Winston Churchill, a carnivore to the core, saw the future of meat back in 1936. “Fifty years hence,” he wrote, “we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”
Churchill’s timing was out by at least three decades, but his prediction is steadily moving closer to reality. While governments chew over the science of meat production — from the US Food and Drug Administration’s recent backing for the consumption of meat and milk from cloned animals to this week’s revelation of a calf born to a cloned cow in Shropshire — scientists are now working feverishly on a third solution.
Meat that has never been part of an entire living animal is potentially far cleaner and healthier. Free from growth hormones and antibiotics, cultured meat could be made healthier by removing the harmful fats and introducing “good” fats such as omega-3.
The world consumes 240 billion kilos of meat each year. But more than 75 per cent of what is fed to an animal is lost through metabolism or inedible parts such as bones. In theory, with cultured meat, nothing is wasted, nothing suffers and nothing dies.
“Would humans be prepared to eat a meat that had never breathed?” — is the final question in the article. I think that is absurd — but, I am confident that all the flavors of Luddite, self-conscious or not, will fight to obstruct the choice, regardless of technology, taste or nutrition.
Honestly I wouldn’t mind too much, as long as I understood the process and that there wasn’t any crap in it.
The *squick* factor is kinda high though.
Soylent Green!!
While it may have the potential to be healthier (and the potential to be not), it kind of gives the impression of the sort of food you would find at Mcdonalds or KFC rather than at say a high quality restaurant.
I have produced the first chicken with 8 wings and 8 legs. Working now on eliminating feathers and producing BBQ sauce outter coating.
If this works out it will be far more humane and probably have far less environmental impact than farms.
KInd of reminds me or Star Trek where all their meat is replicated and no animal ever had to die to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh. Seems like a good idea, wonder how peta feels about it
Meat…It’s what to eat.
Someone will find something to protest, but I think meat-substance is a great idea.
As a vegetarian largely for moral reasons, I can’t wait for this new technology to become common place.
I miss meat. And I would not have any moral objections to eating cultured meat, as it would never have been part of a living, breathing, concious being.
It would sure change round up and branding time at the ranch.
I predict that the biggest problem with this will be the displacement of beef, pork and chicken farmers. I don’t see how the little guys could produce this stuff.
As an animal rights person, I think it would be fantastic. But I do think it wouldn’t catch on in the third world, look at the GM crops that they are refusing to allow into their countries. Hell, even first world countries are fighting them, mainly due to the economic displacement side I think.
I hope that someday we can clone the Big-Mac, bread and all.
Wouldn’t this be a good thing for Vegetarians or vegans, no animals suffered. This is a breakthrough
.
Growing cells in small sterile cultures is far different than large commercial vat processing.
Time to grow some Glow-in-the-Dark™ meat. No more need for candles to get into that romantic feeling…
No more slaughter houses.
No more feed lots.
No more ground water contamination from vast amounts of animal waste.
No more methane from cow farts damaging the ozone layer
Crops used for ethanol and/or biodesel instead of animal feed.
No more veal… but vat-grown should be as tender, since it won’t get much exercise in a vat? 🙂
Vat-grown meat = Veat?
What’s not to like?
This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “Mystery Meat”.
Now if you really want to be humane, produce foie gras this way.
Does the meat you eat have to have feet?
Oh yes it does. If anyone ever serves me meat without the feet, I send it back. That’s why I’m partial to McDonald’s. 🙂
This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “Mystery Meat”.
LOL.
I bet it will taste like your average supermarket meat. Like shit that is. Nothing can compare to a standard old fashioned grass fed cow. Grain fed just plain sucks. I wonder what the feed will be for these meats, glucose? I wonder how long it will take the big “farmers” to lobby for a ban on normal cow production due to “environmental hysteria”. There by squishing the small guys out of the market for good. They tend to lobby for bullshit “regulations” these days that hinder the small producers, yet the big guys are usually exempt from said regulations.
If they can make it look and taste like a Thickburger, with all the cheese, mayo and various toppings, and then make it good for me, I don’t
really care where it comes from. And if they can do the same with curly fries, then my life will be complete.
Thanks but no thanks. So far the idea doesn’t sound appealing.
I also don’t have any desire to eat caviar, bugs, cockroaches, slugs, deer penises, or any other abnormal crap.
Meat that has never been part of an entire living animal is potentially far cleaner and healthier. Free from growth hormones and antibiotics, cultured meat could be made healthier by removing the harmful fats and introducing “good” fats such as omega-3.
What a joke. “Modified” foods are never made healthier, just cheaper. For example: margarine is not healthier than butter, just cheaper. Food treated with pesticide is not better for you, but it increases production, making it cheaper. Same with genetically engineered food, and milk treated with hormones and antibiotics. That’s why I’ll stick with the natural stuff, thank you very much.
Not just Soylent Green, but let’s remember the brilliant Cyril Kornbluth / Frederik Pohl novel The Space Merchants from 1948. The factory-sized chicken that put on meat so fast that they were harvesting it 24 hours a day. And a prescient but scary model of government, economics, and social order.
This sounds grotesque. Ah, the things that the future is going to throw out the window.
1. First it was customer service — gone!
2. Then employers were granted all the rights that used to be reserved only for slaveowners.
3. Then we decided to equally harass and annoy everyone at airports.
4. Now we will have to eat some sort of processed meatlike stuff.
Is this new news? I thought McDonalds already was selling this in their hamburgers and chicken nuggets.
Let’s solve the meat problem first by addressing consumption — if so many people didn’t eat and eat and eat until they weigh 300 pounds, maybe there would be enough meat to go around.
The solution to obesity is the solution to impending meat shortage!
Hell yea!
imagine pre-ordering a steak EXACTLY how you want it say, a month in advance if you’re going out to a fancy place for a birthday/new year etc. They grow it and marinate all together, it’s not got loads of shit in it from eating crap itself, you know exactly how it’s gonna turn out: it’s not gonna have a fat rind down the middle, no greenhouse gasses passed from cows, don’t need huge farms, needs less energy.
Im not talking processed though, I’m talking cloned and grown. Also, because it’s not been moving around it’ll taste like kobi-beef 😀
This reminds me of those funny urban emails about how KFC had to legally drop the word “chicken” from their advertising because they were raising “chicken-like” creatures without beaks, feathers or feet on their farms.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/kfc.asp
Finally you can have a valid reason to ask “Honey , why are you serving the same meat everyday?”
Woot #4!!!
Seriously though – As the food & energy requirements for food animals rises(as in the individual cost for those rises), but as the space available decreases (as the # of people rise) then lab-grown meat will enter the mainstream – it is more cost effective to “raise” the flesh in vats than to actually grow the meat the old fashioned way.
Time will tell, no doubt.
The environmentalists will never let this fly. They are already blocking GM foods like rice, so of course they’ll stop this. Plus the animal rights crowd will hate it too, since it’s all about dictating to people what to do, and having an objection-free alternative won’t be good enough for them.
I remember a tv commercial many years ago where a person was mocked for having tried to invent a “boneless chicken farm”. Sounded ridiculous at the time, but you had to figure it made some kind of sense, too.
“Nothing is impossible. It’s just the degree of difficulty”.