more control over things like BSE since it will be more highly controlled and not dependant on the external environment. It seems inevitable that some diasters will occur. Unknown missing micronutrients, bacterial or other diseases, toxic compounds.

I think the biggest plus will be the reduced pressure on the environment from food production. But i know that will likely excuse an even faster population explosion reversing all of the gains.
.

I prefer my meat from the ocean or the land- footed, finned, or in the shell.

This so-called meat would definitely NOT be Kosher.

[edit on 11-7-2005 by Chakotay]

Well that's interesting. To the meat not being kosher, I dunno. If you were to take a kosher piece of meat and culture it on a petri dish that was properly cleaned and all the syringes and chemicals were made and stored in certified containers, there's really no reason this meat wouldn't be kosher.

I do find the PETA aspect of this interesting. As someone noted, animal rights folks may be all over this technology to allow people to eat meat without killing animals. However, if that ever does take off, where does that leave livestock? There's no reason to keep it, can't set it free, so you'd better just slaughter all of em.

Then we also get into the problems of subsidies for the newly unemployed -- livestock farmers. They've invested hundreds of thousands in their farms, only to be told all their investment was pointless, we can grow what you're trying to provide. Then the government will probably end up footing the bill, which means all of us do. Unfortunatelly, progress in making an industry obsolete tends to have that happen, though. After all, I'm sure many of us here remember the caboose debacle when they became obsolete. Had to keep em on the train, even though they weren't needed, because the caboose workers union was too strong to phase out that technology.

If this technology ever comes to the point of being able to mass produce steaks for consumption, I suspect there will be a major political battle over allowing it to be used as food, driven by livestock farmers who don't want to lose their farms.

Ain't progress grand?

Well as sad as it is for farmers, they are benefitting at the expense of innocent animals anyhow so it's not like theres any moral problems. It's the same thing as if we had the chance to stop all wars but didn't out of fear of making the defense contractors unemployed.

Either way I like this idea. Farms can now be dedicated to fruits and vegtables. And now we can make meat thats less harmful, perhaps even healthy by our standards. Who knows maybe it would help solve part of the obesity problem if hamburgers had less fat. (It'll take a lot more to completly solve it though). Add in the benefits of not having to worry about mad cow diesese or a cow contracting anthrax and we've got our selves a scientific solution on the same proportion as the refrigerator.

Still I can't wait to hear what lame excuses the religious lobbyists have to say.

just goes to show ya; with science anything is possible

like growing meat in a dish LOL
science fiction yesterday; reality today


thats why i love science it makes the impossible possible

science is derived from the Latin word Sciente
it means "Knowledge"

so heres a more accurate statement
"with Knowledge, Anything is Possible"

hey and u mentioned Soylent Green lol

"Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!!!!!!"

Originally posted by muzzleflash
hey and u mentioned Soylent Green lol

"Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!!!!!!"

Thats just what I thought when reading the headline of this article

it wont do anything for the worlds hunger because we have more than enough food for that it just doesnt get used.

As for being meat. It probably is in a technical sense but I would bet in seeing it in a Gordon Ramsey resturaunt.

By Soapydodger
I would bet in seeing it in a Gordon Ramsey resturaunt

I take it you meant wouldn't, and I agree. No matter how mainstream this became I'd be willing to bet there'd still be a sizeable minority that would insist on "real" food. In that way it might have an advantage for farmers as they'd be able to charge more for a product that would probably become perceived as "premium" and more sought after, plus they wouldn't be held to ransom by the supermarkets and could name their own price.

I'm talking 30 - 50 years down the line if this ever took off, and knowing how squeamish people are about this kind of thing it probably won't and at the moment the need (in the west anyway) isn't high enough. The changeover would be nasty though, especially for the environment.

At a guess, aid, military rations and space missions will be it's probable uses.

military rations arent real food anyway so they probably will get that.

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

I even mentioned soylent green.


