Scientists attempt to grow pork without pig. — The question on my mind is how do vegetarians deal with this?
Dutch researchers are trying to grow pork meat in a laboratory with the goal of feeding millions without the need to raise and slaughter animals.
“We’re trying to make meat without having to kill animals,” Bernard Roelen, a veterinary science professor at Utrecht University, said in an interview.
Although it is in its early stages, the idea is to replace harvesting meat from livestock with a process that eliminates the need for animal feed, transport, land use and the methane expelled by animals, which all hurt the environment, he said.
found by Bubba Martin
Oh dear, this may put the 4-H clubs out of business. Who needs to raise live stock if you are going to grow the meat in a vat.
SOLIENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!
I have a vegan friend and I asked him that question and he said that he would eat meat that was grown but didn’t involve killing animals.
My wife is a vegan, and though the taste of meat is unappealing to her, I believe that she too would be willing to eat meat that was grown in this manner. If nothing else, it would be a good source of B-12.
– me –
Mmmmmm, meatsubstance….
I like how we can now do whatever we want in society as long as somehow it can be linked to lessening global warming: such as frankenfoods and reactivating nuclear power stations.
RBG
Two Words – Soylent Green
Well I guess since Soylent Green was made from people – this would actually be Soylent Orange.
It’s about time. I’m a vegetarian and I’ll eat it..
I am a meat eating person currently but the day all meat is grown and not derived from an actual animal is the day I become a vegatarian.
#5 – TheGlobalWarmer,
We’re in agreement. I wonder if I can get imitation bison meatsubstance.
#6 – RGB,
Frankenfoods, OK by me. Nukes, NO!!
I’d eat this. I already take franken-insulin made from recombinant DNA and with a slightly different structure than natural human insulin to make it absorb more quickly. Frankenly, I’m a bit surprised it has taken this long to go from recombinant DNA for insulin to similar technology for meat. I wonder if they can get the carbon from atmospheric CO2 and the power from solar energy. Or, would that just be franken-photosynthesis?
I asked a vegan this question and she said that they still would not eat it. She claimed that if the protein is close enough to animal protein she would have as much difficulty digesting it as she would with normal animal protein.
Years ago at UC Davis I saw a lab experiment paralleling this. “Wine from a tap!” Alcohol is alcohol regardless of source and is 12% of wine. Water is water regardless of source and is 87% of wine. Grape skin has about .9% of the phenols and taste factors of wine.
.1% is a mystery that makes all the difference in the world.
I look forward to the lab boys figuring all this stuff out.
Have you ppl noticed that the ones bitching about not eating it are women?
#13. That’s “People”, not “ppl”.
11,
As omnivores, humans are perfectly capable of eating animal protein. Dairy is another matter, as we only picked that capability up a few millenia ago.
#11 This vegan friend of yours – can he/she substantiate that claim? I know I’m just a chemist and my biochemistry courses were a long time ago, but is there really a significant difference between the digestion of plant and animal proteins? The proteins are denatured in the stomach and pepsin and the like starts cutting them into small pieces. In the small intestine trypsin and others take over. In the end what you mostly get are individual amino acids and short peptides. Granted that some of those peptide sequences may be harder to digest than others, but I don’t really buy the claim that there is a significant difference.
Tallwookie, where are you? Someone has to point out to Angel (13) that “ppl” is politically incorrect because it has peepee in it.
STOP HITTING ME! OUCH! OUCH!
A health positive Thickburger? I’m in.
It is not really a question whether vegetarians/vegans would eat such substance (after all it is documented that all vegetarian humanoid spicies have been extinct, so those are trying the failed strategy and are inconsequential). What matters is should the production of such substance be allowed and would some future pc nuts try to make everyone eat that instead of the natural meat. Not to mention likely patenting nightmare (could one patent process to make fake pork and would the wild boar infringe on it?)
@#12: There are actually monks in the Hong Kong that have perfected such art. Using only the plant material they not only cook meals that taste exactly like various real meats (I personally tried beef, pork, chicken and duck) but look like and have the proper texture! (And, if those monks are vegetarian as they claim, how exactly do they know exact taste and texture of the meats? 🙂 )
#15 – and we didn’t futz around with milk; but, rather cheese. One snazzy tidbit I picked up studying nutrition of anthropology is that for the couple of centuries after dairy production grew into Western Europe – the average hardworking peasant ate a couple pounds of cheese a day.
Good thing they ate plenty of fibrous greens along with that much cheese!
I hope it still tastes like a whopper.
#16
No idea if she has said evidence. I’ll ask her. Could be complete bullshit for all I know but that was the claim.
I’m not surprised this is being done by Dutch scientists. Has anyone here ever tried to find a decent piece of meat of any kind in the Netherlands??? The people there won’ty know the difference between home grown and real, since they have never tasted fresh.
#23
Not unless you go to a gay bad in Amsterdam 😉
Ouch typo, I mean bar
so, we’re wasting lab brain power to make a few nutball vegans happy? The only reason we HAVE vegans/vegetarians is that we’re a spoiled over fed society. You don’t hear much of this talk from hungry/starving people.
And, as for vegetarian being healthier…it’s bunk! We’re omnivores, we’re scrap eaters, we are bug eaters, and scrounders, by nature. We can digest way more than the cultural bias in the United States allows. Having said that, we have been eating a wide variety of diet for a LONG time, I somehow think that eating a replicated protein from a lab would be just as unhealthy as eating MacDonald’s for every meal, or uggh, soy protein goo crafted into the shapes of various other foods.