Last week we talked about the debate around genetically modified vegetables, but what about the food scientists are still trying to engineer: in vitro meat? Animal-rights groups welcome it, but some people wonder if the public can get over its aversion to lab-grown meat.
Can you see yourself ever eating it?
GOOD Magazine suggests that a rebranding campaign might help change public perception of the meat that currently resembles "mouse turds." But many foods we eat are unappealing at first glance (or sniff) — blue cheese, natto, kimchi — so perhaps the animal welfare and environmental benefits could outweigh the disgusting appearance of in vitro meat.
Regardless, we are a long way from picking up a pound of lab meat from the market; the largest piece of meat grown so far is only the size of a contact lens, and scientists have yet to find a way to efficiently produce animal muscle tissue on a large scale.
Is what they are making real meat? Michael Spector, who wrote about in vitro meat for The New Yorker, told NPR,
"I talked to one scientist and I mentioned this as 'synthetic meat,' and she got annoyed," he says. "She said, 'This isn't synthetic. It's organic. It's meat. It's two meat cells growing to become more meat cells.' And depending on what your definition of any sort of life is, this is as fundamental as any animal is."
Read more:
• Can a Rebranding Effort Make In-Vitro Meat Appetizing? - GOOD
• Burgers From A Lab: The World Of In Vitro Meat - NPR
What do you think? Is in-vitro meat a smart option for our future food needs?
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there's already really awesome alternative to meat, it's called beans. :)
Is in-vitro meat a smart option for our future food needs?
no. no, it most certainly is not. it ranks up there with processed food, to me, and is something i would never intentionally consume.
Beans are not a substitute for animal proteins- they are fundamentally different. See: Biological Value, a measure of incorporated nitrogen from variable food-sources.
http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/MEETING/004/M2835E/M2835E00.HTM
I think that lab-grown meat is a fantastic alternative to slaughterhouses, but it fails to take advantage of the theory of ruminants: ruminant animals consume the fibers and materials that we cannot and turn those fibers into resources we CAN use, like milk, cheese, and MEAT! Hence, domestication of ruminant animals. Taking animals out of the equation kind of defeats the benefits of meat, aside from the protein.
We CAN use milk, cheese, and meat, but those of us who are leading healthy lives without them don't want to. Eating a variety of healthy foods, and taking a b12 vitamin will do just fine.
The WHO says that 40% of our current diseases are preventable, so clearly staying on the dairy and meat path is not working.
Anyone interested can read the American Dietetic's stance on veganism as a healthy diet for humans of any age: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864
What a waste of energy, I love some meat but I'd rather become a strict veg.
A grass fed animal can be ecological benefit to the landscape. We eat a lot less in volume but much better quality then we used to..
I agree with Clode! Since becoming vegetarian I feel so much better, get sick less and my allergies have improved. I love it!
I stick to eating grass-fed beef from local ranchers, and do so about 1-2 times per week. Not all of us are vegetarians, in fact, we evolved as omnivores.
With that being said, I am against science messing with ANY of our food supply. Thats it and thats all.
How is this ethically different from GMOs?
Plain and simple, no.
Unfortunately science has already messed with our food supply... hormones in meat anyone? Getting back to local farming and local ranching as much as possible seems like the smart way to go. I was in Shaw's supermarket the other day and noticed they had frozen organic cauliflower in their 'health' food aisle. Took a look to see where it was grown and lo and behold it was grown in China! Is it really necessary to ship cauliflower all the way from China when it's grown right here in the U.S.? That's shocking -- to me at least.
Unequivocally, no. And what alllebasii said.
If they're producing meat, then what's the difference between that and the meat that comes from already living animals? I can't imagine a science lab taking up much less space or producing much less waste than a pasture does. Can't we just... I dunno... be more humane in our procedures instead?
I'm a big believer that nutrition comes from nature and not from science. We get so many more nutrients from meat than just protein, and all of those nutrients come from what the animal ate. What does fake meat consume? I would rather live off veggies before I would ever consider eating this.
Didn't anyone see that episode of Eureka where they all ate the lab-grown chicken and went crazy? The scientist making it had added something, it had unintended consequences, and Jack had to save the day.
Um, yeah. I won't say "never" because stuff happens, but lab meat strikes me as a terrible idea. Just raise the animals already. We eat conventional meat now, but my granddad used to raise beef cattle on the prairies of eastern New Mexico. For. real. Cowboys are my heroes.
I'd rather see all this brainpower work on less unnatural ways to feed people cheaply. Hunger is a real issue, especially in other parts of the world. We're so blessed in the States to have access and money for really good meat, if we choose to go that route.
Would be a great way to eliminate the consequence of having to actually kill an animal for protein. While it may not be economically or environmentally advantageous for a long time, I would feel better eating it knowing that no living breathing animal had been killed for me to eat it's flesh.
I could see large scale operations in vitro meat factories being set up, and then awful contamination stories following. For that reason, I think I'll stay away from it.
However, some kind of virus could wipe out all domesticated breeds of animals in some apocalyptic meat crisis - and then we'd be stuck eating what we can catch and what we could grow in labs for meat. Or, if it effects humans, we just be eating each other's brains and we won't care about the ethical consequences (being zombies and all).
@Clode
If you have to take vitamin supplements your diet is NOT healthy.
That eating TOO MUCH meat, cheese and milk can cause health problems doesn't means that one should NEVER eat them.
Every thing need to be taken in the right proportions.
Without oxygen we die but too much oxygen kills, without salts we would die and with too much too.
Eat meat once a week and you don't need vitamin supplements, you won't get all the adverse effects and, when everyone would do that, we wouldn't need factory farming anymore.
@alllebasii <I am against science messing with ANY of our food supply. Thats it and thats all.>
But at least since man has been living in settled communities he's been manipulating his food supply with what was essentially rudimentary forms of agricultural science. And, science is going to have to play a role in bringing our food supply up to sufficient levels to meet the needs of the world's population unless you are OK with millions (even billions) of people suffering from starvation or malnutrition. I am excited by the prospect of emancipating animals from the slaughter house with such technology as lab-grown meat, but for me the great potential lies in meeting the basic protein requirements of the world's human population. If lab-grown meat helps accomplish this, as I think it could in the next 10-15 years, then this is truly a great thing. I feel like too often discussions about human-beings' manipulation of nature react against science for its seemingly destructive (or supposedly icky) capacities without the acknowledgment that science is harmful when the ends it is put to are harmful. Rather then being anti-science, we need to insist that it is put to better ends. And we just need to get over the gross factor. I am reminded of what Upton Sinclair said about the reception of The Jungle: (I'm paraphrasing here) "I meant to reach their hearts, but I only reached their stomachs."
There is enough food in the world to prevent people from starving, it is simply a matter of politics. Besides that, I doubt this Vitro meat will be fed to the people of the world that are actually starving...it would simply become a cheap source of cheap protein for the masses. I won't support it, and would rather slaughter a cow with my own hands before touching it with a 10 foot pole.
Ha! I must be the only one here who watched Better Off Ted, where lab-grown meat was described as tasting like "despair":
YouTube: Meat Tasting Scene
no. but I'm not much for too much science fiction food. My meat is locally grown and has a good life on a farm.
That just creeps me out.
Also, how is it better on them to give up on eating domesticated animals. Are we going to set them free in the wild? Keep them as pets? Our genetic diversity is already taking a big hit from industrial farming.