[edit on 7/12/2005 by centurion1211]

Edward G. Robinson's death scenes in "Soylent Green" were beautiful. "Pastoral" playing in the background and all those wonderful nature scenes--I can think of worse ways to go.

Meat - reminds me of that idiotic little short story someone posted on ATS a few weeks back--it was funny. Seriously, saw this story on PhysOrg.com a week or so ago and wondered then what kind of nutrient solution would have to be used to get this stuff to grow and how it could be altered to produce different flavors. Also wonder how to get texture changes? Could conceivably turn out to be a big thing sometime in the future.

Strodyn - I nearly choked laughing at the thought of licking a petri dish.

[edit on 12-7-2005 by Astronomer68]

This world is getting sicker by the minute. Even though I'm a vegetarian and strong advocator of "animal rights," I find the entire concept of engineered meat straight out of the "Twilight Zone." No thank you!

If they can do this, does this mean they'll be growing human body parts soon as well. Hell, maybe they already are.

I'm really not too shocked by this news though. Just a couple of weeks ago I commented to a friend how I wouldn't be surprised if scientists started developing brainless livestock, to quiet the controversy over "factory farms." Seems I was on the right track.

I would not partake in this sick and twisted technology anymore then I consume the diseased and tortured flesh of the factory farm animals.

Does man's greed and gluttony have no bounds?

Personally, I got no problem with consuming the "diseased and tortured flesh of factory farm animals". Though i would prefer to skip the disease part, and chase them through the wild before killing them with my bare hands.

At any rate...
I think cheap meat is cheap meat. I don't care if it comes from a petri dish.
As long as its NOT PEOPLE!

I don't wanna eat no people.

On the other hand... vegetarians are probably very nutritious...

I read another article about this subject about a week ago, here's a link to that thread if any are interested.

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

I've had time to think about this idea, and now I feel that it is a great idea! They could control everything that goes into the meat, and we wouldn't ave to worry about things like mad cow diesease. I just wonder if any vegans would eat it. If any of you are vegans let me know if you would eat this type of meat.

Originally posted by Strodyn


tbh meat is pretty poor tasting (just try smelling chicken), its normally the sauce that accompanies it that is nice, so fake cheap meat is good for me.

WHAT THE HELL?

You must not be ordering a nice juicy steak, man I can't think of anything that tastes better!

man I could kill (pun intended) for an 11 oz sirloin right about now from texas roadhouse

It won't be as good as they say it will be. And anyway, I thought chicken nuggets weren't made with proper chicken, just bits of beak and eyelid and other leftovers that can't be used for anything else.

Also, what the hell else are we gonna do with all these pigs and cows?
We'll be knee deep in sh1t within a fortnight.

[edit on 20-7-2005 by Irma]

Given the massive waste of resources that goes into feedlot (grain-fed) beef and the chemicals used to "enhance" the yield(not to mention the environmental damage they do), I can't see how this stuff would really be any worse.

And as the world's largest nation attempts to create the world's largest economy with consumption to match, this is probably going to be available on Beijing restaurant tables before anywhere else.

Why can't we just go back to solving the world's hunger problem by feeding the homeless to the hungry?

As for Eddie G, I intend to die of extreme old age, a burden to my grandchildren who I shall take extreme delight in embarrassing in public at every opportunity.

This world is getting sicker by the minute. Even though I'm a vegetarian and strong advocator of "animal rights," I find the entire concept of engineered meat straight out of the "Twilight Zone." No thank you!

I would not partake in this sick and twisted technology anymore then I consume the diseased and tortured flesh of the factory farm animals.

Alright, that is obscenely contradictory, if I do say so. You say you're an animal-rights advocate, and yet you think this is sick? It will be many, many, many centuries before (hu)man stops eating other animals, if they do at all. Why not slash the animal suffering part right out of the mix? With this method, you create the meat, which normally would have come from some man-imposed miserable farm (factory) animal, without ANY suffering at all. You really should think about this more, you don't seem to have your opinions straight.


[edit on 20-7-2005 by iceofspades]