Lab-Grown Meat a Reality, But Who Will Eat It?

maybe enviromental do-gooders who want to protect animals

I've seen a story on the BBC about this and they said that to give it texture, as the "shmeat" is texture less due to inactivity, they would constantly stretch it and relax it on some kind of machine to simulate the activity of a live animal. Apparently that way it gains the texture of flesh that has been alive.

In that case, it all boils down to taste and safety.

If it satisfied those two criteria as well, I'd eat it. I already eat a whole bunch of "meat products" that I probably don't really want to know what's in, so I don't see a valid reason why I wouldn't eat this. Just think of the huge volume of food this planet could produce if we did it this way! Hydroponic vegetables and lab grown meat..

The we could massively cut back our use of the natural environment too, bettering the world

I wouldn't eat that, it's like flesh and muscles that are never used, no blood or taste probably and it looks disgusting too.

I am sick of the thought that they would like to give us lab food only so they can make more profits.

edit - double post

[edit on 21-6-2008 by Grey Magic]

edit - triple post

[edit on 21-6-2008 by Grey Magic]

I would eat it, as no animal would have to suffer for my benefit. Also, as it is grown from cells, it retains it's protein structure.

I would prefer synthetic meat, and poultry to the real thing. I can't eat the tofu, or the other synthetic vegan food. However, something produced from cells of an animal without it's destruction is a great idea.

I find it difficult eating meat, as I have been brought up to eat it, and was taught that it was for our own good. I was a child of the 70's.

I eat meat moderately, and when money allows, I get things in fit for a vegetarian.

I eat eggs from chickens that are allowed to roam, but not so free range that their eggs are just laid anywhere. The eggs are from chickens who have a chicken run. The birds are kept happy.

I would eat it, however i'd first wanted it to be tested to make sure it had no harmful chemicals in it. I dont' mean low levels of chemicals i mean non existant.

I would also want to test it in blind trials to see if the taste was the same as meat gotten from an animal. Anyone who has ever had wild food or animals allowed to live a natural life on a farm, knows it tastes a lot different to badly farmed meat.

If it tasted the same, if it was absolutely devoid of harmful chemicals, if it didn't harm the enviroment in regards to all the chemicals and energy needed to grow it and if it was cheaper than regular meat. Then absolutely yes i'd eat it.

reply to post by monkeybus


I am a vegetarian, and why not? That is if they just hurt one animal a bit (keep it alive and healthy etc aftwer extracting cells) and then all the people that just can not live without their meat can eat this stuff.

I myself would in all probability say no thanks.

reply to post by monkeybus


Double post.

[edit on 21-6-2008 by QueenofWeird]

I remember listening to NPR a few months ago when they first discussed this happening. Supposedly the 'meat' will not have the same taste as real meat because it will be pure protein and have no skin or fat cells.

Personally I would rather eat animals.

My initial thoughts on this ...

Sounds like an ideal thing for long distance space travel. Grow your own meat without all the hassles of caring for livestock in zero-g's... can you imagine that mess? Cows wouldn't do well wearing diapers.


In the OP link...
"Peter Singer, author of the 1975 treatise Animal Liberation, is all for it.

"I always thought it would be a good thing," he says. "The same way that I think it's good that the abuse of horses for pulling loads has ended. ... I think it would be good if the abuse of animals for raising them for meat were to end, because we had a technological solution to that. We had an alternative.""

The thing about his point of view is it doesn't factor in the unintended consequences. Yes, when tractors and automobiles became widespread and cheap enough to make the switch, farmers didn't have to subject their poor "abused" horses to pulling loads anymore. But farmers are a practical sort, and when their horses could no longer pull their weight around the farm, off they went to the glue factories... by the hundreds of thousands. At least they weren't abused anymore eh?

I can foresee a similar fate for various livestock on a much wider scale if this sort of technology were to become the norm. If it becomes cheaper to buy a chunk of shmeat than to raise livestock, there would be a whole lot of livestock that would become "unpractical". Right now there are many different breeds of livestock, developed over hundreds if not thousands of years of domestication by humans. They are adapted to various climates and conditions, have different characteristics and personalities. Shmeat would only require a small population of tissue sample donors, and due to economics and human stupidity they would only use the variety that grew tissue the quickest.
Raising livestock it a prime consumer of a goodly part of the grain that is grown, so it would also change the whole grain and food market economics in ways I haven't had time to consider.

If it will only grow a pure protein tissue its value may be limited. I watched an episode of "Man vs Wild" or something where he talked about rabbit meat being so lean that if you tried to live off it alone for too long you will develop a condition called "protein poisoning". It seems we have to have some fats and such to balance it out.

All that said, I still think this technology should be developed for future space travel use.

Lurker

I trust scientists as I trust politicians which is to say, not at all.

I expect them next to grow "human meat" for those who want to have a more 'primitive experience' and 'learn' what the cannibals were all about.

And in the background there is a voice screaming, "Soylent Green is People!!!"



[edit on 22/6/08 by Pellevoisin]

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
I've been to a chicken slaughterhouse and I will tell you that what I witnessed bore no relationship to the descriptions I've read. The process was such as to make the horror stories impossible.

Did you go to this one?
media.www.tchnews.com...

Workers were videoed stomping on chickens, kicking them, and slamming them violently against floors and walls. Workers also ripped the animals' beaks, twisted their heads off, spray-painted their faces, and squeezed the chickens' bodies until they would die.

I think we can all agree that we cannot see all of the horrors of slaughterhouses. For one to say cruel things do not happen would be just as naive as saying all slaughterhouses are inhumane.

In regards to the OP:

Like Splenda, Im not so sure about lab grown meat.

Like anything lab created, how much testing and time do we really have to see the overall result both to consumers and nature?

When we start putting things in our bodies that make their own pesticides, at what point does our body start to react negatively?

www.cnn.com...

The meddling in the balance of that which has come from the harmony of life seems like dangerous business to me. I wont be eating lab meat anytime soon.

Peace


[edit on 22-6-2008 by HIFIGUY]

ah man, there goes that vision again of the meat crawling across the counter in Poltergiest.........

Um, thanks, but no thanks. If others want to eat this stuff, then more power to them. If it helps with a food shortage, great! But it's not for me. (The idea of petre dish meat kind of grosses me out.)

I think I'll stick to getting my meat fresh from the farmer across the street where I know he doesn't use growth hormones, he grows their feed on-site & he treats his livestock well.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer my meat as close to off-the-hoof as I can get it. We haven't seemed to have a problem "growing" meat in the last 10,000 years, so I don't see a need to change what is working fine.

Can't be any worse than Spam or liverwurst. Still kinda gives me the willies

I don't see what all the fuss is about...

Allot of Chicken is already grown in incubators, same with many animals you eat, and even if it isn't chances are it's already been modified to some un-natural degree.

Sounds like all this guy has done is removed the useless parts before it's grown.

I'd eat it, in fact, I'm pretty eager to try it and see what it tastes like.

What's the matter? Stomach too weak to try new things?

A couple years ago there was some people advertising Hufu, human flavoured tofu. But I guess it turns out it was just a joke. The idea was interesting though!

Also that baby eating pictures are just some guys art project. The pictures were picked up by some tabloid or internet site and presented as proof of how evil china is, and of course people believed it. It actually caused a large scandal and got that guy and China in a lot of trouble.
But its not real.